It's life Jim, but not as we know it!

From door to door, leaving Dakar, Senegal to arriving at our apartment in Windhoek, Namibia took 35 long hours.

We flew the complete width of the African continent to Adis Ababa, Ethiopia and back again to Namibia. That was the only route available, otherwise, it was back via Europe.

We arrived in Namibia in the late afternoon and the skies were blue and the air was warm and dry. It was altogether very pleasant.

The small airport at Windhoek (the capital of Namibia) appeared very calm and clean.

As we entered the city. it showed all the makings of being German as indeed much of it was (look it up).

We had left Dakar, the capital of Senegal which is colourful, chaotic, noisy and let's face it, filthy and we had landed in this pristine clean and quiet world. It was completely alien to what we had been used to.

But as we settled in we found ourselves mesmerised by Windhoek, a leafy, calm manicured city with pristine buildings surrounded by huge walls with razor wire and what was going on? So many security cameras everywhere. Vehicles with ‘Armed response’ emblazoned on the side and containing beefy security guards sat on every street corner.

Wealth oozed from every corner.

Our rented apartment was modern and extremely western with all the mod cons we would expect from home. What was this country we had come to?

The next day after resting up, we walked a couple of Kilometers into the city and the real picture started to emerge.

We were staying in ‘Mayfair’ effectively and what we had seen was only part of the story.

The city had the usual array of fine shops, interesting architecture and an odd well-manicured park to look around. Just the sort of thing you would expect from a capital city.

But as we dug a little deeper into the suburbs, the mood changed and the emphasis was on discount supermarkets, Fast loan shops and a large number of amusement arcades, fancily called Casinos?

The reasons for the armed response guards and the high wire fences were becoming more evident.

Like a lot of Africa, Windhoek has two sides and the main difference to which side you belong to is mainly down to the colour of your skin and that is a fact and is evident throughout Namibia as we now know.

Moving on from Windhoek we headed to the coast to wait for our truck and we stayed in Namibia’s only real seaside town called Swakopmund. Another German-built town that even boasted many menus in German as well as German beer, German Sausage, German bread all being available at the local 7/11 and strangely the whole town backed out into the Namib desert and so we had the sea to our front and sand dunes top our back - very strange.

Our choice of accommodation in Swakopmund booked via Booking.com offered the usual array of Ikea style furniture, a clean kitchen to cook in etc, etc. We have done this a thousand times we know what to expect.

What Booking.com, or more to the point, the owners of the flat had failed to mention was that this brand new flat with all mod cons was situated in a gated compound, slap bang in the middle of a township.

The best way to describe our position is to use an old comedy catchphrase, of which the inference, if not the content is correct.

We were the only Gay’s in the village so to speak.

We wouldn't have been hauled up in an identity parade. That wouldn't of worked!

This was best-brought home to us when we went for a sundowner at the local hole in the wall bar just outside our compound. It was a pleasantly warm evening and we sat outside when we were approached by a guy whom we watched walk over to us from a neighbouring bar.

He introduced himself and said he owned the bar next door and that when we drank our drinks we should come and drink at his bar. He told us if we drank with him, he would look after us and he would make sure we were safe!

We drank up quickly and shuffled off back to our gated compound and only left by car thereafter.

Now the townships are controversial in every respect, but I want to point out a few facts as we see them.

They are 100% populated by Black or coloured people as far as we could see.

They are always on the outer edges of a city or town.

There are now some social housing mingled in that are at least a little more substantially built and the roads in the main towns and cities are predominantly sealed tarmac and as you arrive at the Townships they became dirt roads.

The Townships had walls surrounding them almost to hide them from the rest of the world and most interesting to me, Capitalism was evident as some of the rickety homes within the townships that are built from wooden pallets, Corrugated steel sheets and Taupaulin’s and some parts of the home structures had quite clearly sold off, or traded away to the people next door who had used the material to increase the size of their own homes.

The cost of living in Namibia is very low and as an example, for a pint of beer, we paid around a gentle £1.20ish and about the same for a glass of fine South African wine - Heaven!

Anyway, these prices gave us access to any establishment that took our fancy and it was good to see all establishments had a mix of Black and White clientele and so although the townships do exist and they do, there are opportunities for all to prosper and they do that too.

I spoke with a white Namibian guy who summed the position up like this.

Both Black and White people don’t really like each other but they tolerate each other as they realise they have to for both to prosper?

A black Namibian told me he was pleased to have a job as a handyman in a hotel full of white tourists. I asked if he minded serving a mainly white community and his answer was that he was proud to serve them as the alternative of unemployment was a lot worse.

An interesting take on a huge subject and neither statement reflect my own views.

Whilst waiting for the truck we had time to spare and we took a day out to visit the amazing sand dunes of the Namib desert and joined an organised and got to see the so-called little 5 (as opposed to the usual big 5 in Africa - Elephant, Lion etc).

Our guide drove us through the dunes and scoured the baron sand for various reptiles.

We saw a Camillion that could disguise itself by having half its body white and the other half Grey. We saw snakes that lived under the sand and learnt how to respect the desert by not walking without looking as there is life under the sand.

The highlight was when our guide dug down into the sand and found a Gecko. A young pregnant female whose beauty will stay with me for a long time.

Whilst driving through the dunes, I was reminded of watching Lawrence of Arabia when I was a kid, I imagined myself riding a camel through the dunes, having blistering skin from the intense heat and a lack of water and how I would be a hero when I finally made it back to camp ..… and then the guide called me and I got back into the Airconditioned Landrover and pulled a bottle of water from the icebox. Dream over I guess?

The dunes were enormous and although we were being taught about the right things to do to preserve the fragile lives that existed in the desert, we then got passed by a group of quad bikers who had no respect for anything in the pursuit of fun. It’s a strange world we live in, isn't it?

All these outings and visits were to pass time waiting for our truck to arrive and as the rest of the world counted the number of sleep’s to Christmas, we counted the sleep’s to our truck arriving.

We had invested in a great amount of extra security for the truck as we had been told of people having everything stolen from their vehicles whilst on the high seas.

We had also stripped the cab of radios, electronic equipment and speakers and all personal effects, we had stripped our motorbike and put it inside our truck along with everything from our external lockers.

Our hearts were in our mouths the whole time the truck was sailing but now as I write, I can say it arrived in one piece with no damage and with a myriad of countries ahead of us with no border closures we can now get on and do what we set out to do.

Today we realise how lucky we are as we do most days. Wild camping at the edge of the ocean, waves crashing in the background and just flamingo’s for the company and after writing this we are going walking along the shoreline that is deserted.

We have been here almost 24 hours and have seen no one. It's majestic.

Namibia still has a lot to show us and we are looking forward to the next chapter.

It's been a while...

As Covid continued to ravage everything and we couldn't move on due to land border closures, we left Africa and we spent 4 months travelling through the Balkans by bus and train and then on to the UK for my daughter's wedding and a brief mention here. What an amazing part of the world the Balkans are but before we left Africa we had our first Covid jabs that were recorded in a big leather-bound book in Ziginchour, Senegal (not a computer in sight) and the only evidence we had was a paper sheet with our details on but well done to our UK Doctor for recognising this and within 48 hours back in the UK we were both supporting sore arms having had our second dose of vaccine fully recorded and evident on our NHS records.

Meanwhile, back in the Balkans we had to rely on public transport to get around and so we barely scratched the surface as we travelled between towns and cities by bus and train but the scenery was incredible with forest, lakes and quaint villages in abundance.

Our journey took us through Turkey to Bulgaria and then on through Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia and finally Austria and Slovakia.

That's a lot of time on bus and train seats and a lot of shuffling around on the seats to stay comfortable!!

Many of these countries are seldom visited by us Europeans as I am sure like me, you just remember the terrible wars and it's true to say that many buildings in these countries still bear the scars with bullet holes being evident on most buildings.

To try and better understand, we went to various museums and exhibitions about the conflict, but the more we saw and read, the more confused we became.

The war is hopefully behind them all now and the city centres in all these countries are making a real effort and Casual dining and chilled out bars are now the norm which came as a very pleasant surprise to us with Ljubljana the capital of Slovenia being our favourite city of all.

With this in mind, we would look into the eyes of many of the older people waiting tables, driving lorries or just walking down the street and wonder what part they had played in the war as many would have been involved?

Did they use a gun, did they lose family? Each one would have a story to tell we were sure.

From the Balkans, we headed to London and Doncaster for my Daughters wedding and I got to be a proud dad for a day.

From the UK we headed back to The Gambia in early November, to be reunited with our truck finally. A moment that was quite emotional for us after 40 different beds in 4 months of travelling we were delighted to sleep in our own bed. And that's a lot of emptying and filling our backpacks (well for Charlotte at least).

Once reunited, we set about getting a few upgrades done with the goodies we brought back with us from the UK (all 8 bags worth)! And we now have a nice new kitchen table and yes, we carried a kitchen table in our luggage with us but I drew the line at a Kitchen sink!

Extra security throughout the truck, better door fasteners are to name but a few upgrades we had done and we are delighted with the results. body content of your post goes here. To edit this text, click on it and delete this default text and start typing your own or paste your own from a different source.

When we weren't at the workshop getting our upgrades we spent a little time driving the River Gambia and heading off the only road along the river to find new and exciting places to stop for the night and as always, when you think you are really remote and away from everything, someone wanders past as though its the most normal thing in the world to do- Welcome to Africa.

One guy we met who was mesmerised by our truck was happy to engage in conversation and it's easy in the Gambia as they speak English and although we were only around 60km (36 miles) outside the capital of Banjul, this guy had no idea about Covid 19 and the devastation it was bringing to the world. A fact we found astounding and we wonder what percentage of the population actually do know about Covid 19?

On another occasion whilst chilling, we had our usual selection of 4 legged friends taking shelter or looking for food as they always do as street/wild dogs are common almost everywhere and we try our best to feed them whilst we can and whilst feeding this particular lot, Charlotte noticed some alarming lumps in the skin of these poor creatures and so Charlotte set about donning her rubber gloves and examining the poor things to discover they were riddled with Mango worm.

Lava burrows into the skin of dogs when they lay in contaminated areas and grow into worms.

With a lot of patience from both the dogs and Charlotte, most of the worms were squeezed out giving great relief all around and allowing the dogs to take refuge under the truck and enjoy a peaceful sleep at least for that night anyway.

Meanwhile, once our upgrades were complete, we were ready to move on but had to await a suitable vessel to ship the truck down to Namibia from where we can then finally move a little easier with few land borders closed in this area of Africa.

In some ways, our timing is once again, terrible with the news of the new Omicron virus hitting Namibia and South Africa, but on reflection, we are pushing ahead armed with the knowledge that Namibia is a country over 3 times the size of the UK, twice the size of Germany and California with a population of less than 2.5 million and that's around 3 people per square Kilometer versus 280ish per square Kilometer in the UK?

Their daily Covid count is around 12 new cases a day and the deaths to date are just a few thousand since the start of the Pandemic.

Life expectancy in Namibia is also rising again to around 64 years of age after the country (as much of Africa) being devastated by HIV for so many years and even now, 91% of the world infected children live in Africa. With over a million deaths every year. HIV is still a devastating disease to deal with.

But we feel will feel a lot safer in Namibia than in the UK?

Now, the only part we have to overcome is the actual shipping of our truck. The last shipping experience (Casablanca, Morocco to Dakar, Senegal) was horrendous as we spent 3 days being hauled between offices handing over handfuls of money for bills that seemed to be being made up as we went along.

This time we are a little more organised but we can't control the wanton theft that takes place on the sea whilst travelling the west coast of Africa.

Our route this time is Dakar in Senegal to Walvis Bay in Namibia is notorious for theft from travelling vehicles and our actions to counter this is extra locks and emptying all external lockers and stripping down our motorcycle and placing it inside our beautiful home. Not something we undertook lightly and we hope our investment in several mattresses (foam covered in fabric) will save the lovely interior of our truck as they have been wrapped around everything we have placed inside. It looks a lot like a teenagers bedroom inside the truck currently.

As I write this we are now hauled up in an apartment in Dakar as the truck is full of our goodies and not livable presently and yesterday we trawled around dozens of offices collecting signatures and official-looking stamps to our paperwork and now its all done and tomorrow we deliver the truck to the port and say our farewells until late December when it will be delivered back to us safely in Walvis Bay, Namibia we hope (we hope) and we contemplate the flight of 27 hours we have to undertake to get to Namibia.

Hay, ho, the next blog will hopefully be from Namibia and will hopefully be back on course depicting local life and the scenery the country has to offer.

Anyway, Merry Christmas and a happy new year to you all and I hope 2022 is a little easier for us all than 2021 has been?

All change!

After our travels around Senegal, we stayed in Gambia for a while and took trips up and down the river Gambia both on the motorbike and with the truck.

And as we did, we encountered the one constant we have become accustomed to in this part of the world, Police stops, which are relentless and boring, especially when they ask what is in the truck and want us to open up to see inside which means pulling off the road, stopping the truck, pulling out the stairs and allowing access before doing all the same in reverse, just so the officers can stand at the door way and nod their heads and say “okay, that’s fine.” Not really good fun in 35+ Degrees and humidity levels to make you cry.

Usually, a small gift of Tea or sugar helps pave the way, but it’s something we don’t agree with, but admittedly have adopted in some cases, just to make life easier. That all said, we didn’t expect, what we were asked when stopped near the border to Senegal. During a routine Police stop the policeman hauled himself up on the steps of the truck to be at eye level with us and then asked – “Do you have any money, food or water. I have no food to feed my family” This is something new and shocking. We obliged with a little help and were soon on our way, but highlight there must be a real problem that we don’t understand?

These relentless stops started to make us question our legality and integrity, and so the habit developed that whoever was co-pilot would often pass time checking and checking again our papers as we started to disbelieve our own position.

After some time in Gambia, we headed for Guinea Bissau via Senegal where we got our visas to enter Guinea Bissau. The visas were issued by the smallest Consulate building we had ever seen and no bigger than a small house, but our visas were prepared in a flash.

Flushed with success we thought we would chance our arm (no pun intended) and we moved on to the local hospital to enquire about Covid jabs and emerged from the grim unkempt hospital premises with stiff arms and our first Covid certificate all logged in a paper journal in the hospital for future reference? Not a computer in sight.

The validity of these vaccinations for the UK though is more than questionable, as we heard from a friend recently who had a Vaccination in Wales and the second in England, and had to stand her corner to get the Welsh jab recognized, so an AstraZeneca jab from Senegal, I don’t think so.

I have to say though, it was seamless and took around 15 minutes from enquiry to stiff arm syndrome.

So, all set, the transfer from Senegal to the Guinea Bissau border took a couple of hours and once in Guinea Bissau we turned a straight right and headed west as we had been told of a super beach resort 50km west but the road might be a bit challenging!

After approximately 20km, we called it a day and turned around. We had lost a roof rail, pulled off by low hanging tree branches, as well as totally destroyed the wiring for the solar panels, similarly ripped out by low hanging trees.

Low trees and completely unmade and deeply potholed roads made passing impossible and so we decided to head for Bissau, the capital city of Guinea Bissau and only real significant town in the country.

Bissau lays approximately 150km south of the border and we set off midafternoon and made plans to wild camp when we saw a good spot.

The Flora of Guinea Bissau is such that the only break in swamp land and densely populated tree and shrub land is for settlements or villages, and as time drew on we didn’t want to ask at a village for a safe stopping area, as the light was already failing and it would probably be a struggle to make our request understood, so we pushed on.

There appeared to be no suitable stopping opportunities until we chanced upon a commercial garage where we stopped (the first real building we had seen since entering the country) and enquired about possibly parking for the night. The night watchmen (there appeared to be one with several friends)? agreed on a price of 5000 CFA or around 6 quid for a place to park and overnight security.

The following morning the group of watchmen awakened us at 06.00 hrs.

This then gave us an easy run of around 120km down to Bissau city and plenty of time that day to find a suitable base to continue our exploration of Guinea Bissau.

We traveled the main road in the whole country of Guinea Bissau known as the N1. This road was mainly dirt track and deeply scared dirt track at that, and the 120km took us around 8 hours to complete, with again, little chance of wild camping as it was mainly swamp or Mangrove with no open space to pull off the road.

The N1 was just about the only road in Guinea Bissau with any tarmac at all. A phenomenon we had never encountered before and quite astounding.

Guinea Bissau is still under Portuguese influence, with Portuguese as the main spoken language, and Portuguese beer being sold in numerous “hole in the wall” type bars all over Bissau. Far more bars than anywhere else we had seen in Western Africa so far and despite being a strong Muslim population of around 45% against 22% Christians, they love to drink beer it would appear.

Signs for Sagres, Super Bock and Cristal beers advertised everywhere once we reached Bissau town.

Music was also a major factor with many bars, no matter how small or dingy, advertising live music. A factor we took advantage of during our stay!

In the city (I use the term lightly) of Bissau, there were the usual array of street vendors and a smattering of western type shops as well as a number of guys on the street with wheel barrows. The barrows all neat and marked with a number. It transpired that the guys worked for a master and were around to transport goods, of any type and size, from A to B around the city.

With the cost of a taxi so low, it wasn’t worth paying, I wonder what these poor guys were getting paid to push a barrow around?

Another observation was that on virtually every street corner were piles of clothing. Mainly just piled up in heaps, these clothes were all second-hand western clothes and after investigation, we found out they were the excess clothes from the clothing banks we all use all over the developed world. The deal being, the charity shops can’t sell all we give so they sell to merchants, who sort the excess and bundle it and sell it on to third world countries to wear as well as selling some as rags etc.

At least it gets used and the charity shops get an income and the locals get a chance to wear western quality clothing.

Our entry into Guinea Bissau was at the start of July and the start of the rainy season and true to form, the rain came and lots of it. Not constant and not every day, but when it came, it really came.

Flash floods appeared and roads where too deep to walk or even drive in some cases.

The temperature went up as did the humidity- A lot!

Walking just 100 meters became a challenge.

The mosquitos grew to twice the size overnight and an array of flying insects of assorted colors, shapes and sizes also joined the party.

If they were viewed from behind glass, they would have been fascinating but up close and personnel. Not so sure.

Antihistamine became a regular with our morning coffee.

Despite having mosquito nets on all windows and doors, they still found a way into the truck.

Western Africa also has numerous redundant Termite mounds all over the countryside, which we had seen constantly during our travels. But the mounds are treated immediately to eradicate the Termites as all local homes are built from wood and the Termites eat the wood, so they are not tolerated. Despite this they still swarm during the rainy season as they hatch en masse and then fly en masse like unmanned aircraft, landing where the wind takes them and then drop their wings and start to look to build more mounds.

So, when we had a swarm land on the truck, it wasn’t the most pleasant of experiences and as we had our roof hatch open with the mosquito net on, we had a swarm of Termites flying and losing their wings directly above us.

As the net was on and sealed by Velcro, the Termites couldn’t get in to the truck, but we couldn’t open the net to shut the hatch either? So, we had no option other than to try and sleep with the creatures buzzing around above our heads……...

I have attached a small video of the night time and a photograph of the carnage the next day, when they had all met their end ,as we spent the night burning Mosquito coils and spraying the net from the inside, as well as sealing around the Mosquito net with Electrical tape to ensure the Velcro didn’t giveaway.

This had to be one of the most revolting experiences of my life.

We were able to deal with the aftermath the next day and I was glad to see the back of them.

We continued our journey and whilst driving through Bissau we were diverted by the local police onto a back road and despite our protests as the road was small and our truck is big! We obliged only to snag an electric cable on our broken roof rail.

Having stopped all the traffic, I have to admit having a minor panic, as what to do to free ourselves from the cable as reversing wasn’t working. The cable had become trapped and as we tried to work out a way forward, two locals shimmied up our truck in a flash, and so I felt obliged to follow them despite my nervousness.

When I got on the roof, the locals had a hold on this live electricity cable, and despite telling them it wasn’t safe, they released the cable and told me it was okay as they had gloves on?

The cable hung like a sagging clothes line, making it hard for even cars to pass under, as we had pulled it even further out of shape.

Guinea Bissau was as far south we could get due to all borders further south being closed for you know what!

After a lot of soul searching, we went back to Gambia where we have parked our truck in secure parking before heading back to Europe to travel through Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania, Serbia etc.)

The plan is to travel back to Blighty for my daughter’s wedding late October and then head to Gambia early November, drive south if borders are open or ship to South Africa and continue from there.

It was a hard decision and although we are still following our will to travel the world, we desperately miss our truck.

I write this from a rented apartment in North Macedonia with a lovely city view, but Africa gets into your blood, and we both miss the chaos we have left behind.

Roll on November, we want to go back to our home.

Oh, and we also filmed for series 2 of Million Pound Mega Motorhomes for channel 5 TV in The Gambia. This will be broadcast on British TV next year I would imagine.

I may take a short rest from writing dependent on our travels, and resume again when we continue our travels in November.

Thank you for reading my blog