Subject: 1996 "It Will Be So Awful, It Will Be Wonderful" Tour -- Continued --
In the realm of the unknown, Africa is the absolute. -- Victor Hugo
The adventure begins when it becomes uncomfortable. Why leave home if what you want to find is the same as you have at home? recently seen in the Travel-L listserv (discussion group) on Internet
The Spousal Unit and I hereby announce a journey, an expedition of ambitious scale that will placate our restless daydreams of foreign places, strange and unknown. It will be a year of indulging personal curiosity, cultivating patience and tolerance, and outwitting petty thieves and uncooperative bureaucrats to explore ancient and exotic cultures, to gamble our health against the nastiest of bugs, and to file income tax extensions from obscure American consulates.
Yes, once again we shall be sallying forth in search of adventure on a shoe string, testing our survival skills under the guise of budget backpacking. Using local facilities and transport should ensure that the experience will be up close and personal. It will also stretch our funds as far as possible although we do not expect to break our worldwide record for cheap accommodations (11 cents per bed). And I shall document every glorious day of this adventure using a solar-powered laptop computer. Let us hope it does not fall apart before we discover the true meaning of my favorite English word: grotty.
Disclaimer: This endeavor has been jointly conceived and developed by the Spousal Unit and myself. However, all personal opinions, legitimate or ridiculous, and any value judgment, insightful or misguided, are those of the author only. The Unit is committed to most of this itinerary but it is worth noting that any, some, or all aspects of the route and timetable described below are subject to change depending on many, many circumstances, not the least of which is matrimonial harmony. It should be mentioned that it was she, not I, who coined the working title for this trip.
2/1/96: Beset by the sleepless nights and distracted days associated with the
sacrifice of everything familiar and comfortable for complete uncertainty and
inevitable discomfort, the Unit and I depart the USA for the United Kingdom,
exhilarated and terrified by the one way tickets in our secret money belts.
Spend two weeks in the British Museum or any place warm which presumably will
not include our $20/night beds in London youth hostels.
2/13/96: Commence a five month overland truck trip to Nairobi in east Africa
with twenty, foolhardy, adventurous companions, most likely young Europeans.
The vehicle is a specially-built truck that looks more like a bus except that
you can ride inside or on the roof. Accommodations are camping, approximately
half in campgrounds (or what passes for a campground in Africa) and half in the
wild (which, in Africa, will probably be a pretty apt description).
The distance covered each day varies between 50 and 500 kilometers depending on
climatic, road, and political conditions. The total route covers approximately
20,000 kilometers, a bit under 10,000 miles. A couple days per week are
reserved for side trips or layovers when an unexpected hospitality, a local
festival, the discovery of an idyllic, white sandy beach, the breakdown of the
stupid truck or an impending passenger mutiny warrants it. Of course the truck
always stops for that most aggravating of travel bum nemeses, spontaneous
diarrhea, which, with a group of twenty, should be a never-ending problem.
The nature of the trip is very participative. The company provides an
all-terrain truck, kitchen and camping gear, and a crew of two driver/leaders.
If the truck gets stuck in the sand or mud, everyone must pitch in to dig it
out. Setting up tents, shooing away critters, collecting firewood, and fending
off the natives are group responsibilities. Meals are prepared from truck
staples and whatever the day's designated cooking crew can find in the local
market. The Unit and I expect to import the maximum allowable quantity of
duty-free Skippy's Extra Crunchy through English customs for consumption during
the trip.
Regarding hazards, I can only re-iterate what our tour operator says: Our
trips are designed to be Adventure Journeys, taking people off the beaten
track. Many areas we visit do not have the infrastructure required by the
package tourist. Adventure travel does involve a certain amount of risk. We
will be crossing areas of the world that do not adhere to western safety
standards and may have inherent political or economic instability. As all
travelers know, situations can occur while traveling that may involve personal
risk, we therefore urge you not to book an overland trip unless you are prepared
to accept these risks. Long experience has shown us that these trips are
unsuitable for the vast majority of people outside the 18 to 45 age bracket.
week 1: Dash through Belgium, France, and Spain, picking up African visas and
colds from sleeping outdoors in the winter.
weeks 2 - 4: Cross the Straits of Gibraltar and zigzag down the west coast of
Morocco visiting ancient, walled cites such as Fes and Marrakech. Explore
mountains and desert in search of Arabic tribespeople while settling into life
on the road. The original route went through Algeria to Timbuktu but since
local dissidents are trying to bring down the Algerian government by disrupting
the economic benefits of tourism, Algeria was dropped from the itinerary.
weeks 5 - 6: Continue south along the desert coastline on the western edge of
the Sahara Desert in Mauritania. Visit our first towns with really
unpronounceable names: Nouadhibbou and Nouakchott.
weeks 7 - 8: Head inland from the coast via sand and gravel roads into Mali,
visiting the well-known cities of Bamako, Mopti, and Djenne. All hands lend
their hands using shovels and metal sand mats to keep the truck moving. Having
extensive experience moving sand from my military life, I expect to prove my
worth to the group. Trek into the hinterlands to visit semi-nomadic tribes such
as the Dogon, whose remote civilization has withstood the impact of the Western
world since 500 BC.
weeks 9 - 10: Enter the equatorial region of Africa along the Atlantic seaboard
via Ivory Coast, another of many former French colonies. Continue east through
Ghana, Togo, and Benin, eventually arriving in Kano, Nigeria for a rest stop.
weeks 11 - 13: Continue east through the grasslands of Nigeria visiting game
reserves, eventually transiting mountainous villages in northern Cameroon,
finally dipping into the jungles of Central African Republic.
weeks 14 - 18: Plunge into the heart of Zaire's northern rain forest where,
according to our travel literature, the tree hyenas scream incessantly and
every riverbank puddle teams with multi-colored butterflies. The road becomes a
mere track; the canopy of trees encloses (the truck) for days on end; bridges
are no more than tree trunks; ferries are flat bottom boats with loose planks
for deck. In short it's as remote as remote can be.
This is equatorial Africa and there is no reliable dry season. At any time the
truck may encounter a tropical downpour that makes the tracks as slippery as a
skating rink. Muddy roads are dotted with enormous pot holes - some deep
enough to completely hide a large truck! (Extricating the truck from the muck
will again be the responsibility of all passengers.)
Because the vegetation is so thick, finding a site for camping can be
difficult. Sometimes it will be in the comparative luxury of a mission, or
we'll ask the head man of a village if we can camp there. Other times it may be
in an abandoned homestead, a roadside quarry, or even in the middle of the
road!"
This trucking company really knows how to whet one's appetite. In order not to
offend the squeamish, I have omitted descriptions of the insect life likely to
be encountered. Suffice it to say that every single country on the route offers
drug-resistant, malaria-carrying mosquitoes. And while I am on the subject of
health, let me list the topics from the medical problems section of our travel
literature: prickly heat, heat stroke, fungal infections, tropical ulcers,
altitude sickness, motion sickness, giardia, dysentery, hepatitis, typhoid,
worms, tetanus, rabies, meningococcal meningitus, tuberculosis, STDs, sleeping
sickness, yellow fever, and bilharzia. The Unit is responsible for medical
diagnoses; my area of expertise is parasite identification. For example, how
many of you can distinguish between fleas, lice, ticks, bedbugs, and jiggers?
Other excitements may include an overnight stay in a Pygmy village with genuine
hunter-gatherers or a possible African Queen style river excursion where the
ferry's galley staff prepares the evening meal by smoking fish or monkey over
the boat's funnels. Eventually we will leave the jungle and pass through the
grassy highlands in northeastern Zaire where "dairy cattle graze in front of
manor houses, and sometimes strawberries and fresh cheese are for sale on the
side of the road ... against a backdrop of lakes, waterfalls, and snow-capped
volcanoes." This we will have to see to believe.
week 19: Cross Uganda (presuming the current genocidal habits of the
machete-wielding natives in Burundi and Rwanda make those countries unfeasible)
and trek into the habitat of the rare and endangered mountain gorillas.
week 20 (around July 1): Emerge onto the plains of east Africa to visit the
Serengeti and observe the annual migration of many thousands of zebra and
wildebeest and their numerous predators. Also descend into the Ngorongoro
Crater in Tanzania with its famous high density wildlife, dip into the Rift
Valley to check out the zillions of pink flamingos at Lake Manyara, and finally
roll into Kenya by way of several Masai villages. Final blow-out meal at the
Carnivore Restaurant in Nairobi to bid farewell to the surviving traveling
companions, the sight of some we may no longer be able to stand, the departure
of others may bring tears to our eyes.
Copyright (c) 1995 Jet City JimBo
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