OverlandSphere
Overland Travel, Expedition & Adventure Information for 4x4, motorcycle and truck overlanders
Trip Start: 2013-03-18 Trip End: 2013-12-01 .
On a bullshit management course I went on a couple of years ago we were told about delivering difficult news with a Bad News Sandwich – if you want to tell somebody that they’re effectively ineffective you start with a slice of something good, throw in the negative filling and finish off with another positive slice. “Nice haircut. You’re fired.…
The night before the ferry we went to KFC to minimise the risks of spending any more time in the ferry loos than was absolutely necessary. We arrived at the port to chaos – hundreds of people pushing and shoving as they tried to get through customs with massive bags and boxes full of things they had bought in Egypt…
After a week of being horizontal we headed off to Aswan to start the next leg of the trip. Along the way we stopped for somebody who had just written-off his car. From the state of the car we were expecting the worst, but the driver was sitting on the side of the road, clearly shaken, but fortunately with no…
In Luxor we stayed at a campsite called Razeiky Camp. This is a hotel with a large garden / sandpit and as we sat nursing ice cold beers in the afternoon heat we were told grand stories of yesteryear by the manager (who reminds Jules of her dad, but for the sake of keeping wills intact no photo was taken),…
As a student I had a Mini 1275 with a 34 litre fuel tank. Filling up a 90 litre gas guzzling 4×4 along with several 20 litre Jerry cans in Egypt 15 years later is considerably cheaper. In Cairo we paid 1.1 Egyptian Pounds per litre. I’ll let you do your own currency conversions and calculations, but if you’re too…
Egypt has a lot of mosquitoes. You would think the author would have warned us about this when he wrote about all the other plagues in the Old Testament. When we finally left Hotel De La Post the room looked like a murder scene with splotches of blood all over the place after four nights of gruesome attacks and counter…
Two posts in one day? A public holiday in Egypt with a car stuck in customs allows for these little lucky breaks. We arrived at Iskenderun on the Friday to buy our ferry tickets. These were bought through an agent for Sisa shipping, Remon Travel. Tickets weren’t cheap – $180 each and another $590 for the car. We spent a…
At the campsite we were staying at in Cappadocia a large overland truck arrived with about 20 people on their way to Australia over the next 5 months. Unfortunately when there are a large number of people in the same campsite you have to share precious things like hot water and water pressure. You also invariably get yourself into at…
Leaving the security blanket of the EU and crossing over from Greece into Turkey was good training for the coming months. All Jules required with her wonderful maroon UK passport was 15 euros and she got a sticker. My not so wonderful green mamba South African passport meant I was sent back and forth between Visas and Border Control several…
To drive along the Amalfi coast you don’t need a fancy pair of brown leather driving gloves, although a fancy pair of brown driving trousers is a prerequisite. As with other coastal roads in Italy, the beast was a bit out of its depth, sharing the pool with a very nervous driver and even more nervous chief navigator. Occasionally we…
When we were in Monaco the beast went on some of the Monaco Grand Prix Circuit, including inside the tunnel. There is no new lap record. There are a few angry Ferrari drivers who were stuck behind us and were unable to get out of second gear and impress the ladies on the yachts as they went passed the Marina.…
Having experienced a sinking Sunday blues feeling nearly every Sunday afternoon for the past 8 years, I think I’ve finally found the cure – not knowing what day of the week it is. Jules keeps trying to teach them to me in French, but having only done a year of it when she was 12, I don’t think the dumb…
We’re 5 days short of our 8-year anniversary in the UK and are about to storm the beaches of Normandy. We leave tonight under the cover of darkness and arrive at the crack of sparrow’s fart tomorrow morning for a fortnight of cheese, wine and greasing the Beast’s axles with fois gras. We had a brilliant send-off and fortunately there…
As the car isn’t heavy enough for this trip we invested in some recovery gear. Things we’ve got include a strop for towing and a hi-lift off-road kit which allows us to turn the jack into a winch if necessary. We also have a KERR rope. This is a magic piece of kit that effectively bungy-jumps your car out of…
Having lost our faith in the original overland expedition “specialists”, we went to see Julian at Overland Cruisers so that he could go over the car and see if there were any glaringly obvious issues that the other guys had missed. While he did this he explained each thing he was looking at and showed us some of the mechanical…
Jules and I went down to Devon to give the car a run when fully loaded and say goodbye to some family. While we were down there we did some off-road training. Having never used the 4-wheel-drive capabilities of our car in anger, it was really good to see just how capable it is. Apart from being bloody cold, the…
My mother-in-law told me that an abscess is as painful as child birth. Having never experienced the latter, I guess I have to accept that as gospel, although a part of me (my jaw) feels that giving birth is child’s play in comparison. I imagine it is probably even less fun when driving down a “four wheel drives only” road,…
Lotions and potions Normally when we go somewhere our first aid kit comprises some paracetamol and Rennies bought at the last minute in duty free before a flight. Having gone on the first aid course and being shown all sorts of crazy ways to die we thought we should be a bit better prepared for this trip. As well as…
Jules and I have been quite worried about the car, to the point of planning to send Christmas cards out this year just so that we can strike a certain 4×4 workshop off our list. As we don’t have the beast to do cool things to, we’re stuck doing boring admin. The list seems to go on forever – carnets,…
The car was supposedly going to be ready this weekend. Now there’s a diesel knock and this involves fuel injectors being sent off to be tested. Another week with no car – I guess this is what if feels like when a parent waits for their children to come back from their first scout camp. Things are starting to get…
On our way down to Devon to stay with family for Christmas the Beast threw a tantrum 90 minutes into our journey. Smoke started belching out the exhaust, we lost power and a gut-wrenching grinding sound started emanating from the engine, leaving us stranded on the side of the highway for about 5 hours while we waited for a tow…
Electronic equipment has a habit of breaking or changing hands and for this reason we will also be taking paper maps and a compass with us. We will be using Michelin maps 745 (North East) and 746 (Central and South). Although not as detailed as Tracks4Africa, they have comprehensive coverage of all major roads. For the European leg of our…
Warning – this is a post about a kettle. When a normal kettle is a only a couple of quid, the expense of a Kelly Kettle seems hard to justify until you take the cost of fuel into account. Boiling water daily in a normal kettle will use up loads of gas, and considering we might not be able to…
A safe, reliable car can mean the difference between life and death on a trip like this. For this reason we took it for a serious service, having pretty much everything stripped, checked and replaced where necessary. Fortunately it was already in great condition (maybe it really was driven by a little old man who spent more time washing it…
Our first aid course was in Oxford and we stayed in a charming B&B called Nanford Guest House. We did a quick search online to find the address on our way there, and upon seeing some reviews for the first time we realised our fatal error – the Nanford guest house has been voted the dirtiest hotel in Britain. Having…
We’ve owned our roof tent for a while now, but as we didn’t have a roof rack until recently, it has been a rather fetching artwork taking up a great deal of space in our one bedroom flat. Besides being quite expensive, I now also owe a couple of friends a lot of beer for initially helping carry it up…
Don’t feed the bears Jules and I went on a 2 day first aid course with Wilderness Medical Training, a company specialising in training people who are travelling to remote areas where access to medical help is limited. The last first aid course I did was a 5 day “intensive” First Aid at Work course, which predominantly involved learning how…