It is freezing cold. I never thought it would be so cold in a desert but here in winter, it is cold. Jersey, scarf and beanie weather, thermal underwear. My fingers ache when I type and my body cringes when I wake up in the morning and stick my hands out from under the covers. I am not amused.

Hathor Temple

The flight from Nairobi was, apart from a guy at the back getting raucously drunk and throwing up in his seat, uneventful. It was a stop over in Khartoum, which almost broke my heart. The Cairo passengers were not allowed off the plane, in theory, but I sneaked onto the stairs and looked out into the darkness and smelt the sultry, hot air and fell in love with the place.

The streetlights hung yellow against the three ancient cities that make up modern-day Khartoum. Where the White Nile meets the Blue Nile there is a bridge connecting the three, and I have always wanted to stand on it and watch the colours of the two rivers meet. When I looked out the window later on I could see the Nile below, glowing in the moonlight, with nothing but the desert darkness surrounding it. One day I will return.

Arriving at Cairo airport we had the first of what I have officially named our Visa Escapades. On a South African passport, you are entitled to a 30 day visa issued at the Egyptian border or Cairo airport. There is a visa fee but this is wavered for South Africans. So we get to the immigration counter and the official demands to see our visas. There ensues a long and exhaustingly repetitious dialogue about why we do not have visas. Our side of the conversation mostly going “but we are South African, we do not need a visa”, and his side of the conversation going “where is your visa?” as he dramatically thumps his fist on our passports in intimidation. But he was such a pompous man that it was hard to take him seriously.

After half an hour of waiting on the sidelines, without our passports and watching everyone else (who obviously had visas) file passed us, the immigration officer beckons to us and stamps our passports – for a seven day visa. Seven days. I have never experienced a problem like it before.

Our trusty Yacht Club showers were "Out of Order", so we opted for an African was instead, bucket of water and soap on a rope. This got rid of the humidity and gave us a fresh approach to start re-packing the vehicle for the journey down south. Once packed, it was a quick stop at the car insurance shop, a local diy backyard to replace my rear window, draw money, fill up with diesel and drinking water and recharge the mobile phone for a quick call back home to tell everyone that we're on our way to the border of Cabinda! All our chores were completed by mid morning, so we had enough time to reach Angola Cabinda only 34 km away.

At the border, dad was introduced to African time. There were some problems with our dual entry Angolan visas we obtained in Cape Town. The Angolans didn't want to grant us passage and told us to head back to the Angolan consulate in Pointe-Noire. Now, if you've been following our trip, our pas experience of this specific consulate was less than favourable, so needless to say I was more than willing to wait it out at the border instead, even if it meant overnighting at the doorstep! This put the ball in our Angolan friend's court - the onus was now on him to come up with a solution. Eventually our friend said that the Head Chief was on his way to the border and will definitely arrive in ten minutes. Three hours later Chief arrives, looks at our visas and make a few phone calls. He said that the Consulate in Cape Town made a mistake and under "Visa validity length" put our passport expiry dates instead. This theoretically means that our visas for Angola are valid for the next ten years! Problem solved, smiles all round, and we're in Cabinda. Crossing this border was a major 3-month obstacle, but with persistence, patience and a helluva lot of the Queen's valuable pounds, we crossed the border at last. The further south, the better. A new milestone for Knakkie, she never been further south before.

DRC truck loaded	Some progress with the road being made in the Congo	Other roads are atrocious

Overlanders.org

This site will be for the hosting of trans-continent trips free of charge. It will focus the concept that travelers would email the build up to the trip (vehicle preparation, etc) and then the journal which I will prepare and post on this site, with pictures of course. Each traveler will would get a two tier webpage off the main menu (see example). This will give the traveler a live website, where they just need to send an email on their travels. And the best part is that they will not have to try and create a website after the trip.

Although this site focuses on trans-continent trips, I will also host short trips from around the world. Once there are a few trips from a person, I shall group them together. But I will be concentrating on the extended trips, and supporting the travelers. 

I will also migrate any existing trip sites. This is mainly for those that have completed their trip, and now do not want to continue maintaining their existing site.

If you have trip report of Sub-Sahara Africa, and have trip reports to contribute, I can strongly recommend posting them on http://www.overland.co.za. Overland.co.za is dedicated to overland travel in Sub-Sahara Africa. Unless specifically request not to, all Sub-Sahara Africa trips will also be forward to overland.co.za. This website is not intended as, nor will be in competition to overland.co.za.

 Please contact me on siteadmin_at_overlanders_org  if you are interested.

It is 6am and I am more worried about having got up at 6am after working a night shift than I am about the fact that I am up at the crack of dawn to go shark cage diving. This worries me. I amusingly worries a friend of mine too, who at 1am this morning was humming Jaws music every time he passed my desk and his parting shot was “maybe I won’t see you tomorrow, a Great White could look at you and think ‘auderve’”. Well, I had thought of that.

Pick up for the trip to Gansbaai was 7am outside the Table Bay Hotel at the Waterfront. Mini-bus driver Dirk was moustached, cellphoned and spent the two hour drive talking into his phone at full volume, one hand precariously on the steering wheel taken off to change gears at 120kph while overtaking. He was unflappably brilliant, just the right person to pick up grumpy tourists in the early hours of the morning.

I must admit, for all my bravo in booking the trip, I was a bit doubtful about this shark cage diving thing. Shark attacks are big news in the Western Cape and a lot of people have (loudly) blamed the shark tour operators for luring the sharks into the shallower waters of the coast.

(written March 21)

Inoculations:

Serious trip preparations (that is, it became more than just day dreaming) began at the beginning of January, when myself and Alison made an appointment at the Netcare Travel Clinic here in Cape Town and began the long, long, long process of inoculations.

I had ripped Alison off for ages before, telling her how she had to have all these injections (she is scared of needles) and how I was all set because I had had all the shots before. Turned out all my inoculations I had for Asia (almost three years ago) and the Middle East (10 years ago) had expired, and I needed everything but the Hep A. Go figure.

Hi all,

Latest update:

We couldn't get Angolan visas in Accra (Ghana), Libreville (Gabon) or Pointe-Noir (Congo), so Ena and myself tried to tackle the muddy road to Brazzaville in the Congo, but got stuck too many times and had to turn back to Pointe-Noir!  

One door closes in Africa, another opens and we've decided to:

1. Leave the cruiser in the Congo in a secure place,
2. Fly to Cape Town, and
3. Return with Angolan visas in the dry season, hopefully April 2007

SO!, currently waiting in Cape Town. It's tough having to eat meat again, not be hassled, and relax a bit. It's tough, but we manage. It's a pity we can't finish the trip in 1 hit, but at least we can return to finish the trip - if the car still has wheels!!  ;-)

More excellent updates on our best countries: Gabon and Congo, in our next update on the website.

All the best,
Dennis

Travel Safely

After an excellent night bush camping, we departed early enough to see the sun rise through the tree tops. The going was very slow, but at least we didn't get stuck. The ruts are very deep and I truly can't see how any vehicle can do this route in the wet season. We crossed many rain barriers and it was going great until the road was blocked by a huge tree. The locals were doing some road maintenance. It was all very jovial and after an hour of pruning the hedges, we were ready to go again. At least it gave us time to chat to the locals. Two old Landcruisers stopped behind us. They import bags of oranges from Nigeria and do this trip to Mamfe often. They say the going is tough, but at least it's passable.

Early morning start from our bush camp	Eventually a huge tree blocked our way	Local insects

                                                                                                                                             Written in Mumbai, India

Namaste. I hope you are all well and having an amazing day and have the possibility of an awesome weekend ahead of you.

I am still in Mumbai and just to let you all know, I have been to Bollywood, on the set darl, the desired subject of several shoots for a popular national television series - and I expect you all to treat me with the respect and awe my newly founded social standing incurs.

                                                                                                                                              Written in Beijing, China 

Hey, hope you are all having an amazing day. I know I emailed last week, but I decided to do a mail on Beijing before I headed out into the great wide unknown of the rest of China. Mainly because I don't think I will be able to get access to the internet for quite a while. And thanks for all the mail. Please forgive me if I don't respond that timorously - just know I will reply when I can and I really love you for mailing.

I am going to see a Nepalese rhino. There are only 800 left in the world and I am going to see one, riding into the jungle on the back of an elephant. I am determined. So determined, I have braved the chill of a Kathmandu autumn morning to catch the bus to Sauhara, the closest village to the Royal Chitwan National Park and home of the Nepalese rhino.

It is 5.30am when I make it, bleary eyed, to the bus station - an informal linear space carved out of the city's main street by a number of hulking masses of buses parked bumper to bumper. I have been in Nepal for three months and I have learnt this: the traffic is a nightmare insane whirl of taxis, cycle rickshaws, pedestrians and animals, but nobody, and I mean nobody, argues road space with a bus.