We’re overlanding Ireland, exploring the Emerald Isle! Yes, that’s quite a hop since you last heard from us in Canada! Back in June we shipped Cuthbert back to UK after almost 8 years overlanding the whole of The Americas. Since then we’ve been busy spending quality time with family in England and touring around wonderful Ireland. So it’s about time we did a blog to bring you good people up to date, bringing you all the hot-scoop on our travels over the summer.
You can’t just drive across the Amazon Delta you know… you’d get a bit wet. Cuthbert earned his ‘Water-fording Proficiency’ badge reaching the Lençóis Maranhenses but this time we need to put him on a barge which zig-zags over 38 hours between the mangroves and islands, crossing the Amazon Delta. Compared to the much travelled western side of the continent, this north-eastern route of South America is, even in the dry season, relatively little trodden by the ‘overlanding community’. In the currently prevailing rainy season, even fewer travellers venture up here. Hmmm… maybe there’s a good reason for that!! 
Continue reading
Montevideo from Hamburg by cargo ship… Done! Yes, we’ve spent October 2015 on a freight ship Europe to Montevideo. We’re bringing our camper-truck Cuthbert to Uruguay to start our tour of the Americas. No scrubbing of decks, peeling of potatoes or climbing of rigging – we took one of six fare-paying cabins on the Italian Grimaldi freight ship ‘Grande Nigeria’. And in anticipation of the obvious question… we’re doing it because we can, and because it seemed like a good idea at the time.
All aboard the Grande Nigeria to Montevideo!!
So was it such a good idea… over five weeks at sea with minimal facilities and no internet??!! Well… at least we had plenty of time to write all this bog-blurb stuff 🙂 Read on and see what you think. Continue reading
Here it is at last… our home for the next 4-5 weeks! Grimaldi’s Grande Nigeria is on its way into Hamburg tonight and we’re joining it in the morning for our ‘Grand Voyage’ to Montevideo. Hurrah! Much anticipated…. we had to book it a year ago to get one of the few passenger cabins on the cargo ship to sail with Cuthbert! Continue reading
So after a great few days stop-over with our friends in Dubai on the way back to Europe from Africa, we had a long and frustrating process trying to establish which numpty is to blame for Cuthbert not being loaded onto the scheduled ship. It seems that the Port Elizabeth port staff are probably the lucky winners of this month’s “It’s Friday and I couldn’t give a s*#t” Award. Anyway…Cuthbert is now finally on his way north and the tracker shows he is just passing Dakar, West Africa. Confucius say… “he who waits two more weeks will get nice truck from ship” 🙂
In the meantime, we have used our ‘sitting-around down-time’ wisely, enjoying great food and wine with family and friends. This included some very enjoyable ‘sitting-around down-time’ with Steven and Gilly, who are also in UK on a short break from their round-the-world expedition in their Bocklet truck with their young daughters Alisha and Lucy (see their excellent travel blog at www.overlandingfamily.com ). We have been corresponding with Steve and Gilly for a couple of years by email swapping travel and truck info, so it was great to spend some time with them in person.
Once we get Cuthbert back, we have a bit of euro-touring to do over the summer and some work to do preparing for the next stage of the adventure: Cuthbert Hits South America in September.
Watch this space, and keep all your digits crossed, for Cuthbert’s safe (and uneventful) arrival off the ship from Africa in a couple more weeks!
🙁 Bad news… long delays with Cuthbert’s luxury cruise back to Europe due to extensive incompetence by shipping agents
🙂 Good news… the delay has given us time to put together a small smorgasbord selection of pics from our fab year in Africa. Yehhhhy!
Click here to see the Africa Random Picture Gallery and watch this space for news of Cuthbert’s return to Europe (fingers crossed!!!)
Cuthbert waiting on the dockside, ready to board his ‘luxury cruise’ from Port Elizabeth back to Europe
Finally, after an enjoyable few days in Port Elizabeth catching up with Gavin and Lee and preparing Cuthbert for the voyage, we handed him over to the shipping agent at the port. After a small volume of inevitable bureaucracy, we said our farewell to Cuthbert and were then dropped at the airport for our flight to UK via Johannesburg and Dubai. The end of a terrific adventure 🙂
Thank you Africa, you are a truly amazing place. We’ll be back… one day!
Click here for the full story of South Africa – the Final Leg and click here for our look-back over an amazing year: Africa Highlights