Getting prepared

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The biggest part of this trip is the preparation, making sure that we have all the paper work in place. this includes the Visa for the countries and also all the paper work that is involved in shipping a car out to Africa and being able to drive it through various countries.

this was a real pain to arrange and took the best part of 3 months

The other thing that we needed to do was to turn our Landrover defender from a weekend car that were going to use for camping and mountain biking into a overland vehicle that would be capable of taking us round Africa and would be our home for the next 6-8 months

When we first bought the land rover at the beginning of the year it looked like this (Vanilla Landy photo)

We spent 4 months with the help of friend and family fitting it out for our trip. The engine and running gear got a full overhall as did the stearing and clutch. We added secuurity grills and under body protection for off-roading. The electrics needed re-doing so that we can add a second battery that would run our fridge, and also power all the new lighting and air compressor we would need. A battery management system and engine watchdog was added to make sure that any problems were detected as early as possible.

We also need to fit out the load space so that we could carry all of the supplies, camping equipment and spare parts that we would need, which is a tight squeeze in a Defender 90.

lastly we needed to fit 2 spare wheels, some sand boards, and what will be our home for the trip a roof tent with shower space and also an awning that would shade us on the hot days and when we are having a few cold ones

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