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I quit my job, bought an army truck, and spent 19 months circumnavigating Africa

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Re: I quit my job, bought an army truck, and spent 19 months circumnavigating Africa

#81

Post by ctrl-j »

jdavis703 wrote: post #52
kochthesecond wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to add anecdotal evidence, I have travelled a lot in Spain and never felt unsafe nor been robbed.

Same I've been to Philly and Barcelona, and live in Oakland, CA. Never felt like I was about to be robbed. I guess at the risk of being downvoted for victim blaming, "don't be stupid." It wouldn't surprise me if people let their guard down when they felt they were in a "safe" area.

> I've been to Philly and Barcelona, and live in Oakland, CA. Never felt like I was about to be robbed.

Maybe you don't know what the feeling is like? I mean, how long have you lived in Oakland? If you grew up in the city with the 3rd highest crime rate in the US, maybe your barometer isn't calibrated the best?

Re: I quit my job, bought an army truck, and spent 19 months circumnavigating Africa

#82

Post by donretag »

DanBC wrote: post #65
donretag wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once had a mugger in a chokehold in Las Ramblas after he tried to get my friend's wallet.

A remarkably stupid thing to do. The wallet is disposable, you aren't.

I was not worried about the mugger himself, but of any possible friends nearby. I could have floored him easily (martial arts), but I did not want to start a rumble.

Re: I quit my job, bought an army truck, and spent 19 months circumnavigating Africa

#83

Post by estefan »

donquichotte wrote: post #71
estefan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. It's something I've been thinking about doing :-) Edit: Can those lighter bikes take panniers? I guess you're not going a long way with a rucksack?

Yes they can. I used hard cases, for future trips I will change to soft luggage though because everything will be ground to dust in hard panniers if you don't pack tightly and ride hard off-road for days. Walter Colebatch designed the "Magadan" soft panniers after riding the Baikal-Amur Mainline, I personally haven't used them yet but will try them for the next trip. If you're into this kind of stuff, check advrider.…

Sweet, thanks for the tips.

Re: I quit my job, bought an army truck, and spent 19 months circumnavigating Africa

#84

Post by M_Grey »

colmvp wrote: post #31
MrDosu wrote: post #18

This is reminds of a story of friends of mine from South Africa. They took the kids out of school to travel all the way up Africa and into Europ and back down for a year. They got robbed three times. Two times in France and once in Spain...

Ha! I've travelled to remote parts of South America, Africa, Asia, and the only times I ever experienced getting robbed or deeply fearing for my safety was in Barcelona and Philly.

Philly is one of those fun places where you can go from "Look at this lovely campus!" to "Oh god... we... we came to the wrong part of town. See how everyone is looking at us like we're crazy to be here? What... we were just on campus!!!" in a couple of blocks.

Re: I quit my job, bought an army truck, and spent 19 months circumnavigating Africa

#85

Post by M_Grey »

jnsaff2 wrote: post #80
sumang wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Barcelona really? I am from Barcelona but never thought people are scared to be in Barcelona. I heard people get robbed in Las Ramblas years back but now its quite safe. You will never get mugged in Barcelona according to my experience.

Years ago I found a foreign hand in my pocket at metro turnstiles in Barcelona, elaborate scheme with 3 people, one covering on the back, one on my right distracting me and one on my left reaching into my pocket. Something tripped my alarm and I ripped the hand out of my pocket before I lost anything, that dude was gone in a flash, the other two urged me to go through the gates as I would lose my ticket. Then I remem…

No one wants to take the chance that they're pissing off someone connected.

Re: I quit my job, bought an army truck, and spent 19 months circumnavigating Africa

#86

Post by gambiting »

barking wrote: post #36

Is this the 21st century equivalent of big game hunting? Driving around africa in a truck for 19 months isn't exactly environmentally friendly. How many miles to the gallon do those things do?

I've said this before, but I'll say it again - I'm 99% certain that my local supermarket stocking fresh cherries from Chille every day(I'm in UK) damages the environment more than someone driving a truck in africa. It almost makes me angry that someone mentions that this sort of adventure shouldn't be done because of environmental reasons.

Re: I quit my job, bought an army truck, and spent 19 months circumnavigating Africa

#87

Post by DanBC »

jonstewart wrote: post #70

There have been so many of these self-congratulatory I-quit-my-job-to-travel-the-world posts that the New Yorker published a satirical piece on it: http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/why-i-quit-my-jo... . TFA doesn't even have any geek discussion of build details, design trade-offs, problems encountered on the road and how they were solved, etc.

> problems encountered on the road and how they were solved, etc.

The solutions seem to be "someone else fixed it".

>> Our truck weighed over 10 tonnes fully laden, and whilst driving through some marshland just before we got to Senegal we broke through the hard crust into boggy clay below.

>> We were very lucky to be just ahead of the Amsterdam Dakar Rally, and they helped pull us out. It took about 4 hours of digging, and 3 trucks to get us out - 2 pulling forwards, 1 sideways to make sure we didn't topple over!

[...]

>> We ran out of diesel, and all the crap that had been floating on top clogged up the entire system.

>> For 3 days we were stuck in the middle of nowhere, unable to fix it ourselves. We were travelling in convoy with another couple and they were able to drive to a small village a few hours away where they found someone who knew a guy in Congo who could help us! So he took our friends to a spot where he could illegally cross the border and smuggle his mechanic friend across.

[...]

>> Turns out the dry river beds weren't so dry after all, and the weight of this truck made it sink right through to the mud below.

>> It took 2 days and the help of a nearby village to dig us out.

I'm kind of surprised there isn't a buddy comedy movie about something similar. (I guess Into the Wild, although very much not a comedy, is similar.)

Re: I quit my job, bought an army truck, and spent 19 months circumnavigating Africa

#88

Post by econner »

nathan_f77 wrote: post #55

This looks like a nice experience, but I'm realizing that I don't want to do anything like this. I thought I did, but I guess not. That includes driving an RV around America or New Zealand, hiking the Appalachian trail, or any other kind of journey where you travel from A to B and see a few things along the way. I do want to visit Africa, but all of this driving and getting stuck doesn't really appeal to me. I do wan…

Go help NGOs internationally.

Re: I quit my job, bought an army truck, and spent 19 months circumnavigating Africa

#89

Post by clydethefrog »

donretag wrote: post #74

You want crazy? Try going around Africa via public transportation. I would not recommend it. ;) No matter what kind of bus ticket you get promising a luxury bus, it will be anything but that. Try getting a small group together and do like the author did. I loved Africa.

I loved reading the story about "the lunatic express", the Nairobi-Mombasa train.

https://www.1843magazine.com/features/the-lunatic-express

Re: I quit my job, bought an army truck, and spent 19 months circumnavigating Africa

#90

Post by gambiting »

draker wrote: post #73
gambiting wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad had a custom-made LR and two people could very comfortably live out of it for any length of time. It even had a water tank with a heated shower head if you were feeling lavish. The tent was on the roof so it should have been safe from most animals: http://imgur.com/a/tUrAX

Is that a Camel Trophy Discovery?

I wish, but no - it was a replica made by a specialist LR garage in Poland. My dad bought it for an expedition to Kazakhstan in 2014, but unfortunately, cancer had other plans. I've inherited the LR but sold it shortly after because I had no use for it.
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