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On the evening of Sunday 26th January my best mate, Mark, drove me from London to the port of Felixstowe, where I was scheduled to begin my 9 month Trans Africa expedition! I entered the P&O Passenger Terminal and eagerly scanned the terminal for a likely looking crowd, sure enough there was a small group with backpacks and sun hats! Our boat was due to set sail for Zeebrugge, Belgium at 11.00pm, so I spent some time getting to know the group. It felt strange to think I would be traveling with this group for 20 weeks overland from England to Kenya! We boarded the ship and after a brief chat everyone decided to bed down. I soon realized the tone of the trip when I discovered that our 'cabin' was actually the floor of the lounge!

1992 Diary - Africa (Part 1)

Gjcmcclurg
2005-12-23 14:19:09

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On the evening of Sunday 26th January my best mate, Mark, drove me from London to the port of Felixstowe, where I was scheduled to begin my 9 month Trans Africa expedition! I entered the P&O Passenger Terminal and eagerly scanned the terminal for a likely looking crowd, sure enough there was a small group with backpacks and sun hats! Our boat was due to set sail for Zeebrugge, Belgium at 11.00pm, so I spent some time getting to know the group. It felt strange to think I would be traveling with this group for 20 weeks overland from England to Kenya! We boarded the ship and after a brief chat everyone decided to bed down. I soon realized the tone of the trip when I discovered that our 'cabin' was actually the floor of the lounge!

Our motley crew was made up of 6 English guys, 1 English girl, 1 Belgium guy, 2 Canadian girls, a Canadian couple, 1 Aussie guys, 2 Aussie girls, an Aussie couple, 1 Kiwi girl and the two expedition leaders. The group seemed reasonably balanced with a roughly equal number of guys and girls spread in the age group 21 - 35 years of age. On our routing down through Europe to Morocco the first stop was Paris. I was quite surprised to learn that -6 degrees Celsius was not considered extreme weather, so we were camping! This was the first of many disagreements I had with the trip leader.

spmadrid.jpg (11721 bytes)We took the route Paris - Bordeaux - San Sebastian - Madrid - Costa del Sol - Gibraltar. It took us just over a week to get down to the port of Algeciras, where we took the ferry across to Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the Moroccan coast. Over the week I got pretty friendly with Paula, one of the Canadian girls, and we had quite a bit of fun exploring Madrid and staying out all night in Torre del Mar. For some reason Paula and I had a sprinting race in Torre del Mar where my lead was abruptly ended when I did a half flip across the bonnet of a car - quite dramatic!

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