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Cairo, Egypt
Wednesday, July 9, 2008

We have joked on and off throughout this arduous journey how we need a vacation to unwind and relax. And well, we're about to get what we wished for: a summer holiday in France!

I can't believe we made it, Cape to Cairo, accident-free and illness-free! Well, that is if you don't count the Tanzanian speeding ticket, several Foxy mishaps, and the hundreds of flea bites.

This time tomorrow we will be sitting on a plane, taking off from Cairo International airport, bound for Milan where we will then pick up our hire car and drive the 800+kms to the Thornington chalet at the foothills of the Pyrenees in southern France.

Once there, we will spend one week with the intention of doing absolutely nothing except sit on the balcony sipping chilled Blanquette de Limoux and nibbling delectable cheeses and chocolate pastries, visit local family friends in Courtauly village, and if we can summon the energy, go on the occasional hike in the mountains.

As much as I'm looking forward to all of that, I am going to miss what has become 'normal life' on the road.

More specifically, I'm going to miss swapping tips and information with other (overland) travelers. The whole journey has been like one big choose-your-own-adventure where you have to solve certain puzzles, revealed to you by the people you meet and the places you visit, before moving on to the next stage. Being so accustomed now to constantly be on the look out for a place, person, object, street, or building, I will miss that feeling of being on a quest.

I will also miss the daily routine of getting up with the sun, setting a route plan, driving it, and then laying our heads down in a new town for another night's sleep, listening to the neighbourhood dogs perform their nightly arias.

Every day has been so different, so colourful, and so emotionally intense in all possible forms.

Matt said that he hadn't realized how hard the last leg of the trip, north of Kenya, was going to be. Perhaps doing it from North to South would have been easier, doing the 'hard bit' first. Still, after a lot of thought and consideration, we agree that the route we chose within the given time frame, the sights we saw and those we had to painfully decide to forego, we wouldn't have changed anything if we had to do it again.

The past few days we have been wondering what kind of re-culture shock we will experience when we get to Europe and North America.

Will we go absolutely crazy at seeing all the flashy fast food outlets with their drive-thru windows, the manicured lawns and white picket fences, the obedient pedestrians stopping at every red light, the absence of car horns, rooster crows, and donkey brays?

Will we relish the fact that we can walk down the street at any time of day and blend in with the crowd?

Will we miss getting that 'special attention', both the good and bad kind, where one minute we are pushed to the front of the queue at the customs counter because we are foreigners, and the next minute we are made to pay outrageous baksheesh to taxi drivers because we are foreigners?

I don't know, but we're about to find out.



Start: Hotel Longchamps, Cairo, EGYPT.
End: Hotel Longchamps, Cairo, EGYPT.
Distance Traveled: 0km
Road Conditions: -
Temperature: sticky humid

Comments

THE END (but not really)
Matt here. Three months to the day after we set out from Cape Town. One thing we've both loved is the comments from all of you reading the blog and I'm sure that some of you will miss Bonnie's regular updates on our life on the road. I've also been a loyal reader and most of our Internet cafe sessions have finished when Bonnie calls to me, 'OK, finished, read my latest entries then let's go get something to eat/drink/fix FOXY with.' So I'll also feel a bit lost without regular online updates about the latest mechanical troubles or temperature updates. So I thought I'd better suggest a bit of further reading for those who still want more. A few books about Africa that we have mentioned in the blog are well worth reading. For a travel book about Cairo to Cape I'd definitely read 'Dark Star Safari' by Paul Theroux and for anyone wanting a guidebook for driving Cape To Cairo then our copy of 'Cape to Cairo' by Mike Copeland displays its usefulness to us by the grubbiness and raggedness of it's much-thumbed pages. To get an idea of why things are as they are for most Africans in Africa then two books stand out, 'The Trouble with Africa' and 'The Shackled Continent'. Hard-hitting and not trying to be politically correct they are both thought-provoking, let us know what you think if you do read them.
Also there are many other blogs about the surprising number of people doing the same journey, you can check out http://www.africa-overland.net/Africa and see how other people are finding the places we liked or disliked.
Finally, you could just try it yourself, please feel free to email us for tips, we're still undecided as to whether we'd recommend a Land Rover but for other issues we've got some firm opinions!
Our final blog project when in France is to copy out all our trip data, costs and GPS points into a final blog entry so you can see how it's quite possible to do this trip in three months with a month added for buying the car and preparing it. Don't let lack of mechanical skills/off-road driving skills/fear of scorpions in the shower etc put you off, we were just the same three months ago. You learn some of the technical stuff along the way, make sure you ask lots of questions from whoever prepares your car and visit the workshop often. Take a good set of spares with you and at least on an older Land Rover most of the engine is fairly simple and almost any mechanic can make a decent job of fixing it. The best advice was given to us by Fernand, a Spanish tour guide and driver, now in his 50s or 60s who has done the trip more times than we probably will, 'Just go slowly, that's the best guarantee of finishing the trip' Very true. Thanks to FOXY (our tortoise) and Bonnie (who is sometimes like a hare) who made it possible, enjoyable, bearable and amazing! Love you both xx

PS Alaska to Argentina 2010? Who knows? I think I'll start looking for maps. From bonthorn, on Jul 9, 2008 at 03:06PM

Pictures & Video

 
our penultimate dinner in Africa, Korean!
our penultimate dinner in Africa, Korean!
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