We booked it south from the Osa and were soon at the border of Costa Rica-Panama. Within an hour or so we had gotten all our paperwork squared away, changed some Costa Rican colones into U.S. dollars (the official currency of Panama) and drove on in. Country #9. Our friends at fromatob.org have a nice writeup on “How to cross…
Wednesday 3rd to Thursday 4th July 2012. Opuwo. The next morning the sun rose as the moon set. It made for a lovely start to our day. We said goodbye to Brett and Mary and drove west towards Opuwo. An hour or so into our trip we stopped to make breakfast at one of the picnic tables thoughtfully constructed along…
Tuesday 3rd July 2012. Oshakati. The following morning we were up on the wrong side of sunrise. Brett and Mary needed to get to Oshakati to get their car sorted. We decided to tag along in the hope of getting a mechanic to fix our leaky fuel tank. We had also noticed that all the rough roads had shaken our…
16/7/12 Arba Minch Total KMS travelled so far: 22,520 ETHIOPIA “You! You! You!” Who knows what silly Westerner first taught Ethiopian kids the word “you”, but that has become the catch cry at high pitch whenever they see a “farange” or foreign vehicle! We know that in the schools they try and teach something better like: “Hello! What’s your name?”…
If taking a break from Panama City is a good thing to do; driving up to the cool of El Valle, around 200 klicks back west, and immersing yourself in the hot water pools of Anton Valley’s Agua Calientes, ranks as a very good thing to do. Some overlanders told us that some scientist living in the area believes…
Position: 43 30′ 10″ north, 16 26′ 53″ east Distance from Sydney: 16,221 km Travelling does strange things to the passage of time (no, no, this isn’t an elaborate excuse around why it’s been two weeks before an update from the road). Travel speeds time, but at the same time compresses. We’ve been travelling two weeks now, and on the…
Flores is probably the best place to go visit the Komodos orRincaIsland. We checked out quite a few of the places that booked tours and found one that seemed willing to negotiate the price a bit better. We were told that during the time we went (June/July) it was better to go to Rinca. I think the other deal with…
As you may notice from the title of today’s blog, we have finally torn ourselves out of Moçambique. 6 months and 8870 km. We were genuinely sad to leave. The last week was just has fabulous as the rest, as we made our way across the northern region of Niassa to Lago Niassa, the western edge of Lake Malawi, as…
If you are thinking about a tent for your next motorcycle trip, we suggest that you take a closer look at the LoneRider Motorcycle tent. We have tested this tent, and we really liked it. The tent was developed by a group of experienced long time motorcycle travelers, and they have tried to put all their experience into the development…
We left out of Scott Louisiana (The Boudin Capital of the World), just after noon on highway 10 heading west toward our next destination of Houston Texas. As we travelled along, we were greeted with our daily monsoon of rain. Fortunately, it didn’t last long and we were able to make good time. As we passed through Lake Charles Louisiana,…
This post is sponsored by Phototech, for all your Camera and Lens Repair needs. Hello and welcome to Part III of my Mobec Duo-Drive sidecar conversion on my 2004 BMW R 1150 GS Adventure. To see Part I, click here, for Part II, click here. This build report is about the conversion of my 2004 BMW R1150 GS Adventure motorcycle…
Finally. Finally we’re on the road. For the past months we’ve been almost certain that our friends must have felt as though they were caught in an endless loop of saying goodbye, only to see us “…one more time.” But now we’re on the road and, with the love of our friends and families warming our backs, we head east.…
Embarrassingly, us Brits too often rely on others knowledge of our mother tongue when travelling. With every good intention to communicate with the natives, we armed ourselves with phrase books and even spent the last few weeks prior to our departure driving to work listening to a ‘Леарн Руссиан’ CD in favour of the breakfast show. Russian is the largest…
From Dar es Salaam we headed to Morogoro, around a 200km drive west. Theoretically this should have been a fairly easy drive but instead it took us many, many hours to get there, firstly because of the traffic getting out of Dar and then due to the 50km speed limit at the many towns along the way. Tanzanian Police “efficiency”…
The older we get, the more our lives require organization and simple solutions. The more we do, the less we seem to want to have to deal with. This isn’t as much about willingness as it is about time well spent. And how we spend our time during our travels is of great importance to us these days. Baggage while…
There’s something about the first day. Perhaps it’s the inevitable poor sleep the night before, perhaps it’s the nerves. In “Long Way Round” Charlie Boorman drops his bike twice before leaving London. When we rode out of NYC in 2010 our friend cuddled up with a deer on Skyline Drive (everyone was fine). On our way to our wedding in…
Suburban Camping! Day two was pretty uneventful traveling, unlike the previous day. We left Mobile around noon, saying goodbye to our couch surfing host, after taking down our tents and drinking a cup of coffee. Leaving the neighborhood, where we did a little “Suburban camping”, we noticed some interesting signs. Now these must be “special” Alabama only signs. I have…
ESta semana obtivemos uma grande vitória: o visto americano! Compartilho agora com vocês como foi o processo. Nosso histórico Eu já estive nos Estados Unidos em duas ocasiões. Em 1998 fui à Orlando e Miami com visto de turista, que venceu e não foi renovado. Em 2006 voltei ao país com visto de intercâmbio, sem direito a renovação. Como…
Lamu…….after much thought we headed North. Most of the people in the area say it has been safe for ages and the only risk is bandits along the way. So after getting 2 guards in the car we were off……however we didn’t need these on the way back so I recon we were scammed!!!!! Anyway, Lamu was awesome and the…
Heat and humidity – how to survive it when you’re traveling around in a truck in the tropics: Hanging around countries like Panama, it is immediately obvious that there are basically two economic modes available: the rich and the poor. In the cities, for sure, you see a middle class but, for the region as a whole it’s this basic…