On Tuesday, 28th Feb, we fly to Cape Town to collect our 4×4 Land Cruiser which has been kitted out to allow us to drive/camp and explore our way through Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Tanzania and into Kenya.  We’ve only got 8/9 weeks so the dilemma in choosing this route over others has been one of depth vs breadth. Many friends asked us to do a blog, so this is it…. let’s see how it works out! Neither of us have ever “blogged” before and our social media footprint is deliberately very light, so bear with us as we find our feet in the blogosphere!   First question I guess I’d be asking whilst reading the first post is why do this trip? Why Africa?  Back in 2007 Monika and I thought about entering a bike race, the Tour d’Afrique, that sees around fifty competitors ride supported in 100 stages from Cairo to Cape Town.  Imagine riding all that way, through the unparalleled diversity of the continent that by a quirk of evolution gave birth to our species, homo-sapiens (a quirk which all other species probably wish never happened!). Go back around 200,000 years and all our ancestors are from Africa, so we are kind of visiting our homeland.  (Would be good if all people remembered that from time to time!).  Unfortunately the “stuff of ordinary life” like jobs and bills and all the rest of it got in the way of that ambitious plan.  A year or so later we drafted up an alternative and far less strenuous idea of leasing a 4×4 and exploring independently a big chunk of Africa but that idea also gathered dust (until recently). In 2012 we spent some time in northern Kenya close to the border of Uganda supporting our dear friend, Tegla Loroupe (famous for her outstanding marathon career and more recently for her work as a global spokeswoman for women’s rights, education and peace), as she toiled to establish the Tegal Loroupe Peace Academy in Kapenguria to provide education for orphans of the tribal wars. We’d both been to South Africa previously but travelling and working for a time with Tegla and her team, witnessing the challenges, smiles and hopes of the local children and communities gave us a strong desire to get to know Africa better.  In 2001/02 we spent over a year on our bikes touring through SE Asia, Tibet, Nepal and India and the same wanderlust for exploration was firmly planted for Africa.  Life however has a tendency to let the tyranny of the immediate interfere with loftier goals and it was not until having watched the moving documentary “Virunga” http://virungamovie.com that we were inspired to finally take a step towards that goal and spend some time in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda last summer. Whilst there, amongst the verdant jungle, the last of the mountain Gorillas and the communities so deeply effected by conflict yet so full of hope we said that in 2017 we’d pack the bags and see more of Africa below the equator.  So in December 2016 we dusted off the sketched out notes of a 4×4 overland trip from Cape Town to Nairobi and before Eric went off for some heli-skiing in Canada we rushed into some hectic planning. Eight weeks later we are about to set off and hope, through this blog, you get to share in our experience with us.