On the road again

After what seemed like endless pointless bureaucracy we have the car back and are heading north. We had anticipated a number of hurdles we would have to leap over in order for the car to be legal in Australia but had not realised just how problematic, time consuming and expensive this would be. Not wanting to whinge but here is a little story of how it went.

The day the car arrived in Fremantle the wharf workers were engaged in a stop work meeting for four hours, so little chance of getting the car off the wharf that day. The next day we were up bright and early for our two hour pubic transport journey down to Fremantle where we paid off the shipping company, visited Customs and the container depot whom we had engaged to retrieve our container. Our visit to Customs went rather well after a previously disastrous visit to another Customs office a few days earlier where some idiot stamped our carnet and then told us a whole load of nonsense explaining that we needed all sorts of documents that as it turned out we did not need. Basically the Customs officer in Fremantle was not interested in us because the carnet was already stamped and they did not even want to see the car or the contents.

The following day the container depot informed us that the container would be arriving in their depot that evening. We turned up at the depot the next morning to find out there had been a mistake and it was coming off the wharf that evening instead. Jan, of the depot was very kind and drove us back into Fremantle (about 6 km) and even arranged to collect us in the morning, she lived quite close to where we are staying. We enjoyed a spot of sightseeing around Fremantle which is a delightful old Port town and got chatting to a local who had lived there all his life watching the port change. Incidentally Fremantle was founded by a descendant of the current Fremantle family of Swanbourne, a very small village in England where I went to Primary School.

The following morning Jan and her husband David picked us up at 6.10 in the morning. Funnily enough they had driven from the UK to Australia in the 70’s in a brand new Austin Princess. By 7.10 am we were at the depot with our container being unlocked. The car was in the same condition we had left it in. Next was the quarantine inspection. It all seemed to be going fairly well, everything we declared was passed, the inside of the car was deemed clean enough it just needed a quick hose down and the radiator needed a clean out (we remembered about the radiator after we had put the car in the container). The depot also had a wash pit so David made space for us - there is usually quite a long waiting time for this. As the car was being water blasted still more dirt was coming out of it (how much more could there be?) but not only that, due it’s rather holey nature, dirt was washing back inside the car. Then we had rather a large stroke of bad luck.

We popped off for an hour to get a bite to eat and on returning we discovered that the original quarantine officer had been audited, his superior had heard that a car from Africa had arrived, and our car had been re-inspected and been gone over with a fine tooth comb and FAILED. It suddenly all felt rather hopeless, apparently such cars usually take at least a week of being water blasted and are pretty well dismantled in the process. However we were determined and set to re-scrubbing ourselves too and eventually late afternoon the car was passed, if sopping wet.

We cannot help but think that if we had not cleaned the car extensively ourselves already things would have turned out very differently due to the fact that it all served to make a good impression which interestingly did matter. Next to our car in the wash pit was a car, or rather a wreck, which had been imported from the States and the car was an absolute mess and filthy. We understand that basically the car was being left to rot for a few long weeks to get a clear and strong message to the owner. There were also some huge vehicles for the mining industry which were being dismantled and cleaned.

Unfortunately it was by now too late in the day to take the car to a vehicle testing station and being a Friday and Monday a Bank Holiday Tuesday was the soonest we could get it done. Indeed, although the car is fully taxed in the UK it still has to pass an inspection in Western Australia. Although we finally had the car, we could not use it because it was still not fully legal.

On the Tuesday by the time we had obtained a new permit to take the car the vehicle testing station we did not arrive until mid morning, the nearest one being miles a way in Perth Centre. Again, unfortunately for us they were closing early on this day so after queuing for a few hours were advised to return the following morning. OK, my patience is beginning to wear thin, but of course I am still smiling. The next morning we arrived back at the testing station 15 minutes after it opened and there were already 20 vehicles in front of us. Some people must have arrived before 5am.Funnily enough there were many of the same chaps in the queue as yesterday but with different cars. They worked for the car dealerships and each time a vehicle is sold it has to be inspected, so the dealerships employ people to take the vehicles to the testing station and wait there all day. Oddly enough private vehicles registered in Western Australia only need to be inspected if the registration lapses. This is just absurd- our vehicle has to be tested but an old hunk of junk only has to be if the police find something wrong with it as they are driving around.

Talking to the other chaps in the queue we learnt that the inspections are most rigorous and the vehicle can be failed on the most minor detail. Great. We notice that many of the cars being inspected are in fact being re-inspected having already failed. Finally, after queuing for 5 hours it is our turn. Our inspector is a very pleasant chap from Northern Ireland. “It’s pretty dry for a Land rover” he calls out from underneath, my heart swells with pride after all Gavin’s hard work on the leaks. 15 minutes later it is all passed. We cannot believe it. Our final errand is to visit the vehicle licensing department to pay for the compulsory 3rd party injury insurance.

IT IS ALL DONE

Today we say goodbye to Ian, Christine and her lovely boys, their hospitality has been wonderful and we set off on the final leg of the journey.

The Journey So Far...

Having now departed African shores, and as we prepare to cross the Australian outback, now seems like a good time to recap on our journey so far.

We left London on 25 June 2007, still buzzing after the previous afternoon’s get-together at the Windmill Pub on Clapham Common where we were farewelled in style by our friends and family. The UK was in the middle of a wet summer, and it rained heavily as we headed out of London town on our way to Ash, where we stayed with friends before our ferry crossing the next morning.

We spent our first few days in Belgium, fine tuning our routines and storage arrangements. After a detour north to the Netherlands to stay with more friends, we pointed south, heading through Luxembourg and into France. We were still encountering a lot of rain, and the awning was paying for itself, giving us somewhere dry to cook and eat.

In southern France the rains finally eased and the temperature rose. Now we noticed that the engine temperature on the Land Rover seemed to rise quickly on hills, probably due to the amount of weight we were carrying.

Over the Alps into Italy to stay with more friends near Piacenza, we then headed for Venice to be tourists for a day. From Venice we headed north (weren’t we meant to be heading south?) into Austria. We even helped in a helicopter rescue of an injured walker near the Grossglockner High Alpine Road.

Our reason for going north was to visit the German equivalent of the AA, the ADAC, in Munich in order to collect our Carnet de Passages en Douane. This is the document that would enable us to take the Land Rover across borders without too much hassle. We also took the opportunity to have some steering components replaced and a wheel alignment whilst in Munich.

From Munich we headed north-east across Germany and the Czech Republic and into Poland so that we could visit Auschwitz Concentration Camp. This was an amazing place to visit, and brings a new level of comprehension of the atrocities carried out there and in other camps during World War II.

Southward bound again, we crossed Slovakia, with a slight deviation to Vienna to collect some mail. Vienna would be our last truly western city until Cape Town, so we celebrated making it that far by enjoying a Weiss bier on the banks of the Danube.

Slovenia was beautiful, and seemed like a lost fairy-tale kingdom. We enjoyed a hot day boating and swimming at Lake Bled, and we were amazed by the underworld-like Skocjan Caves. On to Croatia, and we nearly got blown away by the high winds coming over the mountains and slamming into the Adriatic Sea. It was a windy night in the roof tent.

Due to insurance restrictions we were unable to cross Bosnia and Serbia, so instead detoured around through Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, where we spent a few days at the Black Sea.

The border with Turkey marked our exit from the European Union. Istanbul was fascinating – east and west crash together here. We spent a full day at Gallipoli, and for the most part had the place to ourselves. The walk from the shore at Anzac Cove up to Lone Pine and the top of Chunuk Bair really made us appreciate the difficulties and hardships faced by the Anzacs in 1915.

Across the Dardanelles, we were now officially in Asia. Our sight-seeing highlights included Troy and Ephesus. We enjoyed our two weeks or so in Turkey – the people were very friendly and hospitable. The carpet that we bought in Cappadocia will always bring back those special memories.

The only visas we had arranged before leaving the UK were for Syria, so we needed to be there before they expired. Syria has extremely cheap diesel, but charges a diesel tax of $100 per week. We exited after six days, having visited Aleppo, Crac des Chevalier, Palmyra and Damascus, and with nice full diesel tanks.

In Jordan we had intended to apply for transit visas to cross Saudi Arabia in order to get to the United Arab Emirates and Oman, but although we tried a few times we were refused. In the end we decided to revise our travel plans and drive through Egypt instead. We had a chance meeting with ‘The Duke’ who allowed us to camp on his land for the five days we were in Amman. After visiting Petra and Wadi Rum, we spent some time on the Red Sea in Aqaba diving while we waited for a new Carnet (to include Egypt). We made friends with a French family, Jeff, Estelle, Jeremie and Hugo, who were in the same predicament as us, and we were to see them again later in our travels.

Although part of Egypt, the Sinai Peninsula is very different to the rest of the country. We managed some more diving in Dahab, and the snorkelling at Ras Mohammed National Park was spectacular. After a quick trip to the top of Mt Sinai we made for Cairo, unfortunately arriving in the dark on a Saturday night. The traffic was the craziest we have ever seen. In Cairo we applied for and were granted visas for Sudan. In order to avoid the bustling Red Sea resorts on the coast and the compulsory convoys alongside the Nile, we headed to the Western Desert which forms the edge of the Sahara, and made our way to Luxor , where we made new friends in Louis the Dutchman and the Dutch Bikers Luuk and Guido. In Luxor we hired a couple of clapped out bicycles and spent a very hot day riding around, visiting the Valley of the Kings and seeing the ancient Egyptian tombs. The ferry to Sudan leaves from Aswan only once a week, though due to public holidays we were forced to wait an extra week before we could depart. Aswan is not really the best place in the world to kill a week. By this time, our French friends had caught up to us again, and another two motorcyclists from the UK, Cathy and Glyn, also arrived just in the nick of time to catch the weekly ferry.

For the first few days in Sudan we all travelled in convoy, made up of three four-wheel-drive vehicles and four motorcycles. This section of the journey, following the Nile toward Khartoum, was the roughest section of road we had encountered so far. Construction of a new highway is well underway, so soon there will be asphalt all the way. Cathy and Glyn eventually made their own way off, and then Jeremie came down with Appendicitis, so the French hurried off to Khartoum on their own. After getting our visas for Ethiopia we made an overnight trip to camp out near the dramatic windswept pyramids of Meroe, and then made for the border. Our travels in Sudan were confined to the northern areas, so we were well away from the trouble spots in the south and Darfur.


Within 24 hours of crossing the border into Ethiopia we had climbed 3000 metres in elevation, and the temperature had dropped by 30ºC. In fact, that night it dropped below freezing in the tent. The highlands were spectacular, and the highest we got to in the Land Rover was a pass at 4200 metres. After visiting the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela we made our way to Addis Ababa, and managed to track down Louis the Dutchman. It was good to see him again.

We exited Ethiopia through the less-travelled Omo Valley, coming into Kenya beside Lake Turkana. The roads in northern Kenya are pretty bad, and one of our front shock absorbers blew up a day from Nairobi. Highlights in Kenya included camping next to grazing hippos beside Lake Naivasha, and relaxing beside the Indian Ocean at Tiwi Beach. Fortunately we had departed Kenya well before the disputed elections.

Into Tanzania, and on to Dar es Salaam. We parked the Camel at a campsite and went to Zanzibar for four days. This was the longest we had been away from the vehicle, and it was hard to adjust to hotel rooms and bought food. The Spice Tour was great value. Back on the mainland and on our way to Malawi for Christmas, one of our front springs snapped. Luckily we could still drive with it, and managed to get a temporary replacement the next day.

We arrived at Chinteche Inn on the shore of Lake Malawi on Christmas Eve. Christmas dinner consisted of roast chicken and veges cooked on a fire in our cast-iron ‘potje’ (camp oven) and it was delicious.

For New Years’ Eve we made it to Flat Dogs Camp at South Luangwa National Park in Zambia. This was the beginning of the wet season, and it rained heavily to welcome the New Year in. We drove into the park and spent a day studying the game, seeing giraffes, zebras, elephants and even some lions among other creatures, as well as lots of birds. We completed our stay in Zambia with a day at Victoria Falls, where we even managed to walk over the bridge and put a foot in Zimbabwe.

In Botswana we drove through the Chobe National Park towards the Okavango Delta. Unfortunately we got a little stuck at one point, but with a little digging and jacking and a bit of a push from some locals we managed to get out and carry on along our way. On the way north to Namibia we went to the Tsodilo Hills, and saw some very interesting bushman rock paintings, thousands of years old.

One of Namibia’s most popular attractions is the watering holes of the Etosha National Park, but it had rained a few days before we arrived and consequently the animals no longer needed to frequent the holes for water. We had fun in the puddles though. Further north we saw the Epupa Falls before making our way to the Skeleton Coast and Swakopmund, then inland to Windhoek. Here we caught up on a few necessary jobs on the Land Rover, including installing a new fuel tank and set of front coil springs. We also visited the huge dunes at Sossusvlei, and we were lucky enough to have the whole place to ourselves.

The South African border was the most orderly we had been through in months. In Springbok we collected our friend Ianthe, who accompanied us for a couple of weeks as we zig-zagged our way down the coast to Cape Town. It was good to have someone along for the ride. We finally arrived at Cape Point just over eight months from when we had left London. In Cape Town we carried out a few more essential repairs, as well as taking the opportunity to have our gearbox and transfer box both looked at in preparation for the next leg of our journey. We visited a few of Catkin’s relatives, eventually making it to Knysna via Cape Agulhas, the southern-most tip of Africa. From here it was back to Cape Town to arrange shipping to Australia. After days and days of cleaning, scrubbing, polishing and repainting, we finally loaded the Land Rover into a container, and sent it by sea to Australia.

In the meantime, we spent another week or so in Cape Town before flying to Perth via Dubai. During our stopover we also took the opportunity to see some of Oman, with five nights in Muscat. We have now been in Perth for just over a week, trying to understand just how it is you go about temporarily importing a vehicle into Australia. The Camel is scheduled to arrive this week, so with a bit of luck, by the end of the week we will have convinced the Customs authorities to let us have it back. Then we can finally get on our way, into the outback.

In the eleven months since leaving England we have visited 31 countries in four continents, driven over 44,000 kilometres, crossed both the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn as well as the Equator. We have swum in the Black Sea, floated in the Dead Sea and scuba dived in the Red Sea. We have also swum in both the Indian Ocean (warm…) and the Atlantic Ocean (cold!). We’ve crossed deserts and mountain ranges, baked under hot sun and sheltered from torrential rain, but after 335 days on the road, we still have a great journey ahead of us before we finally get to little old New Zealand.

Coffee and Doughnuts

Our little visit to the Royal Oman Police in Muscat didn’t quite go as planned. My mobile phone had gone missing somewhere around the time of our arrival in Muscat. I had it on the bus, but could not find it the next day in our hotel room. I was pretty sure it must have fallen out of my bag on the bus, but the bus company had not been able to find it so it seemed that it was gone for good. In order to satisfy the requirements of our travel insurance I needed to report it lost at a police station. I have never had to do this before, but thought it would just be a simple matter of the police filling out a form with the particulars and then giving me a copy. If only.

I first went to the police station nearest to our hotel on Thursday afternoon just after lunch, but after going through what it was I needed, I was told that everyone who could help had already finished for the day. As Friday is the weekend in the middle east, they told me to come back on Saturday morning. Saturday morning came around, but after explaining it all over again, was told to go to the bigger police station in another part of town. One of the locals sorted us out a taxi to get there more quickly, but although he had agreed a normal price, half way there the taxi driver reverted to the usual rip-off-the-tourist price, so we got out and walked the rest of the way (and he got nothing!). At the big police station, things still didn’t improve. First they claimed that because I had no record of the serial number that it would be impossible to report it lost. Then I was sent to ‘CID’. Finally someone senior decided that a report could be filed after all.

After loads of waiting around a portly police officer finally filled out a form with all the relevant details. Everything was in Arabic, but it was a start. All I wanted was a copy of the report, but it was against their rules to release this, they said. Instead, they would use it to type a letter (again all in Arabic), which we would then have to take to the main police headquarters for them to provide us with an official letter to the insurance company (not quite what we were after). By this stage, however, there was no time for us to get to the HQ before it closed at 2pm, and even if there was, nobody could tell us where it actually was anyway! And, no, we couldn’t go tomorrow, as we were heading back on the bus to Dubai at 7am. In the end, as everyone was leaving for the day, one of the CID guys told me he would email it to me the following day. We left empty-handed and without much hope of ever getting anything by email (sure enough, nothing has arrived).

We had left our hotel that morning intending to go to the Oman Dive Centre and at least do a bit of snorkelling, but it was now getting on for 3pm, and the only way to get there if you don’t have your own vehicle is, you guessed it, by rip-off taxi. In the end we decided to head back to the air-conditioned luxury of our hotel room. On foot, of course. Another one hour walk. In 45ºC heat… We’ll teach those taxi drivers a lesson.

It was now our last night in Muscat, and after posting Catkin’s blog entry, we wandered once more along the Corniche and through the souq (market). Catkin haggled for some frankincense, and we bought some Halwa, a very rich Omani sweet. It is so sickly sweet that your teeth almost drop out just looking at it. We finished off the evening at our favourite shwarma (like a kebab) shop, and then retired to our room to pack our bags and watch ‘Pimp my Ride’ on TV (at least it’s in English).

Next morning it was up at 5am to scoff our bread and cheese for breakfast before another one hour walk back to the bus station. At least at 5.30am the temperature was only 34ºC. The trip back to Dubai was uneventful, although the bus was much fuller than on the way out. The stamps out of Oman and back into the United Arab Emirates filled up another page of my passport (not many left now). Once back in Dubai our plan was to head for Abu Dhabi, as we had arranged to meet a friend from the UK who is now living and working there. We were offered a taxi ride to the bus station for only 40 Dirhams, but unfortunately for the driver we already knew we could get there for only 4 Dirhams on another bus. The bus to the Emirate of Abu Dhabi was waiting when we got to the station, and within two hours we were pounding the pavements towards our friend’s hotel. Paul has been there for two or three weeks and seemed to be enjoying the ex-pat life. We had a great night drinking beer in the hotel bar, and he managed to sneak us up to his room for a free night on the floor. We were very grateful, as our accommodation costs were beginning to stretch the budget. We had found that food, drink and public transport were very good value in Oman and UAE, but ‘budget accommodation’ seems to be aimed at someone else’s budget – not ours.

First thing the next morning it was back to the bus station and back to Dubai. We had already booked into the Dubai YHA, so jumped on another bus to get there and check in for our final night in town. The YHA has a great swimming pool which we hadn’t managed to use during our first stay there, but we whiled away the rest of the day soaking in the cool water. Later that evening we wandered up the road to the LuLu Hypermarket for another of their great value pizzas.

We had planned our trip to the airport reasonably well, I thought. Up at 6.00, pack, check out, breakfast at 7.00, out to the bus stop at 7.15, plenty of time to be at the airport by 8.30am. What we hadn’t allowed for was that the bus that is scheduled to run every 20 minutes often doesn’t turn up for an hour and a half… We only found this out when talking to a local commuter, after standing at the bus stop for over an hour. Of course, a taxi was out of the question. The bus did finally arrive, and although it was packed, we managed to squeeze on with our packs without knocking over too many locals in the process. We were late to the airport, but luckily we had already checked in on-line, and the flight was quite empty anyway, so we breezed through check-in. The only drama was me setting off the metal detector and having to take off my boots and go through again in my socks. Twice. We had 30 Dirhams left to spend, and in Duty Free finally found a copy of ‘A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian’ which Catkin’s Mum had recommended in a comment on the blog many months ago.

Emirates Airlines have an amazing selection of movies and entertainment – so much, in fact, that you don’t know what to watch first. At one point I found myself watching a stupid movie called ‘Mr Woodcock,’ about a PE teacher at an American High School, which is ironic because I also had a PE teacher called Mr Woodcock (funnily enough, not the same guy…). I also managed to watch a few episodes of ‘Russell Coight’s All Aussie Adventures,’ so am now all clued up about travel in the Australian outback. One movie we both enjoyed watching was ‘Goodbye Bafana’, about one of Nelson Mandela’s jailors during his time on Robben Island and then on the mainland leading up to his release. Having spent time in South Africa and visited Robben Island, it presented a very interesting perspective.

We have now crept into Perth, Australia, under cover of darkness. By the time we arrived it seemed like we had been travelling almost constantly for three days since leaving Muscat on Sunday morning. Perth looks like a really nice place, although the temperature when we arrived was nearly 40 degrees cooler than what we had experienced in Muscat a few days earlier. We are glad now that we lugged some warm clothing around with us through those hot climates.

We decided to try reporting the phone lost in Australia, to at least have something to give the insurance company. Sure enough, five minutes later it was done. So it doesn’t have to be a test of human perseverance after all.

It is still over a week until we expect the ship carrying the container with the Land Rover inside to arrive. In the meantime we are staying at my cousin’s place with her family, and they are looking after us well. We have been searching for books to buy to help us to plan our route across the outback, as well as one to tell us about all the creatures to be wary of. So far on our journey, we have had only one confirmed sighting of a snake - a big puff adder in South Africa - and only a few scorpions and other nasties at various times. Despite the impending threat of death and disability from the Australian wildlife, we are looking forward to getting back on the road again.

Arabian Nights

Seeing as we missed off the Arabian Peninsula (thanks to the Saudi government) when we were passing by earlier on in the trip, we decided to take the opportunity of a stopover in Dubai en-route to Perth. However we still had some time to kill in South Africa as we wanted to ensure that the car had departed South African shores before we did and then there would be nearly another month before the car will arrive in Perth (via Malaysia). So we remained in beautiful Cape Town for another nine days. Plenty of time we thought for activities such as diving and taking a trip on the Cable car. This was before we realised that during our final week there were three, yes three public holidays and fairly changeable and windy weather.

As it turned out, when it was good for us go diving, the conditions were not suitable. Oh well, we thought, the diving in Oman is apparently rather good so we will just have to wait until we are there. On another beautifully clear morning we decided to take a hike up Platteklip Gorge (the particularly steep ascent up Table Mountain) with the intention of taking the cable car down (I really hate steep downhills, unless I am on a mountain bike or snowboard of course). Remembering that the last time we tried to take the cable car it was closed due to high winds we kept an eye on the cable car as we walked up to the entrance to the gorge part, especially as the wind did seem to be increasing. Thankfully we had kept a good eye on it because by the time we reached the start, yes the cable car had stopped running. We did not see it running again until the day we flew out.

Nevertheless we still enjoyed some lovely walks, right from the centre of Cape Town, up to Signal Hill and on to Lions Head, which afforded fantastic views of Cape Town and the coast.

Of course after we waved goodbye to the car we also lost our accommodation. Hardekraaltjie Campsite, however, had some cabins for rent which were considerably cheaper than a backpackers. So we moved into Rose cabin for a few nights. Rose cabin came equipped with beds, a kettle, a few aluminium pans (great for burning food) a blunt kitchen knife and a fridge. It is amazing how quickly our routine changed as we adapted to our little cabin. Losing the car also meant that we had to walk everywhere now, although one day our neighbours from when we had been camping gave us a lift to the supermarket.

A couple of days before we were due to leave Cape Town we decided to move into the centre of the city. Hardekraaltjie was a half hour walk from the train station and the train ride was another half hour into Cape Town, and the trains did not run very frequently. On a previous day we had visited a few backpackers and eventually selected one which was pretty central and seemed to be fairly quiet- we were not looking for party central, although most of the backpackers in the city are in the partying area. Unfortunately we did not view it at 4am, but it was not the other backpackers that were the problem - it was the morons outside. The noise did not stop until gone 6am. These idiots would drive around in some crappy car with a souped up stereo playing their music so loud it made our whole room vibrate (on the third floor), then they would hoot their horns continuously for minutes on end, then the police would join in switching their sirens on and off while other cars sped up and down the street with cars double parked on either side before slamming their brakes on. I was almost expecting someone to tip a drum of oil onto the road so they could skid into it. One really sophisticated chap, with a couple of ladies in tow, decided to make his own disco on the pavement. While the ladies all hung around swaying to the music emanating from his car clutching their bottles of beer, he most indiscreetly took rather a long pee- oh how we wished we had our super powerful torch with us.

After two rather sleepless nights we headed out to the airport and out of Africa. The easiest way to get to the airport is to take a shuttle. This was for us, though, rather expensive so we took a train and walked from the train station. Clearly this does happen very often. The train ticket vendor was rather surprised when I asked for 2 first class tickets to Lavistown and as we walked through the litter strewn neighbourhood after dismounting from the train it became clear that white people walking round with backpacks did not happen every day. Nonetheless everybody was polite and also everybody we passed greeted us and we arrived at the airport unscathed.

We landed in Dubai on a warm and smoggy morning and negotiated our way to the Youth Hostel by bus. We then headed into town at 8am because we could not check in until 14.00. We spent ages wandering around trying to find a coffee shop that was open, just to have a drink and get out of the sun. On our previous forays into Arabic countries we never fully appreciated that there is nothing open in the morning. The following days we walked down the same streets in the late afternoon and it could have been a completely different place, all the shops and cafes were open and there were so many people around.

We did find a bit of life at the wharf where immigrant labourers were loading/ unloading dhows in what seemed to us a most precarious manner. After wandering through the Gold Souk and many other street including the car spare parts quarter (one of the best we have seen on the trip so far) we eventually found an air-conditioned coffee shop in a mall where we hid out for a couple of hours until it was time to claim our room at the Youth Hostel. It is a good thing we are not here in the middle of summer - at least it is only 45ºC at the moment.

Over the next couple of days we managed a bit of sightseeing. Dubai is a much more interesting city than I had imagined. We enjoyed some brief respite from the stifling heat when we made the quick trip across the creek on an Abra. These rather small but sturdy boats zip across the creek racing each other in a manner distinctly reminiscent of dodgem cars, especially when it comes to parking - this really is parking by feel. In the twilight we visited a restored area of old merchants houses with wind towers and courtyards. We viewed the inside of one which now houses a philatelic museum, it really was most interesting and enlightening. Stamp collecting has taken on a new meaning for me.

Another day we navigated our way out to Jumeira which is home to the iconic sail building (which is an hotel) of Dubai. This area of Dubai even has air-conditioned bus shelters. There are signs prohibiting eating food in them. I am sure that this is to stop people having picnics in the cool of the bus shelter. We also spent a couple of refreshing hours on the beach right opposite the famous “World” development a little way out to sea. However, we saw nothing through the smog and haze.



Although the Youth Hostel does not have a kitchen (they seem to have changed quite a bit since I last stayed in one) the street food in both Dubai and Oman has been really good value and tasty, mainly with Indian or Lebanese influences. However, one night we ended up with some food that was just a little too spicy for Gavin’s palette. Luckily for me I got to polish of the wonderfully tender chunks of lamb.

By now it was time to head towards Oman and Muscat. We had heard of a dive centre a little way out of Muscat which also rented out cabins on the beach for a reasonable price. It sounded so perfect. After a couple of days in Dubai I started to come down with a cold. Bad news for divers - a cold and diving is a nasty combination. So although I have not felt unwell at all with this stupid cold, I cannot dive. Ok we thought, why don’t we just head out to the dive centre anyway and hopefully it will improve? Well despite all our attempts to make contact with the Oman Dive Centre (from South Africa, Dubai and Muscat) we have heard nothing. Their phone numbers do not seem to work and they did not respond to our emails. Also when we could finally access their website it seems that their cabin prices have increased by 400%. So on our final day in Muscat, incidentally I am still very snotty, we thought we would go out to the dive centre and just go snorkelling. We just had the small matter of reporting a lost mobile phone to the police to complete. The phone had been lost a few days earlier but when Gavin had tried to report it he was asked to return to the police station after the weekend. Gavin will give you an indication of just how futile such a process is Oman in his next post, but needless to say four hours later we had achieved nothing and no time left to get to the dive centre.

As is commonly the case, things often turn out very differently to how we anticipated but we have had a very interesting time in Oman. We have been staying in an hotel overlooking the harbour and port in Muscat (Mutrah), which feels more like a small town than part of the capital city.

We walked along the Corniche to the old walled city of Muscat and spent an interesting hour or so in the city wall museum developing insight into Omani history and culture. Despite its rather delayed entrance to modernity the country seems to be very well developed and so much cleaner than most of the countries we have passed through since leaving Europe. The Omani border post is certainly the most grand either of us has visited. We even picked up a complimentary map of the country. How ironic that there are so many countries we have been through with no map available at all and the only one we don’t drive to ourselves has a map.

Another day we managed to find our way to Qurm beach about 10 km away which involved a bit of a walk. Here the distances when walking seem to more than double due to the heat and we have not had very good experiences with taxi drivers - again Gavin will explain. We had hoped to find some food along the way, according to our map we would walk past a major mall, but of course at 11am on a Friday nothing seemed to be open. So we had a lovely few hours on the beach with our 2 oranges to sustain us. In an effort to retain some modesty I initially kept my shorts on over my bikini, but all the men stared at me anyway, when I was sitting on the beach and when I went in the water. So after seeing some other western women bravely wearing bikinis I followed suit, but I certainly would not have behaved so rashly if Gavin had not been there.

On the way back to the bus we passed an open coffee shop so we ducked in for samoosas - yes I have managed to convert Gavin, although it is more to do with desperation as the samoosas here are not spicy.

It has been a bit of a culture shock coming here. Not only do we not have all the comforts of camping and our car but the whole rhythm of life is so different. One aspect of this that is so liberating for us is that we do not have to worry about being somewhere safe when it gets dark. In Cape Town, especially as the nights were drawing in, we needed to ensure that we could catch a train in time so that we were not walking back to the campsite in the dark. Whereas here it only starts to get lively in the evening, when it cools down enough to sit outside.

Time to make like Karen Blixen and get Out Of Africa. In departures now. Nobody has guessed correctly where to yet. Keep trying...

Extra-Vehicular Operations

The inevitable delays in our arrangements for shipping meant we had time for even more cleaning and preparation of the vehicle for its long awaited debut on the Australian scene. The shipping industry is big, and moves thousands of containers around the world every week, but when you are just two people trying to transport one vehicle in one container you are only a tiny part of a very big picture. Suffice to say that our hopes to have the Camel in a container by the end of last week were in vain. We had spent the first part of the week furiously trying to complete the last minute jobs that needed doing.

As Catkin had mentioned, I had been concerned about the leak from our power steering box which had slowly become worse over the previous weeks. Our visit to Schalk Burger (the highly recommended mechanic, not the Springbok) the previous week hadn’t been completely in vain, for although he wouldn’t have been able to look at the box for us for another week and a half, he did suggest a couple of other places who might be able to look at it sooner. He was also very interested in our journey, and has a huge map of Africa on the wall of his workshop, presumably so all his customers can show him where they had been, where they had got stuck, where they had smashed their suspension that he would be about to repair, etc.

We tried both places Schalk had suggested for the repair. The first quoted quite a high price, but for the work involved it wasn’t really that unreasonable. The second said that they don’t really fix the boxes, they just replace them with new ones, which are about three times the price we had been quoted for the repair previously. The workshop manager then told me that it might be possible for me to replace the existing seals without doing a full rebuild, if I was keen to give it a go. Actually, I was keen for someone else to give it a go, but it was the cheapest option, so obviously the one for us. The guy was really helpful, photocopying the exploded drawing of the box showing all the parts and giving me quite a few handy hints from the last time he had done the same job.

I tackled the job the next day, and it took the whole day to get the box out, replace the seals and get it all back together again. It would have been much quicker, but in true Land Rover fashion, most bolts or fittings were in inaccessible places, and when you finally got to them they wouldn’t undo anyway. Catkin’s smaller hands were called upon to reach through small gaps between other parts, and she spent another afternoon traipsing around the local industrial area looking for a circlip to replace one that had broken. Nobody had the right size, so the broken one has ended up going back in. By the time everything was back together it was well and truly dark.

All of our scrubbing, and the use of a water blaster, over the previous weeks had finally got rid of most of the caked on lime we had picked up in the Etosha National Park in Namibia nearly three months earlier. It had also removed a good deal of the protective coating on the chassis and underbody as well. We had already decided that a new coating would not only help protect the steel chassis, but would hopefully also serious impress the Australian quarantine official we he or she inspected the vehicle for cleanliness in Fremantle. We found a paint factory nearby, and they sold us a can of their special black chassis and underbody sealer. Another full day was spent wriggling around underneath the Land Rover reaching into every nook and cranny with different shapes and sizes of paintbrush. It was a pretty messy job (I still have paint on me in places I can’t even see) but worth it, as it came up really well. Hopefully it impresses those Aussies…

Throughout our long and tortuous travels we had managed to accumulate not an inconsiderable amount of extra ‘stuff’. Pamphlets, maps, books and souvenirs were all taking up valuable space, along with some items we had brought from England but barely or never used. We wanted to streamline our operation, but more importantly needed to make room for all the wine we had bought in South Africa. We had made enquiries with a few shifting companies but none bothered to reply, so we have ended up sending two rather large boxes to New Zealand by post. We can now fit almost everything into our eight crates in the back, so it’s much more organised. A place for everything and everything in its place. I love it. I’m sure my sisters won’t love it so much when they have to go and pick up two 30 kilogramme boxes from the post office.

We even went out for dinner one night last week. A friend and former colleague of mine, Albert, and his wife Aggie were in Cape Town. We had last seen them when they had been at our leaving do at the pub on Clapham Common. It was good to see them both again and hear their news.

By now we had all but confirmed that we would be loading the Camel into a container at the port on Wednesday 23 April. To celebrate our third to last night camping in Africa, and our final African full moon, we decided a special dinner was in order. We had been on the continent for seven months. Roast lamb is one of our favourites, and it was delicious. Catkin has honed her potje technique to perfection. My getting charcoal to burn using turps is coming along nicely, too, thanks.

Later that night we had the most excitement we had seen for a very long time. We had been camping in the same campsite in Cape Town for almost two weeks, which is the longest we have stayed at one place since leaving the UK last June. There were a few permanent and long term residents, people came and went, some guy practises his driving around the campsite everyday, but really nothing much happens. Probably the most interesting thing was for the other campers watching us do our almost daily ritual of unpacking everything from the back of the Land rover and spreading it all over to grass around the vehicle before packing it all in again at the end of the day. A few days before, an overland tour truck had arrived at the campsite, but we didn’t think much of it. On this night, however, the police suddenly swooped on it, set up flood lights and proceeded to spend a few hours searching around in the back of the truck. We were coming up with all sorts of murder and espionage theories. Later the customs officers arrived – it turned out the driver had been smuggling goods into the country.

Finally, the day we have all been waiting for arrived – “containerisation day.” We had spent the previous night packing our bags with what we would need for the few weeks the Land Rover would be at sea. The vehicle was clean inside and out, and we had managed to stop all the oil leaks. Well, nearly anyway. We had been told that we could not ship with any more than a quarter full tank of fuel, so had made sure that it was showing just under a quarter (the small tank – if they had checked the big one it was just over a quarter full…). At the container depot the customs agent checked registration, engine and chassis numbers and signed off our carnet.

My major concern was fitting the vehicle into the container with the roofrack on. I was pretty sure that the tent would be too high and would have to come off, but was hoping that provided we dropped the sand ladders down a notch and laid all the jerry cans flat, that we could leave the roof rack on. The highest point would be the two rails on the jerry can rack, but I had measured the height against what I had been informed was the clear door height of a standard 20ft container and was certain that if we let the back tyres down to a third of their normal pressure, we would be okay. It worked, because we just sneaked it in. The port workers proceeded to nail chocks to the container floor and strap the Camel securely into the container so that it wouldn’t rock around too much on the high seas. The final task, again in preparation for Australia, was fumigation. The container was closed and Methyl Bromide was pumped in. We stood clear (me especially). The container was sealed, and for good measure I put two of our own padlocks on the doors. All going well we will see it again in Fremantle in just under a month. The vehicle was containerised; we were now officially on EVO.

In the meantime, in the absence of finding any sea passage between South Africa and Australia, we have booked ourselves flights to Perth, with a stopover to kill some time. Details of our mystery destination will follow in due course.

We have another week in Cape Town, and are hoping to go diving, despite the cooler water temperatures. Our last dive was in Dahab, Egypt, so it has been, well, seven months. How time flies. We are still at the same campground, but have moved into a cabin. It is extremely strange, though, not having the vehicle and all our gear, and a list of jobs to attend to. I have had to go and buy the latest Land Rover magazine to compensate.

Finally, today is Anzac day, which for me now is even more solemn, having been privileged to be able to visit Anzac Cove when we were in Turkey in August, walking on the beach and climbing the hills to Lone Pine and Chunuk Bair. It was mostly deserted when we were there, which I understand is a far cry from what is normally like at this time of year. What surprised us was the numbers of Turkish there, which stands to reason, as it is one of their great victories under the future leader Ataturk. The other special memory we have of our visit there is the genuine friendliness and hospitality of the Turkish people. It was one of the highlights of our trip so far.

Anyway, enough rambling from me. More news soon, and maybe even a special bumper issue in the not too distant future.

Cakes!

Happy birthday Danielle. Hope you remembered to buy cakes for everyone at work... Whoops, perhaps I shouldn't have said anything!

We are still in possession of the Camel - arranging shipping is a slow process. It's as clean now as it has ever been though. Hopefully into its little box on Wednesday.

More from us in a few days.