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Principles of Overlanding the African Continent · The Overland Journal Podcast

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. I am
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: your host, Scott Brady, and for today we're going to
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  Speaker 1: talk about the principles of overlanding the African continent. Joining
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  Speaker 1: me today is Steve Edwards, who has lived in Africa
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: and has traveled around the continent. We also have Graham Bell.
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  Speaker 1: Graham Bell was born in South Africa and has quite
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: literally circumnavigated the continent. This wide ranging conversation includes how
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: to ship your vehicle, how to buy a vehicle locally,
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  Speaker 1: the two classic African routes, which would be the East
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Coast and the West Coast. So we dig into all
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  Speaker 1: the details on not only doing a week long trip
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  Speaker 1: in Southern Africa, but also crossing the continent. So please
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: enjoy my conversation with Steve and Graham. This content is
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  Speaker 1: brought to you by Overland Journal, our premium quality print publication.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: The magazine was founded in two thousand and six with
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  Speaker 1: the goal of providing independent equipment and vehicle reviews, along
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  Speaker 1: listening to right now. You can subscribe directly on our
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  Speaker 1: website at Overland Journal dot com. So welcome to the podcast.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: We have some great guests today, So we have Rambell Graham.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Give us, give us a little bit of history of
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  Speaker 1: your time on the African continent.
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  Speaker 2: All right, Hello, I was born and raised in South Africa.
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  Speaker 2: Born in Johannesburg, moved down to Cape Town, spent some
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  Speaker 2: time in Durban, kind of moved around South Africa itself
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  Speaker 2: a lot, and then started traveling overland within the country
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  Speaker 2: and then up to Doris Alum twenty ten. Took the kids,
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  Speaker 2: picked up the landy and traveled up through Mozambique, Malawi
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  Speaker 2: to Tanzania. After that down across Zambia, Botswana, Namimbia, not
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  Speaker 2: too much of butt Sswana. When we first went left
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  Speaker 2: to travel, you know, we were all told by all
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  Speaker 2: the local gurus this was years ago. This is fourteen
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  Speaker 2: years ago. But there was like there were the sky
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  Speaker 2: is going to fall on your head. Sure you need
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  Speaker 2: all this, this, this and this, and we soon realized
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  Speaker 2: that it was a very different reality. So after that
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  Speaker 2: initial travel up east and across Southern Africa, the overlanding
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  Speaker 2: bug were really bit hard and we set off and
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  Speaker 2: so I can now I got to South America, up
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  Speaker 2: to Alaska, around Europe, and then we went again and
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  Speaker 2: down West Africa from Portugal over to Spain, Morocco, down
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  Speaker 2: to South Africa again and get around South Africa again.
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  Speaker 2: We were trying to drive from Cape Town to Vladivostok
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  Speaker 2: in Russia.
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  Speaker 1: Sure during a little more challenging right now.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, And it wasn't COVID that actually stopped us. It
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  Speaker 2: was a situation in Ethiopia which is still a problem.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, we need to talk about that in the podcasts.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Then we've also got Steve Edwards with us, and Steve
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  Speaker 1: give us a little bit of background on your time
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  Speaker 1: on the African continent.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, my wife Julie and I we lived in Huberona,
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  Speaker 3: which is the capital of Botswana, for about two years.
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  Speaker 3: That was our kind of second go around actually on
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  Speaker 3: the continent. A few years Prior to that, we were
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  Speaker 3: went to Cape Town for like a business conference, and
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  Speaker 3: we kind of decided, if we're going to fly all
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  Speaker 3: the way to ten thousand miles to South Africa, we're
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  Speaker 3: not going to just sit in a conference room, you
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  Speaker 3: know all all, you know, for the whole trip. So
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  Speaker 3: because at that point we weren't really sort of engaged
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  Speaker 3: in the overland life. At that moment, we were looking
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  Speaker 3: at you know, fully catered safari experiences, lodges, that kind
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  Speaker 3: of stuff, and of course the price tags are astronomical
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  Speaker 3: for those things. We're feeling kind of discouraged. I sort
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  Speaker 3: of read somewhere about these self drive safari self drive
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  Speaker 3: overland experiences that you can do, you know, pretty easily
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  Speaker 3: in Southern Africa, and we just kind of took a flyer.
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  Speaker 3: We booked at a high lex with a roof tent
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  Speaker 3: and a fridge, and we started in vent Hook in Namibia.
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  Speaker 3: And we drove out of wind Hook ten miles down
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  Speaker 3: the road. The first thing we saw a bunch of
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  Speaker 3: ostriches and wore hogs running around, and there was zebra.
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  Speaker 3: And we spent our first nights at a truly special
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  Speaker 3: place called the Namabrand Nature reserve which is near Sosu Sly,
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  Speaker 3: a little bit south of the Big Sand Dunes, and
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  Speaker 3: we knew from that first night this was like someplace
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  Speaker 3: we needed to come back to. That first night we
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  Speaker 3: were there, giraffes came and ate from the acacia tree,
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  Speaker 3: you know that we were camped underneath the middle of
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  Speaker 3: the night, and yeah, that was it. And then so
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  Speaker 3: we toured na maybe in Botswana. During that trip we
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  Speaker 3: got back to the United States. We were both kind
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  Speaker 3: of in this mindset that we need to find some
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  Speaker 3: way to get back there on a more permanent basis.
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  Speaker 1: Julie.
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  Speaker 3: At the time, my wife was an academic and she
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  Speaker 3: received a fullbite fellowship to teach at the University of
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  Speaker 3: Botswana in Harone. So that was kind of our that
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  Speaker 3: was the foot in the door. Incredible and supposed to
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  Speaker 3: be there for a year, but then they asked if
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  Speaker 3: she would stay for one more and we of course
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  Speaker 3: said yes. We were just this amazing privilege to be
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  Speaker 3: able to not only travel extensively on the content and
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  Speaker 3: I think we traveled about thirteen countries in East and
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  Speaker 3: Southern Africa, but also to live there, you know, to
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  Speaker 3: live there for you know, many many months and make
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  Speaker 3: friends and be able to return to special place, says,
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  Speaker 3: particularly in Botswana. I think we took seven or eight
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  Speaker 3: trips the Central Calahari Game Reserve just there and that's yeah,
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  Speaker 3: that's our connection.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: We were there for about two years and we've been
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  Speaker 3: back in Montana, which is our home now for We
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  Speaker 3: came back in twenty nineteen, and I was saying before
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  Speaker 3: the PAG podcast started, how much I miss how much
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  Speaker 3: I miss it.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really amazing.
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  Speaker 1: My feelings around trips there is that I'm always so
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  Speaker 1: excited to go back because it actually feels like I'm
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  Speaker 1: going home. And I have heard others describe it similarly,
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  Speaker 1: but I think it's because it is a place that
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  Speaker 1: most aligns with the things that I find fascinating. It's
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  Speaker 1: this huge variety of geology, and it's this huge variety
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  Speaker 1: of life, of animal life and of human life and
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  Speaker 1: of human culture. These are all very ancient things. It's
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  Speaker 1: where we came from, so to go back there, I
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  Speaker 1: just I remember the first time that I heard a
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  Speaker 1: lion roar, and what was so fascinating about it was like,
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  Speaker 1: you know, we're higher thinking creatures. And I put pieced
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  Speaker 1: it together what was happening. But before I pieced it
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  Speaker 1: together what was happening intellectually, my body had responded in
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  Speaker 1: about seven different ways, including all of the hair that
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  Speaker 1: I don't have on my head standing up, like feeling
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  Speaker 1: this tension that no question was there from my long
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  Speaker 1: distant ancestors. That noise meant something. It meant a lot
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  Speaker 1: of danger, and that has you know, the ones that
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  Speaker 1: lived were the ones that respected that noise and that danger.
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  Speaker 1: And now it's a part of me, and it was
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  Speaker 1: it was very, very present with me in that moment.
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  Speaker 1: Every trip that I've done there has been an absolute blessing.
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  Speaker 1: And I've been able to do game drives where you're
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  Speaker 1: camping and also gamed where you're staying in a neat
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  Speaker 1: lodge and raced in Morocco and the Outback Challenge, and
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  Speaker 1: I've been back a few other times and across the
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  Speaker 1: continent from east to west and things like that. But
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  Speaker 1: I have so much more of the African contin continent
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  Speaker 1: to see. I've really just barely scratched one tenth of
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  Speaker 1: one hundredth of one percent of what there is to
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  Speaker 1: see in Africa. So I am just an enthusiast believer
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  Speaker 1: in the place and in the people that are there,
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  Speaker 1: and I'm grateful to be going back very soon for
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  Speaker 1: an extended trip up the length of the continent. That's
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  Speaker 1: kind of what prompted this opportunity for us all sit
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  Speaker 1: to sit down. Steve, you were down here, you're a
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  Speaker 1: member of our team, you manage the expedition portal editorial,
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  Speaker 1: and you were already here for some extended time. And Graham,
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  Speaker 1: you're actually on your way up to tuk Tiaktuk in
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  Speaker 1: the wintertime in the Arctic, and you happen to be
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  Speaker 1: coming through. So it felt appropriate to have someone that
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  Speaker 1: it was at least born in Africa, also fortunate to
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  Speaker 1: have someone who has lived in Africa. And then you
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  Speaker 1: have me, who is the total Nube and very very
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  Speaker 1: grateful for every moment that I've had in that beautiful place.
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  Speaker 1: So I think the first thing to talk about is
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  Speaker 1: really we don't generally just want to say Africa, and
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  Speaker 1: the reason for that is it's really not only short
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  Speaker 1: sighted from a language perspective, but it's also very short
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  Speaker 1: sighted from reality. The African continent is absolutely massive. It's
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  Speaker 1: the second largest by land mass. You can stuff a
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  Speaker 1: whole bunch of North America's into the size of it.
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  Speaker 1: We decided what there was fifty four countries. I think
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  Speaker 1: we decided that was either on the continent itself or
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  Speaker 1: very close as an island nation. So it is an
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  Speaker 1: incredibly diverse place, from the Sahara in the north to
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  Speaker 1: the Cocovelts in the south, and just the beautiful places
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  Speaker 1: that are in between include being a lot of equatorial
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  Speaker 1: jungle in the middle. So this is an incredibly diverse continent.
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  Speaker 1: I think the first thing that I wanted to ask you, Graham,
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  Speaker 1: having grown up there, when you learned about the history
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  Speaker 1: of your country of this continent, what are the things
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  Speaker 1: that stand out as being most notable about the African
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  Speaker 1: continent to you?
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  Speaker 2: Being born and raised mostly in a party in South Africa,
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  Speaker 2: it was actually very difficult to get a greater understanding
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  Speaker 2: of the African continent because of the nature of their
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  Speaker 2: education system. It wasn't like we were being taught broad
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  Speaker 2: African history in school. We were taught South African history,
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  Speaker 2: but the focus on colonialism and the conflicts with the
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  Speaker 2: Zulu Use, etc. I actually felt, when I was as
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  Speaker 2: an adult traveling into Africa Africa proper from South Africa,
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  Speaker 2: the first time that I actually knew nothing about the continent.
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  Speaker 2: I knew a bit of history, I'd done my reading,
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  Speaker 2: but it was a bit of a blank slate for me,
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  Speaker 2: and I had to kind of go discovered for myself.
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  Speaker 2: And I think that was a large part of why
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  Speaker 2: we traveled and how we traveled, is that we wanted
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  Speaker 2: to discover it for ourselves and we were surprised by
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  Speaker 2: what we found. But the history of Africa, the recent
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  Speaker 2: history and the forming history which made what it is
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  Speaker 2: today is the colonialism. And that's colonialism that created those
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  Speaker 2: fifty four countries. Before there weren't countries, there were tribes.
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  Speaker 2: And half of the tragedy of the recent history of Africa,
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  Speaker 2: as you have these lines drawn on a map by
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  Speaker 2: people sitting in Brussels, we have no idea that that
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  Speaker 2: river separates that tribe from that tribe or that mountain
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  Speaker 2: range is you know. There was just so much complexity
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  Speaker 2: to the entire tribal system, and then try the then
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  Speaker 2: political system, and it was just arbitrary, drone out the
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  Speaker 2: lines were drawn up. And that's a lot of the
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  Speaker 2: conflict and a lot of the problems that Africa faces
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  Speaker 2: is because there's those arbitrary lines.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, there were powerful kingdoms that existed, I mean huge
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  Speaker 1: kingdoms of people with kings and militaries and complex even
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  Speaker 1: political arrangements with other kingdoms that were near them. And yes,
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  Speaker 1: so the lines were drawn arbitrarily that oftentimes cut through
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  Speaker 1: those original those original kingdom lands.
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  Speaker 2: And that the history, it's the written history. It's it's difficult,
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  Speaker 2: I think, from from our perspective to to truly understand
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  Speaker 2: the history of the continents and all its it's it's
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  Speaker 2: various facets because of the written history. It's not quite
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  Speaker 2: as as it is with Europe, for instance, but there's
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  Speaker 2: I mean, it's.
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  Speaker 1: It probably misses a bunch of really important details.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, right, the bit of history that we we can
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  Speaker 2: access some fascinating stuff. There was a that king from
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  Speaker 2: Mali who even by two days standards would still be
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  Speaker 2: considered the richest man in the world. And he traveled
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  Speaker 2: to Egypt, and he took so much gold with him,
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  Speaker 2: and he gave so much away that it actually devalued
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: gold as a currency in Egypt. You know, the languages
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  Speaker 2: that the people spoke, the complexity of their societies. I
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  Speaker 2: think they're underestimated and they're not appreciated enough by all
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  Speaker 2: of them. And those are things that you can see
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  Speaker 2: as you travel through. You can see echoes of the past,
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  Speaker 2: but you can see the reality of the future as well,
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  Speaker 2: which both of those are to me are quite fascinating.
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  Speaker 1: Even the stories that you hear that in Ethiopia there
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  Speaker 1: is some island that supposedly contains the arc of the Covenant.
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  Speaker 1: So even Western history and Western or Eastern religions, Western history,
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  Speaker 1: Christianity has a very significant, at least potential footprint.
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  Speaker 2: And that's again that's looking at as you travel through
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  Speaker 2: the country, through the continent. Sorry, you'll see this, I
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  Speaker 2: mean East Africa. Massive Arab influence. Yeah, that goes from
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  Speaker 2: the religion, to the style of dress, to the language,
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  Speaker 2: to the forts on Zanzibar, and you know, there's so
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  Speaker 2: much of that. And then you have the Portuguese influence
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  Speaker 2: and the Spanish influence on the west coast, and then
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  Speaker 2: of course everything that's north of the Sahara is not
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  Speaker 2: what people understand to be Africa. That's right, you know,
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  Speaker 2: I know, that's quite fascinating. It is quite fascinating.
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  Speaker 1: So Graham, when you think about traveling like you have done,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: doing these big cross continent trips. I mean the one
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  Speaker 1: that you did up the West coast qualifies as an
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  Speaker 1: expedition in my mind. In every term, these are very
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  Speaker 1: significant endeavors. What would you say are the most important
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  Speaker 1: considerations when you look, especially to go up the west
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  Speaker 1: coast of Africa. For context for those that are listening
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  Speaker 1: to go up the Western route of Africa is it
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  Speaker 1: includes about three times more countries than to go up
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  Speaker 1: the east side, and the infrastructure is significantly different. There
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  Speaker 1: are places where there are paved roads, absolutely, but there
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  Speaker 1: are long distances that need to be traveled without a
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  Speaker 1: paved road. Whereas the eastern route is the most travel
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  Speaker 1: and it also is where most of the over the
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  Speaker 1: road commerce occurs. There tends to be a little bit
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  Speaker 1: more stability, which means there's more commerce. When there's more commerce,
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  Speaker 1: there's more infrastructure, which includes being able to drive on
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  Speaker 1: tar for the entire length of Africa other than a
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: short ferry ride into Egypt. So they're very different, the
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  Speaker 1: two routes, and you've done them both, so that's for me,
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  Speaker 1: it's very interesting to think about. The more challenging route
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: is definitely the Western route. What are some things that
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: you would recommend people consider before even attempting.
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  Speaker 2: That the Western route is without a doubt. It can
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: be precarious, it could be dangerous, it can be very,
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: very difficult. The bureaucracy is one of the first hurdles.
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  Speaker 2: I think it was seventeen countries we had to go through,
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  Speaker 2: and even though we have South African passports, we still
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: needed visas for most of those countries. And to get
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: those visas, you have to travel to the capital city
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  Speaker 2: of the country before that country. That tells a lot
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: of logistics. Then it's the expense of the visas, it's
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: waiting for the visas, it's hoping that you get the visa,
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: it's hoping that the visa is valid when you get
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: to the border of that next country. So it's a
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  Speaker 2: bureaucratic challenge to travel those countries. You have a mix
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: of languages as well, you have French, English, Portuguese. Then
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  Speaker 2: you have the climate itself. Depending what time of year
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: you go, it's always going to be hot, sometimes hotter
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: than others. You might have the harmitane winds that are
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: coming down from Morocco carrying all that dust from the Sahara.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: You are going to get ill. It's guaranteed, and the
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: roads are absolutely terrible in most of those countries.
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  Speaker 1: And sometimes they're barely they barely qualify exactly.
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  Speaker 2: That's and it's connecting countries. You know this goat track
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  Speaker 2: like oh, were on the right road. But it kind
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: of all comes together though when it's hot, it's dusty,
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: there's no road to speak of, you're ill, the vehicle's
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: breaking down, and you've got this bureaucracy ahead you, and
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: you don't know if you're going to cross the border.
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  Speaker 2: All of these things combined make it a very very
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: challenging route and I believe it's the last great overland
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: route because of all those challenges. It's very similar to
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: the Silk Road, right, But I don't think on the
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: Silk Road you're probably not getting stuck twenty five times
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: a day by a military.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, that you experience, but you don't. I would say
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: that the difference is is that the from what I understand,
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  Speaker 1: which I have not done the West Coast Proud of Africa,
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  Speaker 1: and I.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: Haven't done the Silk Road.
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  Speaker 1: But the one significant difference is the quality of the roads.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, you do drive on jeep tracks when you're
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: going through some of the stands. I mean they're very
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: you're in low range and picking your way over rocks
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: and things like that, But that is very different from
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: a goat track that's covered in mud.
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  Speaker 2: Right and it's a military checkpoint on it, you know
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: you're on the right road. T when some of the
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: steps in front of you with an ak you're like, oh, okay,
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  Speaker 2: we only had that once and it was a very
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: bad situation as well. I think it's I've tried to
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: warn people that half the problem is. I think you
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: get a lot of overland travelers that overbold or over
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: sell certain routes and then they're like, oh, this is
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: really dangerous. They're trying to make a bit more hardcore
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: than it seems. West Africa is every bit as hardcore
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: as its reputations says it is. You can't go likely
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  Speaker 2: end to it. You will be tested and a lot
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: of people actually turn back eventually. It just gets too much.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: So I think the number one thing you have to
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: you know, prepares your mind. You have to be mentally prepared,
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: and you have to stay the course, and you have
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: to stay patient and strong.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: Maybe remind yourself that that's what you wanted right As
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: a challenge was to experience something because life is short,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: so why not do hard things right?
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: And the reality is, once you get deep enough into it,
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: there's no way out. Yeah, yeah, either all the way
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: back or all the way down and keep going. But
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: because it is such a challenge, it is so incredibly rewarding,
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: because there are so many obstacles and you're tested in
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: every way. By the end of the journey, you are
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: exhausted and elated. Yeah, you know, it's the summoseuphoria. Yeah,
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: when you're all into Angola, man.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because Angla has actually gotten a lot easier. So
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: you know, fifteen years ago Angola was a challenge even
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: to get into, right, and now they've got good roads
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: in Angola and a lot of development. Yeah, it's been
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: interesting to see how that is Africa. Things change, right,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: Some countries come into success and wealth and resources and
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: then you know, then a cycle can hit that can
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: take those things away.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: Right, And the technological advances I think have been absolutely
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: amazing for Africa and it is going to be even better.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: Whereas before the just the geography is and obviously the economies.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: I've been strictive in terms of infrastructure, but now you
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: have city in networks. I have starlink that's spreading all
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: the way through Africa, and I expect that you're going
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: to see that it's there's going to be some very
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: very significant changes on the continent, not only for the
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: people that live there, but also for the travelers, and
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: most of it, I think is going to be overwhelmingly positive.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Improving communications tends to improve a lot of things. And
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: so when you were traveling that route, what are a
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: story or two that comes to mind that was the
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: most that was the most memorable for whatever whatever that
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: may be.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: I think that would be the build up to and
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: the crossing from Nigeria into Cameroon, which I think I've
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: also talked about you about before. Basically, it was four
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: days in low Range in the highlands of Nigeria, the
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: most beautiful countryside you've ever seen in your life, just
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: mud and little villages, then popping down into Cameroon and
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: doing these river crossings and more mud, mud, mud, and
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: then yeah, just the most beautiful people in the most
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: beautiful country that we emerged into. That was an amazing
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: part of the journey for me and something I would
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: literally I would like to go back just to do
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: that part of that again. Unfortunately, before we went into
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: that area on the Dungerian side, there'd been a murder
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: outside our camp. We had armed men coming into our
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: I say camp. There was a compound, a hotel, one
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: part alled men coming in. There was a kidnapping zone.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: It was extremely dangerous and difficult situation. That to me
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: is pretty much yeah, it's that's unforgettable when you when
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: you find yourself with your family in that kind of
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: situation and you just we were all ill and we
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: had that going on, and we thought, oh man, I
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: just I don't know if we can take this anymore.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: And then the next day it all just became beautiful. Yeah,
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: and we went from the depths of almost despair to
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: elation or within forty eight.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Hours sounds like adventure, No sure was. And then did
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: you go through Gabon at all or did you go
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: right into the d into the Republic of Congo to
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: get through Gabon?
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: Is amazing? Okay, so you Bon is beautiful? Yes, we
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: spoke in Gabon. Yeah, yeah, I managed to get I
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: don't know a satellite or something. I always spoke. Yeah,
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: Gabon is absolutely amazing, beautiful, beautiful country, very good road
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: network at least most to south. Wonderful country, yeah, very
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: sparsely populated.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: And then you went into the Republic of Congo kind
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: of along the coast.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: Then. Yeah. I have to remember basically there's a encloth
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: of Angola called Cabinda. I see that here, yeah, yeah,
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: And we had to get into Cabinda. And then there's
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: a little strip of.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: The d r C.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: I see that that you have to go through to
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: get into Angola proper.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Very small.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: Now they call it the N one.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: I'll show you some photos of the N one.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: And what's interesting about that. We had gotten the visa
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: for the d r C, I think in Benin, and
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: there were all these rumors going around that the guy,
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: the consular head who was issuing the visas was actually corrupt, okay,
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: and the visas weren't legit. So if you're in Cabinda
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: and if they won't let you into the DRC, you
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: can't get into Angola. There's no way out. You either
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: have to drive all the way back up to Europe
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: or maybe four cut ten thousand bucks to get your
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: vehicle on a DC ten. That's sure, whatever, but.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: That's going to cost you a lot of to fix
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: that Procem.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: Stress we had on that border essentially there for twenty
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: four hours and eventually, Yeah, it was all fun, it
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: was all taken care of, but there was hardcore.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Now talk about the roads, because I've seen that in
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: some of Dan Grek's stuff too, and I mean it
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: it looks like low range, like if you you probably
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: wished you had seven diflocks, but like it looked. Some
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: of the stuff that you went through looked incredibly challenging.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: Luckily us driving a defender and we had some really
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: really bad jungle roads, really really muddy drugs, river crossings
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: that were quite challenging. There was a lot of that,
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: But that was the fun stuff. Yeah, sure, that was
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: the stuff you look forward to. That's what you enjoyed driving.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: The majority was either jungle track or just pothole tar
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: tarmac that was laid by whichever colonial power was there
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: forty years before, sure, and it hasn't been maintained since.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: And all the potholes grow in the shade, they do,
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: and so you'd finally get into third year and then wow,
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: isn't exactly there's a big tree boom and you don't
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: know boom it's just whole day. Yeah, you're rocking, you're
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: smacking potholes. Yeah, it's a challenge. It's a real challenge.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: When you get to a decent piece of tarmac, then
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: that's like it is.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: It's so funny how when you finally hit it, it's
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: like you feel like your heart rate drops by twenty
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: beats a minute. Yeah, and you and like all of
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: a sudden, then you hear all the squeaks in the
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: car right and you're like, what's what is that clattering?
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: That that what's broken? You can actually hear it.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we had a lot of that where you get
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: onto the dirt road and you're like you started, you're
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: enjoying it, and then after a while it's just man,
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: I already want to get into Tomac And then you
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: get into Tomac and you're like you missed the dirt.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: Unless you're in Namibia, where they have somehow have made
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: the best dirt roads on the planet. Yeah, Like I
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: think I think the best car for Namibia would be
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: a Super WRX because like I would like to spend
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: the entire time sideways on there and Namibian road. I
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: mean they are so they're beautifully crowned wide graded. You know,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: they just skipped the whole terrible tar and just went
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: with really well maintained dirt roads.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: Right. We were there then during COVID, and I think
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: the Greater Guy was forced to stay at home or something.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: The car.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: All those farmers that you live out there in the
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: middle of nowhere, they travel these highluxes where they've fully
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: pumped tires at seventy five miles an hour on the.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Dirt, right, Yeah, they're not even touched in the ground. Yeah,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: they just skipping right over the top. Yeahlievba I drove
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: the last time I was in Maybe I was driving
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: the New Defender, of course, like beautiful air bag, suspension, independent,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: you know, suspension on every corner, air down tires. It
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: was literally like a magic carpet. I mean it was
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: a rally car on those roads for sure. Yeah, it was.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: It was the right car for those kinds of roads
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: for sure.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: And then said to see, sorry, how the New Defender
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: would handle like the West African Rock.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: You know, the challenge is just the complexity. I mean
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: it's going to be it's going to be amazing until
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: something some complex component of the suspension fails. A sensor
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: or a height sensor, or an airbag or a stick
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: comes up and punctures the air bag. But driving even
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: over Venzel's and all that, we did that all in
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: a stock one ten and it was just effortless, absolutely effortless,
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: so it.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: Could handle the technical terrain. It maybe a long duration
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: of a very.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: Technical It's a difference between capability and durability. So if
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: you if you look at a jeep wrangler, very high
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: on the capability range, low capacity, low payload, low low
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: durability because the components are really designed for a lightweight
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: recreational vehicle, whereas your defender is designed to carry three
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: thousand pounds of stuff, so it's it's much more durable.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: Or a land cruiser is another good example of that.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: Less capable, more durable. They're similar, they're just they're just different.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: The defender has better articulation, but the land cruiser has difflocks.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: So if you're in a land cruiser without difflocks, the
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: defender will do better. But you know, that's you know,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: that's all those are all those are all those are best.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: Those are conversations best hat over a beer because I
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: have to say to say that, you know, give me
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: a good driver, and uh yeah, and a and a
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Samurai any day of the week over any of those cars.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: That's what I love about driving in Africa. You'll be
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: up on that low range full day pass up in
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: Nigeria and you're like, yeah, we're in the thick of
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: it now. This is why you're driving four by four.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: This is why you're driving Defender. And then the local
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: comes along in a go back and like refloated up.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: And it's just no big deal. The power of local
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: knowledge that we were I can't remember. We were somewhere
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: super deep and Uganda, same thing. G wagons, low range,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: rear dip locks on creeping up this trail and literally
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: at Toyota, Corolla comes around and everybody hops out so
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: they get the weight out of it, and then it
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: starts up the trail and people are pushing and then
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: and they made it right up like like they well
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: they probably had done it a hundred times and it
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: was just it just wasn't a big deal. But we
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: like to feel like we're special.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: We are, Yeah, I wouldn't. I mean if I was
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: driving on my own with a couple of buddies, I
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: take it to it. At Corolla but I'm not going
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: to take my fan Yeah, of course, of course. But
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: I think that also speaks to the reality of these
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: roads on these across those countries, especially like West Africa,
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: where you'll have large sections the vast majority of that
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: road is going to be fine. It's not going to
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: be great, it's not going to be pleasant, but you
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: only really need that four by four capability, et cetera
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: for a very small part of it. But it makes
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: a big difference when you get to it that you
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: can get through it without having to depend on other people.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: And sometimes it's even just getting off of ferries. It's like,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: some of the more challenging conditions that I've experienced with
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: heavily loaded overland vehicles is getting up the dirt ramp
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: right because it's usually muddy and there's been a lot
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: of ruts, and the locals just choose to hit it
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: at mack ten. You know, they hit it. They're in
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: third gear by the time they're on the dirt, you know,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: and you're smashing through.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Even getting up the banks of those rivers can be
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: quite challenging. When you do those ferry crossings, well, let's
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: let's shift gears a little bit and talk about logistics. Traditionally,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: traveling by vehicle around Africa has been best done with
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: a carnate a passage, and that is still considered best practice,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: but that's slowly changing because of people like Dan Grek
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: and I don't know if you traveled on a carne.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: You may have not needed to with it being a
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: South African vehicle, but did you travel on a carne?
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: We chose to.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: I think the first note there should be as well
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: is that the AA is very reliable in terms of
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: a logistical source as a bureaucratic entity. We had a
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: kanne years ago that we never got the deposit back for,
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: but the karne had expired. We got another karne in
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: Senegal and then we returned to South Africa. They gave
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: us both deposits back. So something like that in an
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: organized is great where they have this kind of you know,
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: there's this integrity there, accountability behind accountability, and they switched
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: on your you know that it's the bureaucracy is good.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: The karne for me is it's useful, It's really useful.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: You know some countries, for instance, Senegal, there's one border
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: crossing where they absolutely insist on a on a carne,
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: or they'll find you, or they will detain you, this
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: and the other. The other option is to drive a
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: really bad road eight hundred kilometers around to go to
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: the other border plant postly they don't worry about it,
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: you know. So and then you get to some border
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: crossings where you can sit forever to try and get
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: your TP done, or you can literally just walk up
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: the carnage in you're out. I don't know. We just
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: for Africa travel. We just were The first time we
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: went around we used a karne, and the second time
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: down we used to karne as well. We just found
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: it to be a lot easier.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I'm I'm going to travel on a carne,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: So I do. I think it's it's so it is
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: so admirable that Dan decided to try to do it
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: on a tip the entire time, right, And that's pretty impressive.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, so that's he's very much trailblazer in I mean,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: I'm sure others have done that. I'm not giving him
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: exclusive acknowledgment of what he accomplished, but it certainly showed
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: people that there's possibility to do this a little bit different.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: But there are countries in the world where you simply
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: cannot get in without a karne. So you want to
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: go into Mongolia, you're you got to have a karne period.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Egypt went through Egypt without the contry.
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: He managed to figure that out.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, there was a bit of a bucksheesh thing
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: going on, but I think so.
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: But as far as I know, at least in a
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: recent memory, he's given the length and breadth of his trip.
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: Managing to that was pretty pretty amazing. And we only
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: traveled on t Ip's also, but we had kind of
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: a different traveling situation.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: We had a home base.
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: The countries we traveled in were not sort of a
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: huge challenge to get in and out of without you know,
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: without a karne. There is some say, for example, uh Kenya, Tanzania,
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: the tps are pretty short for uh for tourists, So
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: I think Tantania was only seven days when we were
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: traveling there, So you know, it does kind of delimit
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: a little bit what you can do, Like if you
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: want to stay for a longer time, you can often
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: get those tps to temporary import permits extended. But again,
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: you need to go to Dar Salam and sit in
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: a line at a you know, at a customs office.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: And somebody wants to do that.
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: Oftentimes it's also like super in flux right now too.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: So for example, right now, the I think the transit
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: t ips and Kenya are only a few days now,
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: so Kenya is basically requiring a karne at this point.
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: And then I'm sure we can talk a little bit
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: about what the situation in Ethiopia when we talked about
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: the East Eastern route. These things change too, right, They're
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: not set in stone, and I think particularly where you
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: see some political instability or like in West Africa, where
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: the bureaucracies are really opaque. I mean there's a lot
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: of opaque bureaucracy in Africa in general. It can change
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: on a wide variety of levels, from the policy level
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: at you know, you know, within the government to whoever
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: happens to be manning the customs desk at that particular
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: border that particular day. And that's one of the one
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: of the things that makes Africa travel. Africa travel, whether
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: you're in the East coast or or on the West coast,
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: is yeah, sort of preparing yourself mentally for those those variables.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: And preparing yourself mentally that that the variables that you
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: know today will change, yeah, exactly. Governments even can change
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: in flux.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: But he who has the most paperwork once right, so
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: we always carry a folder. Its guard everything going back forever. Yeah.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: And as soon as they you know, you're the wrong
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: person on the wrong day, and they start with this
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: and the that, then you just go, what paper are
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: you looking forward to? And I've got it here somewhere,
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: and you just burn time and then she might actually
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: find what they're looking for. Sure, I think the t
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: ip genually it's easier to get the karne makes life
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: a little bit easier, but in general, having as much
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: paperwork as possible, making sure that everything's up to date today,
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: everything's done. It's frustrating when you watch the locals lift
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: the boom and go through on the right and you're
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: sitting there for three days to try and get over
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: the border.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Well, and there's there are travelers that have done that too,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: and lift the boom and or they drive through and
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: then they kind of walk around for a little while
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: and they drive away.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't do that. We get to that next mortar.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: It happens a lot. It happens a lot.
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: We did that too, and this is this is I mean,
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: I think fine advice too. If you're traveling in Central
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: Asia or Central America. We had this big accordion plastic
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: accordion binder, right and just filled with dozens and hundreds
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: of pages of paperwork and all easily labeled.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: And you know, extra copies and all extra copies.
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: And by the time you know, we were done with
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: our travels, like I knew exactly, I could close my
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: eyes and stick my hand in the folder and pull
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: out the you know, pull out the right the right
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: piece of paper at the right time. And there's also
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: something of a there's a confidence thing at the border
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: as well that kind of sometimes makes your life easier
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: where being bullied by touts and people who want to,
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: you know whatever guard your vehicle or you know, help
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: you through customs or they want to help you.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: Right, you know, if you've got a big fat.
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: Binder under your arm and you walk purposely and you
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: can do those sorts of things that it certain times
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: makes things easier even if you don't know what you're doing.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, pretend then you do, yeah exactly goes walking with
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: a little bit of purpose and intention. Now talking about documentation.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: It is. It's really that folder, that binder that you
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: have is not something that should be taken lightly. It
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: shouldn't be something that's just kind of stuck up in
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: the in the little cubby above the above the sun visor.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: This needs to be in a secure place in the vehicle,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: preferably locked up, and it needs to be treated with
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: a great deal of care and respect, because losing those
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: documents is oftentimes an enormous inconvenience. And I'm going to
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: speak about my own failure in this regard. That was
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: nearly like about as bad as it can get. I
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: was jet lag, came into Cape Town. We were getting
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: the land Cruiser ready to fly it to Antarctica, the
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: most difficult part of Expedition seven logistically, and I was
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: in the hotel. I had had breakfast and I was
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: going through paperwork. Exhausted, I got up and I go
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: back to my room and getting packed up for things,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: and I don't know where the binder is. Oh, and
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking about the last time that I had it.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: It was in this little cafe in the in the hotel,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: and I mean, this is it's such a problem, it's
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: such a problem. It was literally it would have been. Yeah,
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: it's probably in my entire life. It is probably the
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: moment that I felt the greatest dread that if if
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: the next couple steps don't start to align in a
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: positive way very quickly, an enormous amount of effort would
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: have will unwind itself and it'll be, you know, about
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: as tragic of an outcome. And all things considered, right
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: in the fact that they said, I'm on an adventure
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: of my choosing, but as far as it's team that,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: there's all these people that were waiting and everything else
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: like that, and the vehicle is getting ready to get
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: put on a plane and everything else. And I go
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: back down there. It's gone. It is not it's not
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: in the booth, it's not. It's nowhere to be seen.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: And I'm asking the people that are there if they
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: have seen it, and they don't have any idea. And
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: I asked if the manager or the restaurant was there,
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: and like, no, he's he's he was somewhere else. I said,
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: I did this. I took one hundred dollars bill out
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: of my pocket and I said, I need to find
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: this folder. Can you guys help me make that happen?
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: And there was all of a sudden, an enormous amount
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: of attention paid to my problem, and they call the manager,
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: and the manager they were very enthusiastic about him coming back.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: And he comes back and I explained what happens. He's like,
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: and he gets this smile on his face and he
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: reaches down into this bottom drawer and he opens it
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: up and there was the folder. And it was the
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: best one hundred dollars I have ever spent in my
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: entire life. So learning from my mistake, which was a
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: really there was a rookie foolish thing that I did
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: was not keeping track of you know, let's keep track
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: of our passports. Let's never put our passports in a jacket.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Should always be in our first layer of clothing, always
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: on our person. Losing your passport and all those visas,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: it's a huge problem if that happens. And it's the
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: same thing with our vehicle documentation and our carne which
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: was in the folder. Learn from my mistake is to
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: keep those things where they should be, keep them under
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: your control so that you don't lose them. Because I've
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: heard the stories of the people who have and trying
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: to unwind those problems is really really difficult. We not
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: only want to keep good control of our documentation, but
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: we also want to have lots of extra copies of
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: all of those of all of those documents. And when
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: you get to a place a hotel or whatever, that
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: happens to have a copy machine make copies of all
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: the documents that you just got at the other borders.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: But before you even do that, when you've gotten through
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: the border and you're sitting there, you've made it through,
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: you had all your paperwork, and you're pulled off and
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: you're kind of stopping, or maybe you're gonna have a
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: cup of tea, grab your phone. Take a picture of
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: every single document that you just got, every single thing
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: you got, the little insurance card, the one that says
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: this is you paid the tax for the road stuff,
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: and the signatures in the karna. Take a picture of
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: all that on your phone. Most places have data still
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: and you can upload all that to the cloud and
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: now you've got a full copy. Doing that, having extra
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: copies digitally, extra extra physical copies, it's amazing how much
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: that solves problems at these borders. There is a lot
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: of bureaucracy when you're traveling through these countries. I experienced
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: it going into South Sudan and Uganda and those really
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: remote borders in Kenya and Uganda where you got you
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: got to have your documentation and order. They're wonderful people.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: I did not have a single bad experience. If you
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: treat them with a smile and you're you have a
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: little bit of humor, and you acknowledge their position of authority,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: which is only fair. We do that with with the
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: people in our own governments. We give them that deference.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: It's amazing how smooth those things can go. But you
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: want to make sure you have your documentation in order,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: absolutely and look at it as part of the adventure.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: The grumpy overlander that shows up to the they're always
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: complaining about the border crossings. I'm like, no, wonder, why
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: are you even here? Why are you doing this? You
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: seem so incredibly unhappy about the entire process, Like you
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: didn't think it was going to be tough. Of course
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: it's going to be tough. Put a smile on your face.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Let's make it a game.
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: Let's have fun with it.
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: Border day can be stressful that we always look forward
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: to it because we also knew that it was onto
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: a new chapter in the pure right. And borders are
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: just these incredible places of like cultural exchangelistic exchange, and
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: they're a liminal space right between one sphere and another,
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: and there's no place like that. And we've met so
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: many other travelers at border posts right, other overlanders, other
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: travelers all over the world, you know, and exchange of information,
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: exchange of information, that shared experience that you're having and
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: totally yeah, we've had some extremely stressful and like anger
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: inducing days at the border. You know, traveling is a
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: couple with my wife Julie and I, we tend to
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: we have very different personalities. So Julie, she wants to
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: get stuff done, and you know, when the time calls
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: for someone who's going to be really insistent and really
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: going to put their foot down, it's Julie's turn to
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: work worker magic. But when you know it's time for
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: the glad handing and the jokes and the patients, right,
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: that's where that's where I come in. And so especially
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: if you're traveling in a group or you're traveling with
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: their significant other, sort of understanding like your different personalities
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: and what you need from the situation, you know, is
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: also good there's that self awareness because those things really
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: I think bubble up mostly at border crossings.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: And educating the people that you travel with that you
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: are only to answer specifically the question that was asked.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: I have seen shocking volunteering, volunteering of information at borders
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: where I'm looking over at the person and he's talking about, well,
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: this engine, you know, I actually got it out of
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: and like they ask him for the VIN He's like,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: you know, I actually don't have the motor thing and
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: they didn't ask for the motor number, you know. So yeah,
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: when they ask you a question, very short response with
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: a smile, specifically what they're asking and nothing more, because
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: why you even open up Pandora's box when you do that.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: Still, I still get border anxiety after all these years,
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: every single border I have border anxiety. And half of
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: that is is that the kind of country you're going from.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: You had that anxiety when you entered it. But then
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: you relaxed and you realize it's actually pretty cool. I'm
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: having a good time. Yeah, you get chilled out, relaxes,
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: everything's good, and they're like, oh, another border, what's going
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: to be like on the other side? Yeah, yeah, lucky
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: it's just speaking about strengths. Louisa is the border person.
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: She's the one who's got the paperwork this any other.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: I just trail along with the kids and signed because
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: things are in my name, and I'll sign and I'll
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: like smile and they're stupid.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: Do you feel that the kids help with that process
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: having a family there?
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: I think I kind of lead into a point I
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: wanted to get into maybe a little bit later, but
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: also that Africa tends to be an Africans tend to
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: be quite conservative and they tend to be quite family oriented.
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: And so if you're showing up with the border, you're
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: well dressed, you've got long pans on your trousers, you've
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: got a college shirt. You're a family, you're respectable. You
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: organized their respect that and they'll give you that respect
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: and you will respect them. This is like all that
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: kind of works there, and I think it always has
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: help there. We travel with the kids because people immediately
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: see the kids and then they think family. Yeah, family
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: is not going to be doing ninety percent of the
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: things other than overstaying visas and things like that. Some
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: countries that's popular for families to go in. And yeah, sure,
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: so they have a look at your passport. But yeah,
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: I mean we had it coming into the US. Once
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: they came and they actually planted a box full of
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: narcotics on our land rover to train a dog.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: That's terrifying.
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: Right, I'm cool here.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: But it was how really bad movie starts. Right, We're
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: just gonna plant this drugs on your It's gonna be okay,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: that's gonna be fine.
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: But it's because we have the kids. So these guys
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: are looking at everyone coming in today. Here's the wh're
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: the people are the least likely to be breaking Google.
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: It's the people and the defender with the fan the kitchen. Yeah,
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: so I think it does. It does make a difference
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: to have the children.
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: And I think I think you're I think you're Your
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: point is well taken to just in terms of thinking
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: about doing your research, because it's like we open the
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: podcast with, in terms of you you can't just say Africa, right,
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: like if you're like going into Malawi or if you're
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: driving into Gabong or wherever, having some fore knowledge of
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: understanding a not only their bureaucracy at the border, but
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: be a little bit about like the cultural context, right,
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: because yes.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: Not appropriate for even a man to be wearing shorts exactly.
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: So like the cultural you know, differences, they are vast
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: and multitudes in Africa, and yeah, just understanding that. And
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: most cultures, like you're saying, are pretty conservative. They're high
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: context cultures. So understanding what's going on at any one
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: time in your social interactions, stuff that maybe North Americans
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: or South Africans might be completely oblivious to, are extremely
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: important for other folks, right, and that goes across the globe, right,
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: But sort of preparing yourself a little bit for that,
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: you know, handshakes and smiles and respect go long way.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're a guest. You're a guest. They don't
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: you know, they don't owe you anything. They don't have
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: to let you in their country. You're asking permission and
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: you are a guest of their country. So being mindful
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: of their culture and their social norms and and their
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: their ways of doing things certainly goes a long way.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: It's easy, sorry, Just as general respect, yes, And it's
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: not just the border, it's it's not just the immigration
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: and the police, it's everyone that you come across. If
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: you if you treat people to respect, they will treat
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: you with respect.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: It's it tends to be the case. It tends to
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: be the case. So the other side of the documentation
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: is related to the people that are on the trip.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: So we need to make sure that our passport when
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: we enter into an idea of crossing the African continent,
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: we want to make sure we have lots of time
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: left on our passport. If you're going to a trip,
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: you're going to go to Italy for a couple months,
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: and you got six or seven months left on your passport,
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: probably fine. Even getting into a European country with less
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: than six months on your passport, they won't let you
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: do that. But crossing the African continent can result in
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: there can be a lot of delays. You can have
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: a mechanical problem, you're waiting for parts. You could be
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: in a place for quite some time. So you want
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: to make sure you have lots of time left on
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: your passport, lots of empty pages on your passport, and always.
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: Get sorry and always get the maximum visa a lot. Yeah, regardless,
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: I'll just take two weeks. But if three months is
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: an option, to take the three months, yeah.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Because you never know what you may need a new
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: gearbox or whatever, I remember.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: I really love that story.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was the same for Graham Jackson when
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: he was crossing. He needed an all new gearbox. They
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: brand new vehicle, they just did not put there was
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: some part of the transmission that wasn't lubricated, so needed
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: an all new transmission. So yes, absolutely you want to
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: be planning advance for your visas. There are two ways
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: to do that. If you're on a very regimented schedule
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: and a fairly short one, you can do all your
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: visas in advance. You can send them all to Washington,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: d C. If you're traveling as an American, they'll courier
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: your passport to all of the different consulates and they'll
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: give you all the visas that you need for all
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: the countries and you kind of have them all planned
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: out in a schedule. And that is one way to
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: do that. And the other way to do it is
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: as you described earlier in the podcast, where you're going
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: to take each country at a time, and you're going
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: to have to go into usually a fairly populated center,
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: and you're going to need to go into the consulate
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: office yourself or use a service if it's trusted. You're
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: going to need to get the visa for the next
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: country that you're about to go into from the main city.
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: Right or it might be full countries ahead. So you
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: have to be very careful with your planning and know
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: for each country what are the requirements that's right along
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: the entire route. And you can't just wing it, Yeah,
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: you really can't.
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: There's the beauty of the American passport as well, particularly
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: East and Southern Africa. The only country we traveled in
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: where we had to apply for a visa ahead of
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: time was Ethiopia. Every other country we traveled in we
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: got revisa on arrival.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: So yeah, that's that's interesting.
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: Rocked up to the border hardly. I mean, the only
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: country that gave us really any flack was Mozambique. We
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: drove from Swatini or used to Swaziland into into mas
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: That was just we just got a grumpy immigration officer
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: that day. I think any other any other day, I
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: think we would have been You know, the American passport
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: is still you know, if you look at the Handley Index, right,
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: it's still an extremely powerful document.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: Or the Japanese passports.
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: Exactly, and hardly ever anybody looked twice once we opened up,
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: you know, an American password.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I was surprised. I was surprised some of
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: the ones that. So I did get a visa in
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: advance for Kenya and Uganda, and I got to the
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: Ugandan border and like the sweetest border control agent I
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: have ever worked with in my entire life, and she
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: she's educating me about their process and she says, you know, sweetie,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: like you don't you didn't need to do that. I
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: can give you that right here at the border. But
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: there was no documentation at the time. So this was
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: twenty sixteen that said that that was the case. Yeah,
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: I had to have it ahead of time. So and
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: now I know that. And I think I needed the
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: Kenyon one because I was flying into Kenya. But you're right,
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: most of them you can get right on arrival.
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: And there are different requirements too if you're sometimes if
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: you're going traveling overland, or if you're yes, you're flying,
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: there's an interesting visa that allows you to travel Kenya,
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: Uganda and Rwanda kind of all on the same visa.
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: Those things, again, like the customs requirements are often in
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: flux a lot at a time. Yeah, doing your research
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: ahead of time, but also understanding that it's good to
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: follow up on that research because sometimes it changes rapidly.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: Find the best way to do that is to not
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: speak to someone who was in Kenya if that's where
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: you're going two years ago. You want to speak to
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: someone who just came out of Canp two weeks ago,
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: two days ago. That nothing's the best for on the ground,
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: what's happening now, and then speak, sorry, speak to a
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: variety of sources as well as you can. Not everyone
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: is equally talented when it comes to bureaucracy, Yeah, no
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: question with Some people rarely struggle. Other people find a debres.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: Or they find it as like something that they look
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: forward to. It's also good to know that if you're
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: going to, like drive from Cape Town to Cairo, and
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: you you have a brand new one hundred thousand dollars
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: land Cruiser, you are for most of those countries you
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: do not have car insurance. So you may have liability
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: insurance that you secure at or near the order, but
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: in the vast majority of cases outside of the countries
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: immediately around South Africa, you do not have any kind
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: of comprehensive or car insurance on your vehicle. Should you
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: get in an accident. So when you go into the
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: decision to travel across the continent, there's only two choices.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: You can secure an insurance policy that applies to the
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: asset that's purchased ahead of time, and it basically covers
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: it for all instances including falling off of a ship
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: and a container. But that one hundred thousand dollars vehicle
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: to spend a couple months across Africa, it will most
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: likely cost seven to ten thousand dollars for the insurance policy.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: So you have to decide, is that what's your tolerance
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: for risk? So I think it's a really good idea
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: to make sure when you go into the process that
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: you recognize that you have to be able to walk
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: away from the car because most likely not going to
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: lose your car, and a because you can document through
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: the police department and everything the vehicle has been damaged
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: and destroyed or whatever. But you very well could lose
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: the entire asset when you're traveling across the continent, and
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: it happens. It's very very rare, but it does happen,
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: and it's the speeds are lower. People are more mindful
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: the speeds are lower, you know, not to travel at night,
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: So you start to remove a lot of the variables
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: that can result in risk your vehicle being damaged in
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: some way highly likely, your vehicle being total highly unlikely.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: But we need to know that going into it, and
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: we need to just say that, all right, that's the deal.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: Like we know that this car may not make it
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: to the other end. That's something that we own.
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: This is why Graham and I drive old decrepit which
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: are incredibly valuable. Now now you're like, wait, hang in
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: a second, something, all right, So that.
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: Now we're going to shift our conversation a little bit
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: to yes.
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: Sorry, just to the bureaucracy and what's going on. I mean,
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: what's quite contemporary current is the pandemic is still happening,
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: and along with all the visas c you have to
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: be very mindful of what are the requirements in terms
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: of vaccinations or negative tests or sure tests, et cetera.
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: We traveled during COVID, so we jumped through some massive
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: hoops to make it happen, but we were very careful
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: and we were conscientious and we always got negative tests. Yeah,
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: that's another dimension that's been added on, another layer of bureaucracy,
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: which as a trail. So if you keep your record
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: of you or your COVID tests or whatever, you've got
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: to keep that in the folder because you do not
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: know if you're going to get to a border crossing
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: the middle of nowhere and the guys can insist on
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: everything for the last kind of year or whatever. So yeah,
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: they probably won't happen, but it's something that's that has
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: to be considered.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: And it can change extremely quick. I remember I was
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: in South Africa when COVID kicked off, and the day
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: before I left, I was restricted to the Katained province.
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: That was it.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: Like they started literally locking you down by province from
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: within South Africa. So I thought at first, I'm like,
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: this is great, I'm gonna be I'm fine, it'll be
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: here for a year if I have to. And then
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: and then it became quite draconian their response to it.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that their response was not appropriate,
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: it was draconian. Then they were trying to control it.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: I went from like, oh, I'll just be going on
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: safaris and working in Africa to like, no, this is
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: really a bad thing. Let's get out of here right
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: lock lockdown. We thought we thought we were locked down here.
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: We were not lockdown.
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, we were. It was they were a hard lockdown.
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: They were locked down. And what they didn't know at
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: the time is that Africa itself wasn't really going to
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: suffer that much the projections of where projections were that
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: Africa was going to really suffer from COVID and actually
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: Africa was one of the consonants of the.
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: Least Yeah, youthful, healthy people for the most wild riots. Yeah,
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: natural exactly.
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a huge amount of international travel going on.
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they just they kind of brushed it off for
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: the most part.
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: One last final thing I'll make on the border issue
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: is that in East African East Africa in particular and
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: also Southern Africa, at the major border crossings, these are
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: like really advanced customs and immigration systems. Almost all of
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: them are computerized.
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: Tanzanian border post with Rwanda Rasumo Falls is like the
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: most modern and beautiful building ever been in in contrast
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: to the road outside. So I think this is something
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: that Pete sweets Are I think whom we all know,
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: says in his Border classes at over Land Expo that
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: the job of customs is to collect revenue. Most of
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: these countries sometimes as a result of foreign direct investment,
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: but also from there on, you know, initiative thoroughly modernized
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: their customs and immigration systems, and we were never shaken
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: down for our bribe. We were never like you know,
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: never encountered sort of corruption among you know, officials at
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: major border posts. So it's all very modern and you
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: know advanced the smaller but border posts are different, right
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: the major ones.
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: And they have to be quite efficient because there's a
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: lot of commerce. The commerce is that's happening on the
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: East Coast.
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: Intense right intents. I think that's something maybe people are
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: surprised about. I was like, oh wow, this is a.
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: In general, we actually found the customs offices to be
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: the offices that the location itself to be of a
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: higher quality than the general immigration offices themselves. The staff
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: were hiring had a higher education and facial sure. So
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: a lot of times my biggest warrior was like the customs,
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: But actually customs tends to be a breeze compared to
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: immgression and there's a lot of less people doing customers
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: and immigration.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: Those are all super important insights when we look at
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: doing a big trip like this. So talking about big trips.
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: The other and the most popular way to travel up
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: the length of the African continent is on the Eastern Route.
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: And as we talked about in the beginning, if you
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: wanted to, you could drive the whole thing basically on.
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: Tar, stay in nice hotels.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I was. I was. It was just a
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: few months ago. I was reading and her name escapes
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: me right now and I feel so, so unfortunate. But
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: eighty something year old woman drove the length of the
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: African in a ters all will drive to cell She
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: drove from Cape Town to London and she had a
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: friend along for most of it. I was like, she's
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: my hero because she decided that life was not over.
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: She was going to go see the world. But it's
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: a really important context that it is very feasible to
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: do this trip. Now. The thing that can change, and
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: this is what we're going to talk about in a
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: little bit, is countries can have There can be regional issues,
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: flare ups that happen that either cause short term or
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: very short term or sometimes relatively short term inconveniences to
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: the traveler. But for the most part, traveling up the
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: East of Africa, if you're going to go from South Africa.
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: And let's say you want to go to the falls,
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: You're going to go through Zimbabwe and a little bit
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: into Mozambique and Zambia and Tanzania. These are all big
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: border crossings, really easy to move around. South Africans travel
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: there all the time. It's very common for people to
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: go up to Mound in Botswana and go camping for
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: a week. You leave Joe Berg and your desk job
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: and you go for just like we do. So it's
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: very common for that to happen, and things stay super
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: efficient all the way up into Kenya. From there things
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: start to become a little more challenging. Ethiopia for quite
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: some time was actually like it was the jewel of
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: the route, where people were so impressed and just couldn't
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: believe how wonderful that experience was. And I don't doubt
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: that that part of it's the same. But now it's
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: a little more complicated to travel through Ethiopia. So let's
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: talk a little bit about what happened with Ethiopia and
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: kind of where things are today for the traveler. So Steve,
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: you want to give or or gram either one of
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: your insights.
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: A bit of the inside of the this year in
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: the Horn of Africa, as you have you have Ethiopias, Sudan,
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: Egypt and Eritrea and some Audios are as well, and
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: the Nile. Ethiopia's building dams on the River Nile, which
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: is destabilizing the entire region because obviously Egypt is that's
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: this source of water. So whoever's going to control the
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: Nile controls the water, therefore the agriculture there the therefore
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: the economy's downstream. And then you'll have these clashes age
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: old rivalries that's been happening between the Eritreans and the Ethiopians.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: You have the Somalians, which the civil war is their
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: cup of tea, and so it's just a very volatile
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: region in general. Add to that is Islamic extremism, so
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: there's a heck of a lot going on in that region.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: You have the South Sudan breaking away from Saddan, and
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: the problem there is is it actually represents a rather
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: small part of the entire journey from Cape to Cairo.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: But there's no way around it. You Okay, look, if
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: you've got a big chunk of money and you've got
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: some very good contacts, you can find a way around it.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: You can get fixes, you can get this, you can
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: get that.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the current way to do it through South
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: su down industry.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: Right or even through Eritrea. There's ways to go around
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: to Eritrea. There's ferries i think from Saudi Arabia. So
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: there are ways to do it for those who have
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: the means and the courage to commit those expendable assets.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: But it's very expensive. So it's a chuck point on
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: that entire route, which is forcing more and more people
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: to go to the West African route.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: Well, and it looks like Ethiopia has reopened borders. They
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: are allowing tours tourists to go through. You can get
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: a tourist visa to the Ethiopia now.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yes and no. The big obstacle right now is
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: with overlanders with their own vehicles. So there's a couple
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: of things going on. It's it's a multi variable issue
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: right now in Ethiopia. I'm actually I'm writing an article
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: for exhibition Portal about this. I've been doing a lot
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: of research and corresponding with folks who are on the
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: ground right now. I'm traveling in that region. There's two
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: things happening in Ethiopia one is the recent civil conflict
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: in the northern part of the country with the Tea
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: in the t Gray region, and that's sort of an
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: internal conflict within the country and it's essentially a civil
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: war and it's sort of calmed a little bit. There's
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: a little bit of a little bit of a piece
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: right now, a little bit of ceasefire, but over the
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: last year year and a half or so, it's kind
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: of gone up and down. And a lot of that
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: was sourced in the most recent governmental transition in Ethiopia,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: which happened just a couple of years ago, so that
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: that whole northern region with the border with Sudan was
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: basically cut off because it was an active war zone.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: So that was problem number one that has sort of
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: calmed a little bit. The second problem is a major
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: policy shift right now in Ethiopian customs. So there was
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: some point back in October of twenty twenty two when
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: some overland folks came to the border I think it
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: was Moyale, which is the big border crossing with Kenya,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: and the customs folks wanted a five hundred percent deposit
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: on their vehicle as a customs guarantee. Five hundred percent
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: a lot.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: Measure one dollars land cruisers exactly right.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: They said that you have to pay that deposit in
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: US dollars and if you manage to make it to
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: the other border to leave Ethiopia, they give give it
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: back to you and burr, which is the Ethiopian currency
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: and has zero value anywhere other than Ethiopia.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: So and you're losing you know, hyperinflation, so you're losing.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: Exactly single day, exactly, and so that effectively closed all
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: like overland borders. And there's some, you know, various reasons
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: for that. There's a lot of historically a lot of
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: sort of customs issues in Ethiopia, people sort of getting
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: vehicles into the country and selling them and moving them
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: around in the market without paying any kind of customs duties.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: So they're not accepting a carnae at the border.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, even if you've got a carnae, they want the deposit.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: So there has been very recently some movement to get
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: some workarounds. So what's going on right now is you
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: have to pay a five hundred dollars deposit and then
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: for the vehicle, and then it's it's really in flux.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: I get people telling me different amounts every day. But
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: the idea is that you pay your deposit for your
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: car if you're a tourist, and then you have to
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: have a guide. Say, for example, like you're maybe you
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: want to travel inland China, you know, if you have
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: guid So now that's the status. So you have to
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: hire a guide through an agency, and then it's fifty
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: dollars per person per day or something like that in
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: addition to like a flat fee on top of it,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: so it mounts up. You're looking like thousands and thousands
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: and thousands of dollars if you want to spend any
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: time in the country, which is actually a very inexpensive
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: country to travel.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: And from what I.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: Understand at the moment is that the tourism sort of
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: government organization is talking with the Customs Office incentive, yeah,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: exactly internally to try to figure out some different workarounds
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: right now. But again, like we've discussed earlier, it's changing
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: like constantly from like day to day essentially, so there
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: may be some like some loosening of the issue right now,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: but who knows, you know, it could be shut down
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: again soon.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's like the visa that you can get, you
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: can get visas to Ethiopia. But that's the flying addis
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: that's correct. I think maybe a solution will be like
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: dealing with the right end drive bands in certain countries,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: and it might be a case of having to put
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: your vehicle on a truck on a truck, but then
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: that still don't have to do a TP or whatever
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: even if you're on a transit, so it gets complicated.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: Is another route? I believe you can take a ferry
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: to Saudi Arabia, which is opening up to tours. Saudi
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: is opening up, but I think can you do it
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: from Kenya?
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: It's from Port Sudan to Jeda. But the problem then
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: is like there's you posentially have to get on a
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: container ship or a road or something from Jedda to Mombasa.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: Right now is the question. I just saw someone manage
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 3: to travel from Sudan through Chad, Central African Republic and
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: then is it Cameroon. I think so they went across Yeah,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: that very recently and they did it by vehicle, which
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: was a big shock to everyone.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: So wow, the Italian sorry, there was an Italian diplomat
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: that I was actually killed. Yeah, that's right, just a
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: few months ago in that very region. Yeah, so yeah,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: you know, it's really its risk and reward, I mean.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: And another group managed to make it through South Sudan
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: and then through the No man's Land between South Sudan
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: and Sudan, which is sort of administered by the UN
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: right now, and then into Sudan and then on to Egypt.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: But again, that looks like you were saying, that looks
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: like an interesting possibility. I mean, that was where I
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: entered South Sudan. Yeah, it was through Cadepo.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And there's a problem right now. This is area
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: it's sort of called colloquially the box, and it is
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: this no man's life see that on the And it's
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: partly as it's they're fighting over there's a lot of
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: patrollum deposits there, so that border is far from settled
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: between South Sudan and Sudan, and so there's been a
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: few people who've managed to get through there. But it's
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: again it kind of gets back to Graham's point about
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: your tolerance for risk and how like your pockets are,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: you know, sort of your average whatever overland or in
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: a land rover, you know, a GS or something like that,
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: is may struggle. So now we have a lot of
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: people who are just like going in circles around Kenya
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: are like going around circles, or they're just going home.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: Somalia's basically impossible. They don't there's no land crossings into
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: Somalia right now. But again, you know, next week the
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: whole thing might be resolved.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: Right but how do you plan for that? You know
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: what I mean? That's what makes us so difficult is
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: next week it might change. But you're in the middle
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: of a five months, six months, even month journey and
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: just kind of hoping that when we get there it'll
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: be okay. It's like the situation we had from Cabinda
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: going into the d r C. It's just so stressful
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: and you just don't know if you're going to make it.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: You think, so, I really have the resources, the time
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: and the energy to do turn around ago all the
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: way back again. But as far as I remember now,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: this is I'm it did my research a little while ago.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: But that the option that they say you're going north
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: to south, it would be bya Israel into Jordan and
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: into Saudi a Saudi Arabia and then Saudi Arabia get
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: the ferry over to Africa. But then you try and
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: get south of Ethiopia, right. So then you saw at
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: the Kane situation with Kenya, right and then so that
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: might be the more common route, and which is great
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: now that Saudi Arabia is opening up to tour is
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: a quid pro quote. No right hand drive, right hand
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: driving dogs. So I guess I'm not going any.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: Time you put little cat ears on Chewbacca put a
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: little place staring with all the.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's complicated.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah so, but I mean this is all part of
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: the thing that you were saying Scott in terms of
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: like opening yourself up to that you know, flexibility, right,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: but it is exceptionally like hard right now, just because yeah,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: there's like Grandmas saying it's like there's.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: It's the choke point.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: And Ethiopia is, yeah, beautiful and amazing and in some
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: way it's very difficult to travel through. Actually, of all
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: the countries we travel through it in eastern southern Africa. Yeah,
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: it's it's full of the food is fantastic, the culture
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 3: is credible.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: It's this it's where coffee came from.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's this ancient, ancient, ancient culture. Yeah, it's
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: it's it's really amazing. That's the ongoing thing. And I
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: understand now too that Koteivoir on the west coast is
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: also closed. The land borders are closed. And I'm not
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: I haven't done a bunch of research on this, but
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: I'm hearing it from a lot of folks who are
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 3: traveling West Africa right now. They're being just turned away
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: at the border of Koti War. I know, there's a
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 3: one couple's guys familiar with Gusto overland, so they're currently
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: on the west coast trip and they turn around, they're
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: headed back to the UK because they couldn't get through
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: kodev War.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: Again, you know, things, things change, right, and you've got
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: to be prepared, like, okay, I'm going to turn around
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 3: and go home.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: Was a really nice country, of course, lovely, Yeah, capital city,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: burger King. You need that burger king after you've earned it.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: It's funny, it's funny how those things. Yeah, all those
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: things do stand out.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: But then again, so when we're talking about these two
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: main routes West Africa East Africa, and these are literally
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: slivers of the entire continent. You have that entire central
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: part of it which is a no go zone for
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: most people. You know, you have explorers like Kingsley Holgates.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: We've spoken about him before South Africa. He's considered the
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: most explored man in Africa and he will go through
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: these countries sponsored by land Rover. But he's got all
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: the fixes, he's got all the contacts, he's been there,
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: he's done that. You know, so it kind of takes
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: it from you if you give these different levels of overlanders.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: Now you get the you know, the couple that's just
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: going for an adventurous journey or something like that, and
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: you get people that are more professional and more it's
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: more integrated into their lifestyle and they have a lot
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: more connections and they have you know that they're kind
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: of the resources to invest in getting through these countries
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: and hopefully we can see a time in the future
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: where that that center opens up. You know, Chad car incredible,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: there is a massive I mean seeing the majority of
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: d r C is completely in North Africa. Yeah, Malli Algeria.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: You know these.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: These start going back to timbukto yeah, dream route.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: You know it would be like trans Sahara.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: Right, absolutely absolutely.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: I mean who knows, right, But like say, for example,
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 3: like the border between Algeria and Morocco has been closed
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 3: since time immemorial.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, We've spent a lot of time talking about
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: crossing the continent. But the reality is is that even
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: to spend six months and never never leaving South Africa Lisui,
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: like Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, like, you could have a
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: lifetime of adventures.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: The continente countries in it absolutely massive, shocking, right.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: So there's for those that are listening. The reason why
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: we're talking about traveling on the African continent is because
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: it is such a special place. It is it has
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: the most special place in my heart of all the
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: places that I go. And even if you're saying I'm
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: just going to go for two weeks and I'm going
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: to have an experience in Namibia, it will be the
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: experience of a lifetime because the first time you see
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: an orx walking along the top of a sand dune,
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: it's life changing. The first time that you hear a
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: lion roar, the first time an elephant sneaks up behind you,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: because they're silent. They're like gigantic ninjas. I don't know
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: how they do that, but like somehow they are silent
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: going through the bush. These are experiences that are otherworldly.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: They are absolutely incredible and they change you as a person.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: Consider traveling to the African continent. Consider doing a trip
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: like this, talk to some people that live there, follow
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: their stories, read their stories, and then plan your own adventure.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: If I could add to that, I think doing trans
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: Africa East. Always it's for simons to feather in the
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: cap whether it's part of a great world to where
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: like it is for me, I want to drive travel
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: the whole world, you know, around the world. I want
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: to cross these continents. It's very important for me to
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: do these trance continental journeys. But for most people, they
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: would get a lot more out of their effort and
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: their investment in Africa specifically, if they had to focus
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: on a region, that region, in my experience, where you
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: get the most bang for your bick would be southern
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: and touching into East Africa, ship into South Africa, and
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: like you said, you could spend six months, a year,
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: two years just going around doing that circle. If you want.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: If you want to eat giant shrimp on the beach
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: under a palm tree, you go to Mozambique. If you
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: want to see the rings and the elephants and the
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: desert lines. Go get lost in Themibia in the desert
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: for a while, you believe, and is everything in between.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: You want a five star experience, it's there. You want
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: absolute freedom in the middle of nowhere, it's there. You know,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: you get to choose, so ship your vehicle there or
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: buy a vehicle there. And that's another great, I think point.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: But yeah, traveling in the African continent. And we all
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: know this is that South Africa is a very good
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: place to buy and equipp overland vehicles.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: For sure. I have a lot of infrastructure for it.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: The dollar strong right now.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: The Laghbor's cheap. You look at half of the overland
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: products that are on the market, so many of those
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: innovations and some of those products, well respective products are
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: coming out of South Africa. You could buy yourself that
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: defender that you've always wanted that is out of a
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: reach in or even that Toyo land cruise I just
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: can't get in the US patrols.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: You want a Unimog, they're all there, They're all there,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: and they're I found myself the other day looking at
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: a little cabin overlooking a creek in Dulstrom, right and
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: it was forty eight thousand US dollars for the land
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: and the cabin and frontage of the creek, and then
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: you spend another twenty five thousand on an old defender
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: and I could I could whittle away the rest of
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: my life doing that, right, So right, yeah, So it's
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: an incredible place and it is affordable to travel there
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: if you need. If you are looking for affordable travel,
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: it's absolutely possible.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 3: So particularly if you're really interested in that wildlife experience.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: Most of the big wildlife game parks in s Tanzania
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 3: and Kenya are wildly expensive for foreign travelers five hundred
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 3: dollars per person per day kind of expensive, right, Whereas
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 3: you know many of the game parks national parks and
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 3: say Botswana or Namibia or South Africa, like it's you know,
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: arrive and drive right and you have your own experience.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: It's or a magnitude less expensive. It's not to say
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 3: it's cheap per se, but it's you see all the
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 3: same animals that you do in Kenya, and you can
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 3: see them in South Africa you can see them.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: The most incredible campsite I've ever had in my life
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: was outside of Mound and we had worked with a
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: local community that had kind of its own little land
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: in holding. It was not part of a park, and
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: you could get a permit to camp wild wild camp,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: no fences, no chain link, no locks. You drive along
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: the trail and you're like, this looks like a nice spot.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: And you set up camp and you start the fire
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: and and you see the you know, the hippo, and
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: you see the you know, the giraffe or drinking, and
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: you hear the lions in the distance, and the light
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: had gone down and that was just the firelight, and
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: I just got this sense that there was something like
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: that eats people around here, and like, you know, again
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: the hair that I don't.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: Have on the time, sometimes you can smell them.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: Maybe that's what it. Maybe that's what it was. Maybe
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: that's what it was. And you know, my good friend
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: Greg Miller was working on downloading some pictures onto his laptop,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: very focused on his computer, and I'm like, there's something
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: right there. And I popped my flashlight on and there
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: was the biggest hyena I've ever seen in my life,
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: about ten fifteen yards behind him, moving through the grass.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: And as soon as the light hit he was gone,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: or she was probably she a big, big one and
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: was gone. It makes you feel like like.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, I've had camps where you know, step outside
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: the vehicle or doing whatever and it's just getting ready
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: for bed and settling down and then feel that and
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: you put the toch on and then there's a set
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: of eyes and the further apart the eyes are to
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: be and they're not blinking and just focus completely behind
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: some canvas. Because particularly.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, in western Botswana and the far reaches of the
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 3: central Cali Harry Games or there's an extremely remote campsite
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 3: that is one of our favorites. And one evening, middle
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: of the night, actually we were sleeping in our roof tent.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 3: I was exhausted, but out of nowhere, I sat like
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 3: bolt up right, you know in the tent, like I
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: was awake, and like why am I awake? And I
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 3: could I could smell this like wild smell, you know,
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 3: outside and then then I could hear it just breathing.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 3: And I looked and I looked at the mesh and
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 3: there's an eye right, and it's an elephant right, And
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 3: I kind of look and the whole camp site is
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 3: full of elephants, you know, and this is you know
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 3: two am right, and like you were saying, they're so
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: you know, graceful in their movements, you know, ninjas stepping
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 3: over the guidelines for the tents, and then one of
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 3: them like broke a huge branch off the tree in
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 3: the campsite, and of course Julie straight up. But they
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 3: were there for an hour just munching on the trees
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 3: and hanging out. And at that moment when you know
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 3: you're your eye to eye with an elephant, it's so
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 3: humbling through some mesh, right, yes, it is so humbling. Well, gentlemen,
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 3: thank you both so much for being on the podcast
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 3: and allowing us to talk about it. Sounds like the
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 3: three of us our favorite place on the planet. Truly
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 3: an exceptional spot.
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: How do people get in touch with you, Graham if
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: they want to follow you on social media?
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: A two A expedition, that's a number two A expedition
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: is my Facebook page, yep, and I'm Graham dot r
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: dot bell on Instagram. Nice. And then Steve, how do
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: people get in touch with you?
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 3: Ata? Or our handle on Instagram is venturesome Overland and
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: I've been a little quiet there in the last few months,
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 3: but you know, I'm always checking for messages and I
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 3: do love maybe if you couldn't tell during the course
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 3: of this podcast, I'd love to talk to folks about
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 3: traveling in Africa. I teach classes on it over land Expo,
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 3: so you can find me at Expo. It's just a
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: part of the world that i'm you know, staunch advocate
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 3: for and if you're into adventure travel, there's no other
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 3: place like it. And then of course also you can
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: find me on Exhibition Portal and I'm happy to touch
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 3: base there as well.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: Perfect and you all can reach out to me with
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: any questions as well. Scott dot a dot Brady on Instagram.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: We thank you all for listening and we'll talk to
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: you next time.