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Janet Wilson
Canadians exploring the world. Completed overlanding across Africa. From 2005- 2008 we drove over 80,000km through 34 countries in a Land Cruiser, exploring southern, central, eastern and western Africa. visit our website for tons of hints and tips for overlanding across Africa plus photos, videos and of course our travelogue and travel safe. We are now planning to leave in 2010 to spend a year exploring and traveling across Central and South AmericaAdventurouspirits
Travel Blog Posts
October 8th 2010
We are now on the road driving from Prudhoe Bay Alaska to Ushuaia Argentina. We anticipate being on the road for 18 months. Alaska was stunning and I will update this blogs with details of our travels completed to date. We drove from Alaska across Canada and the USA to Toronto. We are now in Toronto and will be heading south next week hoping to get the fall colours in the New England states. Our blog will now be updated regularly with our travels Safe travels all... read more
January 19th 2010
Mauritania For more details see our website www.adventurouspirits.com We had decided not to spend too much time in Mauritania due to the current political situation. The country has recently had a coup and although it appears to stable, there were 12 Mauritania soldiers killed in Western Mauritania the week before and tourism has suffered since the murder of a French family traveling through Mauritania. There is an 8 km sandy track through no-mans land between Morocco and Mauritania. We had been told only to drive the track with a guide as the area is heavily mined. But it was a holiday in Morocco and there were no guides, so we were advised to just “stay on the tracks and go slowly.” We had only gone about a km when we passed a car stuck in ... read more
January 12th 2010
For more information see our www.adventurouspirits.com We were anxious about entering Nigeria we had heard so many horror stories, but in order to head south there is currently no safe way to avoid Nigeria. We decided however to enter Nigeria further north thereby avoiding the busy main border crossing near Lagos. We approached the Nigerian border with some caution not quite knowing what to expect. The police welcomed us warmly into Nigeria and wished us a good trip. We headed for the health inspector who entered our vaccination details into his book and wished us a good trip and then we headed for customs. Again we were warmly welcomed and they eagerly gave us advice on roads and the best route to take heading for Abuja the capital of Nigeria. The head customs man told us ... read more
January 5th 2010
MALI Our journey across Mali on route across Africa. www.adventurouspirits.com We arrived at the Mali border to be told we would have to pay CFA18, 000 penalty each for not having a visa. We knew that we could purchase a temporary visa at the border so politely refused to pay the penalty and with no further fuss we were issued our visas. They also wanted CFA 5000 for the car, which we politely refused to pay and our carnet was then stamped Kayes our first town in Mali has the dubious honour of being Africa’s hottest town, so we did not want to linger. We headed for Bamako the capital but decided we would bush camp on route. We found the most enormous Baobab tree, just off the main road which we camped under for the ... read more
December 6th 2008
Morocco as we traveled across Africa www.adventurouspirits.com It seems that only when we finally stood on the African continent did our overland journey begin. We took the ferry from Algeciras in Spain to Ceuta (a Spanish enclave in Africa) a 35 minute trip across the Mediterranean Sea. We watched Europe disappear over the Northern horizon as Africa appeared on the southern horizon. We went through customs with absolutely no problems or hassles, the Moroccan officials were helpful and friendly. We headed for Chefchaouen, a little town where we planned to spend our first night in Morocco. RAIN IN MOROCCO As we pitched the tent it began to rain hard so we headed for a restaurant to have a celebration Moroccan meal. We were early and the only patrons, after a delicious meal, consisting of a traditional ... read more
December 6th 2008
Burkina Faso is certainly not on the travel itineraries of many tourists. Generally foreigners who visit this land locked country are NGO workers, diplomats, businessmen or those that transit through it from countries such as Mali or Ghana. We usually avoid capital cities if we can, since they are generally congested, noisy, polluted and navigating around them in our large cruiser is very stressful. However as needed to get our Ghana visas in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso so it was necessary for us to visit “Ouaga” as the locals refer to the capital. It was with some trepidation that we headed across the barren north of Burkina towards the capital with the most musical sounding name in the world. With a population of over 1million it is not an insignificant city and other cities ... read more
December 6th 2008
TOGO We crossed into Togo at a little border, which according to the Lonely Planet and other travel guides was only open to pedestrians as the bridge had been swept away. The Ghanaian police entered our details into his book which revealed we were the 8th vehicle since August. We had to fill out forms and Tom was made to rewrite his form as he misspelt the name of little village we had come from. Then they used white out to erase his parts of his signature that had gone over the lines, obviously too much time on their hands. Then we headed for Togo from Ghana to cross the river and hopefully a bridge. The Togolese customs could not complete our forms as his boss had the stamp but we could find him at the ... read more
December 6th 2008
We crossed into Benin at the main border crossing on the road between Lome and Cotonou. Formalities on the Togo side were pleasant and quick. Benin police took their time filling in all our information into their books before we headed for customs to have our car paper stamped. Once there however the customs man refused to stamp our carnet unless we paid him CFA 5,000, we refused and left returning to the man who stamped our passports. We kindly asked him to stamp our carnet, he looked confused but we reassured him it was necessary because we are from Canada. He stamped the carnet, we left and I wrote in the required information. Our challenges in Benin had just begun. We were not able to get to our first destination because the road had been ... read more
September 12th 2008
Finally our Land Cruiser was unpacked from the shipping container and through customs. Now we begin the task of packing and organizing ourselves and our cruiser in preparation for our long drive from Portugal via Morocco and the west coast of Africa to South Africa. We are hoping to leave Portugal by the middle of September for Morocco. We anticipate the journey will take us 6 months. Once we are officially "on the road" we will update our website www.adventurouspirits.com ... read more
June 19th 2008
Traveling from South Africa we headed for the DRC, travelling through Namibia and Angola in 2007. KABOOM The moment I heard the sound and felt the cruiser begin to sway out of control I knew but could not believe it, we had another puncture our 7th!!! But this time when we got out of the car we discovered this was more than a simple puncture the whole back left tire was shredded. This was not going to be a patch job this would require buying new tires. Once again we prepared to change the tire, tools out, rocks in front of wheels, brakes on, spare tire removed, high lift jack positioned and slowly the heavy cruiser hoisted into the air. A small group of locals gathered to watch the performance, which we now have down to ... read more
Tot: 0.159s; Tpl: 0.007s; cc: 13; qc: 76; dbt: 0.0659s; 1; s:apollo w:www (50.28.60.10); sld: 2; ; mem: 6.5mb
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