My first little oasis in Egypt

This morning, the Talat (the owner) served us breakfast, some omellete, cheese, bread and jams. He sat with us and also offered us some fresh dates. He said he is addicted to them. He actually runs Desert tours, so check out his website, http://www.edengardentours.com

As we left the campsite, Delilah came off her bike in the deep sand roads, getting her foot stuck under the pannier, but a helpful local quickly picked the bike up for her, even before Lindsay could get off this bike. She hurt her ankle, even with boots quite badly, she can still walk and ride, but hopefully it will get better soon.

Eden Camp

We headed to the next “oasis”, Farafra on the Western Desert Road and again, some of the hottest days I have ever experienced. 44 degress celcius of just plain sun, no shade, no vegetation, just desert. When we do decide to stop a little, even little birds would come and sit in the shadow of our bikes just to get some shade.

Western Desert Road

I think the biggest problem we had in the desert was our water getting warm so quick, even completely frozen bottle water, Mr Talat gave us, was warm in no time. Lukewarm water is not nice, but better than nothing in the desert.

We arrived in Farafra and ended up staying in the Badawiya hotel … at last, what I imagined in my mind what an oasis should be in the desert … a nice swimming pool ! The place was only 10 Euro per person per night … not bad. For lunch, the local tourism polise officer took us to a small little restaurant in town which prepared a meal for us … I have to say, I was quite sceptic, but Lindsay loved it and ate it all 🙂

The pool at Badawiya Hotel

The little restaurant in Farafra

Oh yeah, a few days ago, at Alexandria, we lost contact with Peter and Matt in the Land Rover, so we don’t know how to contact them as stupidly enough, we didn’t even get a contact number from him. We knew that Peters’ wife flew into Alexandria to meet up with them, so we were hoping to catch up with them on the road …

London to Cape Town : Day 1

Was a bit of a rush this morning as I almost overslept, that is the 2 hours that I did sleep. Packed up this morning and headed off around 5am … weird photo I know 🙂

I hate the ride the Folkestone and this morning it was cold and foggy … at times I could barely see a thing. Made it just in time for the train and in no time we were in Calais.

Much better than to UK, or so I thought, a few miles out of Calais, exactly the same. Cold …. and lots of fog.

Stopped off at a petrol station for something to drink and a bus load of people arrived and looks like it was the first time they have seen a bike before, everyone stared at me and smiled. One french guy was really concerned that my shocks will give in .. not sure why he was so obsessed about it .. 🙂

As soon as I left, the sky opened and was sunshine all day around 21 degrees, lovely day, just a shame I was so tired !

Headed mostly motorway which is damn expensive by the way and now sleeping in Strasbourg. I plan to leave tomorrow morning early, heading to Italy.

The battery on the laptop is running low, so I better make this post quick ….

Will do a better post when the laptop is charged … going to bed now !

Visemar Line Ferry from Italy to Egypt

This post is more a mental note to self …. apparently it is very difficult to find the actual Visemar Line ferry in the mass of docks around Venice, so knowing it has to dock there on a Thursday (it departs Venice every Thursday), I went to the following site which tracks its real-time position and now I know where it docks which should be easy to find now, wallah !

Also made some slight changes to the website, above right corner, you can now see the Twitter and Youtube icons, to follow me if you wish – laters !

Update: London to Cape Town by Motorcycle

Here’s the latest … first of all another “self-designed” job on the left hand side … ready to tackle Africa, hopefully without being chased down by a lioness !

Secondly, we have yet another new route, but at least some fixed dates now. We are leaving for Egypt on the 23rd of September using the new Visemar Line ferry service from Venice in Italy to Alexandria, Egypt. It takes 4 days arriving on the 27th of September. It looks awesome and I have read of people who have used it before without any problems.

This means, with me skipping the bulk of Europe, I will leave London around the 21st of September to arrive in Venice, Italy on the 23rd in time for departure. So the new list of countries for me at least will be: UK, France, Italy, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, (maybe Rwanda), Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia and then South Africa.

I plan to hopefully attend a wedding on the 11th of December in Hermanus, South Africa and then fly straight back to the UK to be back at work on the 13th of December … hope it all works out .. will have to wait and see !

My main source of updates for the trip will be via txt messages to twitter, so follow me on twitter for up to the minute updates while in Africa 😉

new route …

We decided to change the route slightly, not for Africa, but mainly Europe. As we have done France extensively in the past, we decided to do something else. Instead of the normal France, Italy route, we are going from Calais, then Belgium, Germany, Austria and down into  Italy !

This way we see a bit more of Europe and places we have never been 🙂

More info here

route has been changed ..

I have just updated the proposed route to include Uganda and Rwanda. I am not sure about Mozambique, but we will discuss whether to include that in our trip as well. Visas seems quite straight forward and I think that might be the least of our worries, we (as South Africans) only need visas for 4 of the African countries proir to arrival.

More info about the route in the Route section ..

More info about the visas in the Visa section ..

Proposed route has been added

I have added the proposed route page, any comments, tips, hints or suggestions will be great.