2nd February 2013

Life on the road:
The journey so far has been an amazing one, we have recounted adventures and incidents that are funny (at other times not so funny), but the everyday ‘housekeeping and daily living' need to have a mention in this blog. I have enjoyed driving the van in parts of Morocco and Mauritania, but I do find that I am better at and enjoy the ‘administrative’ aspects of the journey such as managing the finance, planning the route, negotiating with officials, sorting out the documentation as we go through each check point, dealing with the countless number of people from officials, to the local vendors, all just being interested in what we are doing, and of course, there is the general day to day running of the house on wheels.

For a start, I am just so impressed and thankful at Noel’s ability and skills in keeping Pegasus 2 on these roads. Potholes and bad roads take on a whole new dimension when travelling at 5-10 km/hr, accompanying this are the suicidal drivers coming at you from all directions, the prevailing cloud of fine red dust that gets everywhere, the regular checkpoints from the gendarmes, customs or immigration, and not knowing where we will end up most evenings. Most days, the van will need a thorough check (such as nuts and bolts intact, lights and windscreen wipers working, correct tyre pressures in case of further punctures) By the way we had our 8th puncture today.

        Changing tyres again!

Washing
Getting a daily shower is not a certainty, so where we can,
we make full use of proper shower facilities at some of the
wonderful campsites/hotels that we have described on previous blogs. When wild camping in the bush, our portable shower tent works a treat, we have even been able to warm up a large bag of water on the dashboard of the van in order that we can have a hot shower! However, keeping clean even after a nice cleansing wash is really difficult. The heat, dust and grime get to your skin before you know it.

                             Bathroom in the bush

Laundry
A bucket with a sealed lid, is filled with water, detergent and clothing before we set off, and this will be well shaken and stirred by the end of the day on these bad roads. This just needs to be rinsed out, depending on the availability of water. Noel is frustrated that I am constantly boiling water to disinfect the tea towels – This is something that I have to do! 

Meals:

Self-catering is best when we are on the road, just need to be a little bit more organised and prepared.  We usually shop in the local markets where most staples such as eggs, rice, lentils, dried milk etc are available. Fresh meat is harder to come by. Pork was not available from Morocco to Northern Senegal, and it is sometimes hard to discern the type of meat being sold. However we’ve had some delicious vegetarian cuisine, Noel is converted! Bottled water is available in all markets – I have strong reservations about the amount of plastic bottles that are discarded all around us.

                                             Shopping in local market

 Keeping groomed

I would love a pedicure, and a haircut, I did manage to get a haircut in the Gambia but it is unlikely to happen again soon, so will have to make the best of it. Cutting Noel’s hair (the little that he has) will provide good entertainment for the village children.

Communication

Email, texting and phone calls are all affected the by the availablilty of electricity,  sometimes speedy and reliable , at other times take hours to upload . The fact that you are reading this is an indication that there is some communication even in the most far flung corners of the bush. We have a GPS machine (which I am still not too sure how to work, Noel wouldn’t go near it) which will I hope tell you where we are in case we need someone to call the Falmouth coastguard!

Some comparisons with the overland trip to India in 1979

Doing West Africa is hard work, maybe it is because we are 35 years older than the when we last went overland through Asia. There is a danger that we tend to hark back to those days but it is sometimes the ‘you can do anything spirit’ that is really good for us. Not being able to speak French has been a real obstacle bu I am amazed at what can be achieved with 2 words of French and a smile. 

Health and Well being

Being considerate as a visitor in a poor country with little infrastructure (eg not using more water than is necessary) is also something that we would not have thought much about in 1979. We didn’t use to worry about ill health or injuries either. On this trip,  concerns about ill health or sustaining injury of any kind is at the front of our minds. We are vigilant about anti-malarial precautions and being careful about every bite and sting.  This comes from knowing about the consequences of ill health in a country where health care provision is quite limited and it would be selfish to deprive the local people of the minimal provision of health care should we need to use it.

Bureaucracy and patience 

Civil unrest and conflicts have necessitated that we make detours and in order to do this we have had to make application for visas. Doing this in cities like Conakry and Rabat have taught us a thing or two about coping with bureaucracy! We were in the Cote d’Ivore embassy in Conakry for 5 hours, we had thought this was just to hand in our application, it involved a lot of photocopying and scanning and use of a new biometric  computer system that the officials had not quite got the hang of. In the meantime, we sat and gazed at the faded poster on the wall  giving instruction on  what, was an acceptable passport photo.  There was a lot of conversation in French which did not specially aid communication. After an hour we were under the distinct impression that we might get our passport stamped this day. But after 5 hours we were told that this would all be sent to Abidjan and we could collect in 2 days!

Friends

So far, the trip has its  high and low points. From our blog, you will probably picked up the difficult and often frustrating aspects which can make us wonder why we are doing this. The high points are the constant reminder that we are just extremely lucky to be able to  experience the kind of journey that not many people will have the chance to do. We have seen  amazing scenery and met some incredible people (some will become good friends, others just passing through) but mostly kind and helpful. We are missing our folks at home, so keep the emails coming.