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For Africa that is. That’s right, we made it all the way to South Africa. We have a few more days before we arrive in Cape Town and hopefully ship the trucks to Argentina on the 6th of July, so  we are taking in some of the sights on the Garden Route. It has been a pretty hectic month and a lot has happened. Here are some of the highlights:

D.R.C

After getting deported the first time we tried to enter the DRC, we were more successful the second time with a little bit of help from our friends at the US Embassy in Brazzaville. On our way to Matadi where we hoped to finally obtain our Angola visas, we took some time to camp a little bit at the Zongo Chutes, a waterfall churning out a huge volume of water that eventually empties into the Congo River. It was quite an interesting sight and probably one of the only semi-developed tourist attractions in the entire country.

At the Chutes, we also met some people from the Netherlands who are working for Heineken in Kinshasa. We had some good conversations around the campfire about living in the DRC and life on the road and they were kind enough to let us crash at their guesthouse in Matadi while we waited for our visas. That’s right, we waited for our Angola visas at the Heineken House… enough said. After three days of waiting in Matadi, we finally had our visas in our passports and headed south to the border.

The guys from Heineken pose for a photo at Zongo Chutes, D.R.C.

View of Matadi from the Heineken House

Angola

It was hard to believe that we actually had our visas to Angola… it was almost as hard to believe that we only had five days to drive over 2,000 kilometers on roads that were reported to be pretty rough. The roads in Angola did prove to be pretty bad, but if you are planning a visit there in the next five years, the Chinese will probably have completed most of the wide scale construction projects we witnessed there. Angola was an interesting country. The people were exceptionally friendly, the natural beauty was astounding and given all of the construction going on, it was obvious that they are preparing for an explosion of tourism in the not so distant future. Someone just needs to tell them that if they want people to come to Angola, they need to chill out on the whole visa thing. It was also very interesting driving through a country that up until a few years ago, was in the midst of a brutal civil war. Signs of the war are still everywhere, from wrecked military equipment littering the side of the road, to completely destroyed buildings pockmarked with bullet holes… not to mention the thousands of landmines still hiding in the ground waiting to be found by an unlucky farmer or pedestrian. It was too bad we only had five days to experience Angola, because there is a lot more that all of us would have liked to have seen and experienced there. In the end, we made it through Angola in the time we were given, but had to log in about 60 hours behind the wheel in just under five days to do so.

Much of the Portuguese architecture did not survive the civil war

Military equipment dots the Angolan countryside

Most of the horrible roads were no match for the Thundra

But when the bridge is washed out, there is not much you can do but find another way around

Namibia

After spending four months in the developing countries of West Africa, Namibia was a welcome change. The roads were in great shape, the ATM’s worked, the official language was English and the grocery stores were stocked with a variety of items that did not cost a fortune. A lot of the change is probably due to the fact that the wildlife in Namibia attracts a healthy stream of tourists and the country has invested in infrastructure to keep that stream flowing. We were still behind schedule, but we could not miss the opportunity to see some of the amazing wildlife in Namibia, so a few days after entering the country, we headed out to Etoshia National Park to see what we could see. We saw a lot, but unfortunately missed the opportunity to see any of the big cats, but rest assured, they are there waiting for you.

No Photoshop… the shot of the day!

The Etoshia Pan is the only waterhole for miles so animals are everywhere

This bull elephant felt we were a little too close to his family and charged the Sequoia

Wildebeests share the pan with Zebra

It was amazing how close you could get to the animals in the park

Often we get cheers from people about our courage to take on such a big project with such little resources.  Many tell us that we are crazy, jaws often drop when Steve Bouey tells them that he cashed out his whole retirement fund to put into this dream.  I have put a great deal of my savings on the line and dug a nice little black hole of credit as well.

When the project first started we went back and forth on the idea of starting TWBR as a non-profit so that we could have an easier time raising money. This was based on the idea that our objective was to work with schools when we return educating youth about what is really happening in the world and inspire them to follow after their dreams like we have.  Again, the majority of people are very supportive of us and these goals.  We don’t expect to change the world, but we certainly hope to change as many minds as we can about what is happening out there.  This is why we ultimately decided to not make this whole thing about a cause like everyone is doing these days.  Many races, expeditions, and adventures are about raising money for something, we did not want to make this about that.

Since both of us decided to pour our entire lives and financial security on the line for this project, it seemed reasonable to at least have the option at the end of this of turning a profit and maybe actually getting paid for the risks we have taken.  Still there are those few out there that take offense to this, as though we are selfish people.  Perhaps someday some of these angry people out there can realize that just because someone is trying to make money, doesn’t mean they cannot also be helping someone.  The most recent and anonymous comment on the blog writes as such:

“Let’s see…..there are hundreds of thousands of children starving, abused, homeless, uneducated, orphaned and generally unhappy every day. 30,000 USD would change the lives of an entire village. I could help them, or help this group put more gas in their SUVs drive around the world. Hmmmmmmmm……….”

This fine anonymous reader of the blog is from Milton, Queensland in Australia based on the IP address.  My question to him/her and anyone who feels the same way is, “What did we ever do to you?”  We are a couple of guys that believe just throwing money at poor, less fortunate people does not solve problems.  As we state in our mission statement and all the info on the site explaining what we are doing- Only 20% of Americans hold valid passports and an even smaller amount of them actually using them in a given year (some years less than 5% of Americans leave the country).  The statistics are very similar in most developed countries.  Although the statistics may be a little better in other countries, not many people who donate money to the Red Cross or the countless other organizations out there trying to help people have even been to the countries where the money is going.  From what we have seen, a majority of this money is misused or never even makes it to the people it was meant to help.

Man on his Soapbox - Courtesy of Wikipedia

There are still many upstanding organizations out there helping people, but saying that giving money to a village is more important than educating youth is crazy in my opinion.  If we can fill the world with more young people that are truly aware of world issues, then we will more quickly solve problems like starvation, illiteracy, corruption, disease, pollution and more.  The majority of people I have met on this journey, American or not, do not know where half of the countries in our route lie on a map.   Before we all fill ourselves with guilt because we are privileged or stand on our soapboxes about sending money abroad, remember that education and understanding are our most important tools to creating real change in the world.  Between Europe, the USA, and the other developed countries pouring billions of dollars each year into foreign aid and influencing countless decisions of other countries governments, it should be our duty as citizens of these countries to make sure that those dollars are spent responsibly and the decisions are made well.  Without ever even getting near these places, who are any of us to say where the money is best spent or whether the decisions being made are responsible?

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PS. Anonymous, if you are looking for a village that has a really great program helping locals, The ETC in KhaoLak, Thailand is a place I would recommend.  Our friend Reid Ridgeway runs the program and it is a place that makes an unbelievable difference in the lives of Thai people and helps to preserve their environment at the same time.  Also, if you were interested we also filmed with AUSAid in Indonesia, and your Australian dollars are being well spent there building schools.

Planning our route through Africa has been quite an ordeal. We are pretty much always on the move so it is hard to keep tabs on what is going on in Africa, whether or not to pay any attention to what is going on in Africa and what sort of things we can expect to encounter and strive to avoid. The research - from border crossings to which roads are not mined to how much of a pain visas are… all of the information needed to successfully navigate our way south with as little problem as possible is a huge task. Unfortunately, we are not in a position to do as much research as we would like given our location and access to reliable internet, but luckily, we have some amazing people helping us out back home. I would like to send out a huge thank you specifically to Doug Tucker for all of his help in researching Africa. Doug not only researched the necessary things to help us better plan our route and to help us stay safe, but he also provided a lot of information about all the the fun and interesting things to see along the way. Based on the amount of information Doug compiled for us, I imagine he spent quite a few hours scouring the internet and other sources for things that can help us out. These are hours that we did not have, so thanks Doug for helping to give us a clearer picture of over-landing through Africa!

The people who come to our website, the people who we meet on the street and those who send us e-mails with words of encouragement are a all a big part of the success of our expedition. From time to time we also get notified that someone has contributed financially to the expedition and to those who have, we are truly thankful. Most recently, we received support form Ken Gerlack and Bonnie Bouey (thanks mom!). Thank you both for your generous support of The World by Road… you have helped to ease the pain we have felt at the European pumps!

We are all safe so do not be alarmed by the title of the blog. However, we are in some need of assistance. When Little Pepe got broken into in Kazakhstan, the punk thief stole my entire business card folder. I know business cards are a hot ticket item these days, but seriously. I have a few left that were floating around the car, but essentially, all of the business cards and e-mails of people we have been into contact with in one form or another since the planning phases of the expedition were lost and are probably now lining the bottom of a dumpster somewhere in Almaty.

So, if you are reading this blog and are a sponsor, a traveler, a one-time passenger, an interesting restaurant owner or just someone who we met along the way and exchanged contact information with, I would appreciate it if you could e-mail either Steve or myself so we can start to compile our contact database again. If we have been in e-mail contact since we met, etc. it will should be in our Outlook, so don’t worry, but if not, we would truly appreciate hearing from you.