I wasn't going the full length with this convoy, I would be following the guys down to the border, making sure there were no hassles or major problems at the border, then turning round and heading back to Juba. Because the roads are so bad, the convoy was going to have to head south out of Yei town, at the Congolese border at Morobo the road turns south east, right along the border to the town of Oraba, where the convoy would cross into Uganda, following down to Koboko before heading across to Yumbe and Moyo where they would re-enter back [View Full Entry]

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So am at the end of the second month and it has been an adventure, it has been incredibly busy. OK, so a bit later than 2 months, but has been stupid busy again... After the trip to Malakal in the north it was time to start on the 2 machines in the south, so a quick day drive down the road to a town called Yei, south west of Juba, 160 kms, only takes 6 hours, the road isn't great, it was apparently better than last year when it took even longer. So myself and one of the mechanics from [View Full Entry]

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Well it sounded like fun and the toys are big So i have changed career yet again (well more gone back to something I have done before) from the offshore world of submarines to the world of machines that are designed to run over, chew up and blow up landmines, of both the Anti-Personnel and the Anti-Tank varieties, as well as allsorts of other goodies that they come across when doing something called BAC work (stands for Battle Area Clearance... the demining world suffers horribly from far too many acronyms, AP, AT, DA's, BAC, LOD, blah, blah sometimes it takes longer [View Full Entry]

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Slowing down, calming down and blowing bubbles..... After the totally hectic dash to get to the plane, fly through what remained of the night and get to Kenya, to hop on another plane quick smart to head to Dar (having completely forgotten there are direct flights to Zanzibar, which would have saved $150 or so in flights) then a taxi transfer to Terminal 1 for a ZanAir flight to Chake-Chake in Pemba, I had enough time to breathe, grab a delicious bowl of beans and rice at the little cafe down the road and find out that I had enough time [View Full Entry]

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Best laid plans of mice and men... So after completing what will probably be my last offshore trip for a while, which was actually my most interesting to date, doing lots of flying and fixing lots of in-depth stuff that was very interesting. Getting out was another story entirely. Because Omar Bongo died, suddenly the Air Gabon route through Libreville was no longer safe.... the fact that quite a few of us had been flying Air Gabon (deemed safer than South African Airways or Ethiopian Airways by SS7 incidentally, despite it being an exceptionally ancient 2 aircraft fleet...) [View Full Entry]

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Belgium and names Just realised that I missed a few photos of oddities in Belgique, in particular a shop which at first glance appeared to be a translation issue, one of those were in Dutch or Flemish the name sounded good then someone decided to put it up in English, the give away came in the picture on the door, it seems to be a high class boutique clothes store, with the picture on the door....what was lurking at the back of the store..... anyone's best guess!! Then there was the guy in Brussels who we were absolutely sure wasn't drunk, [View Full Entry]

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Well I was trying to get caught up, just too many photos to share... So having driven back through Spain and France pretty much non-stop, we hit the ferry port with 2 hours to spare, not bad timing after a nearly 1600km drive. Unfortunately luck was having a wavering moment as the customs department decided to take the Landy apart, so the entire contents was spread out over the loading ramp at Dieppe, with the sniffer dog only really interested in the fresh baguette we weren't allowed to take out the car.... ignored everything else but the bread, we knew there [View Full Entry]

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So much to write, too much time enjoying the sights Apologies for it, but there seems to be too much adventure to catch up with, so I will try and use this post to catch up from the desert to the present, in time it has been less than 6 months, I have been trying to catch up my writings, but am just not managing it. An important lesson learned though, write ups for the blog needs to be written when it happens, not later. So with that in mind, I am going to try and do the catch up, racing [View Full Entry]

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Heading south into Zagora and the Sahara Heading out we drove through the back route of Tamnougault, passing the old Kasbah and having a small disagreement with a lad on his BMX who rode past just after I had taken a picture of the kasbah, figured he was in it and demanded (in English impressively) money, not asked, nope, demanded as if it were a right, so I did relent, I gave him a 5 Malawi Kwacha coin I had, it was money and I was trying to give it to him, but he didn't want it, “5” wasn't enough, [View Full Entry]

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A proper Off-road adventure between the Gorges Once warmth had returned and we had made tea and Jonathan had packed up his tent we headed out for what we figured would be a long day. We planned to head up past Tineghir and up the Todra gorge, before hopefully finding the bush track over the mountain pass that leads down to the Dades gorge. What a day it turned out to be..... Such splendour, the walls are vertical and I had to walk up the steepest part of the gorge, otherwise you simply don't experience the scale of it. We were [View Full Entry]

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