It's funny how the enthusiasm with which i set up this blog all seemed to be based around the excitement of setting off on that Epic road trip and how once things went wrong all of my enthusiasm evaporated! I have to admit that im disappointed in myself for not being more resilient especially considering that when things went wrong they didn't really go all that wrong. I guess it's all about expectations and when things didn't go as expected I found it hard to maintain that enthusiasm for writing.   

The first thing I'm going to do is actually explain what went wrong.

Leaving Etosha everything was on track, we had a tough mileage target but we were doing well. We were right on time. I'd been driving for 3 hours or so and we were very low on gas. How low is hard to say because the fuel gauge in the van doesn't work properly but after pushing on for about 200 k's after the gauge said empty I was getting a bit anxious. At our planned fuel stop they were out of gas so we had nno choice but to push on with no idea how much gas we had! I guess that's Africa for you! Eventually we made it Grootfontein a tiny little town on the Namibia Angola border, we gassed up and took off again. his time with Ezan driving and me taking a little nap. 

We flung open the engine bay and were blasted by a cloud of hot stinky smoke and steam. I didn't want to freak out just yet but it looked bad. I was still hoping that we'd thrown a fan belt, the engine had overheated and burst a hose causing all the steam.I tried to stick my head in to see what was what but it was just way to hot and smokey in there to see anything. We waited for everything to cool down a bit and tried to reassure each other that it was ok, it wasn't. Staring at the engine it was obvious that this was fairly catastrophic, everything was covered in oil and the distributor seemed to be missing. I'd never seen anything like it and was totally confused.  The distributor had completely disappeared and there were strange very hot pieces of metal littered about.  I've been working on cars with my dad since I was a little  kid but this was a new one. It really took me a while to figure out what it was. Ezan and I went searching down the road for  the missing parts and what we found blew my mind. About 50 yards behind the van laying in the middle of the road and sizzling hot was a piston!
Somehow a Piston had blown straight through the side of the engine. The forces needed to make something like this happen are massive. A cars engine block is made out of cast Iron so for something to explode through the side its gotta be powerful. Im still confused as to how the mechanics of this happened. The bent a twisted shape of the Piston suggests it broke from the crank shaft and went smashing around inside the cylinder before bursting through the side of the engine.
If you look at the above picture you'll see the engine laying behind the van, look at the bottom left and you'll see a dirty great hole! That's where the piston came through, that hole is about the size of soft ball or just bigger than a cricket ball. I could easily fit my entire fist in. 
It really took a while for this to sink in but when it did it hit hard. At this stage we didnt know exactly what it meant, we knew it meant a new engine but how much that was going to cost and how long it would take we had no idea. We just knew our original plans were out of the Window. Matt and Ezan had far more to worry about than me. Matt because he was on a seriously tight schedule and needed to catch a flight back to the states. Ezan because he owns the van and as much as I wish I did, I just didnt have the money to help him out.

In a situation like this its easy to get very emotional, it's very hard not too but it's the worst thing you can do. Your thousands of kilometers from home in a very isolated part of Africa you have very little idea how safe or dangerous the place really is. We all read the horror stories in the media and it's easy to let your mind run away with you. For us though we just knew we had to chill out. I can only speak for myself but at this point my mind was running through hundreds of different scenarios. What could and was likely to happen? I figured that at worst we'd be camped out for a few days by the side of the road and that really wasnt such a bad option. We had plenty of food water and shelter, the basics and essentials were covered. We were really ok. All that lay ahead of us was a bit of stress but we werent in any kind of danger. I know that may sound obvious but it's actually very reassuring to consciously think to yourself.
From here we need to get the van into the nearest capable town and figure out how to get a new Engine. We put together a help sign and began trying to flag down cars. Lucky for us the road we were on is frequently traveled and after a few cars just passed us by one finally pulled over.
What happened next was really bizarre. I jogged over to the drivers door and as the window rolled down and the driver spoke i couldn't believe what I was hearing. The unmistakeable easy going 'Hey how's it going?' of a Canadian! Far from any sizable town in the very far reaches of northern Namibia the first car to pull over is being driven by a Canadian!
I couldnt help but laugh. This guys name was Peter and he was from a little town in Southern Ontario called Woodstock. I cant imagine what the odds of that one are. I lived with my family in Woodstock as a small kid and remember it well. 
Peter was a brilliant guy who did his very best to help us, He made phone calls to try and get us a tow and even asked a coupe of his buddies if they could help. Non could be Peter tried his best. Peter is an agricultural consultant to the Namibian government and has been living up there for a number of years. It was really great to meet him and he really made me proud to have lived in Canada. Peter was in that moment everything that is great about all the stereo types you hear about Canadians. He was totally unflustered, immensely kind and went a long way out of his way to help us.
In the end he couldn't really do allot for us but he tried his very best!
Eventually we did get a tow from a passing Dutch couple in a brand new 4x4. It was a long way to the next down and the trip would be far from without incident.

I think that's enough of the story for now. The excitement and drama is far from over and i'll pick up the rest of the story soon!

Cheers
Terry

Firstly I need to apologise for not updating this blog sooner.  The reason for this is that not long after the last post the Van broke down and stayed that way for weeks. That pretty much destroyed my enthusiasm for a while.

But never fear I’m back at it and can’t wait to tell the story of what happened in detail.

Before we even left the fish river we noticed that the van had lost power, she just wasn’t pulling right and our top speed was greatly reduced. We stopped in a little town called Keetmanshoop in Southern Namibia to see what the problem was. The mechanic quickly figured out that the air filter cover had broken and the engine was sucking in loads of sand, dust and small rocks through the carburettor. This was bad news, it meant that for the last few days all kinds of nasty stuff had been pulled into the engine. In hindsight what we should have done was drop the sump, drain all of the old oil away and completely flush the engine before we moved off again. The thing is non of us are mechanics and didn’t realise just how bad this little problem was to become. It was a piece of ignorance that was going to cost us dearly later on.

The work the mechanic did seemed to improve the engine performance somewhat but not fully. We pressed onto to Windhoek hoping it might sort itself out. Very Naïve and very stupid.

When we got to Windhoek we knew we couldn’t let it lay any longer, we had thousands of kilometres still to cover and we’d have been very stupid to carry on without getting it sorted.

You’d think this would be easy, you take the car to a mechanic they tell you whats wrong and how much it’ll cost, you agree, they sort it out and off you go.
Not in Windhoek, it just doesn’t work that way. I have to say that the people we met in Windhoek were the worst people I have ever had to deal with. They were unfriendly, unhelpful and would tell you bare faced lies just to make a quick buck. Outside the city it was a very different story, people were friendly, enthusiastic to meet you and loads of fun!

I’ve never really felt discriminated against but in Windhoek I did. We were 3 young dudes in an old hippy van and to the conservative people of Windhoek, we weren’t worth the time of day. There were a few exceptions, the people who run the Cardboard Box backpackers are awesome, the DJ’s at Radio Wave and a couple of ladies who ran a little take away were incredibly kind. Everyone else we dealt with in Windhoek can rot for all I care.

We must have stopped at half a dozen mechanics that morning and all of them either span us a bullshit line about what was wrong or just refused to help us. One big fat stinky grease covered oxygen thief tried to tell us it was the clutch and that he’d sort it out for us but at a big cost. I couldn’t handle this prick and lost my temper. He got told where to get off in a combination of Victorian royal navy and my best Mitchells Plain. He didn’t quite expect the violent tirade that flowed from my mouth and after my detailed comment about his mothers birth canal he turned his back and walked away. At that moment it was the last thing I was hoping he’d do. I was in a mood to bust his face and was just looking for the excuse to do it.

We eventually found a mechanic who after an incredible amount of begging agreed to fix the van.
The van has an engine modification, instead of running on the original air-cooled flat four engine it runs on a water cooled straight four. It’s a more modern engine with a greater output, better fuel economy and is less likely to blow in hot weather. In theory it’s a great modification however the work was carried out by bush mechanics in the old Transkei and there were plenty of things that they just botched or did poorly. One of things they botched was to put a plastic covering over the accelerator cable, the cable runs the length of the underside of the van. This plastic cover runs right next to the exhaust pipe at one point and the heat generated had melted the plastic and prevented the accelerator cable from moving correctly. It was an easy fix but an expensive one, the mechanic was the VW main dealer and not too keen on dealing with the van in the first place so they made us pay dearly for the help.

A few hours later Ezan fetched the Van and it seemed to be running better than ever. Everyone was pleased to death. The van was running correctly and we could be on the road again.

Our original plan was to head from Windhoek to the Botswana border stopping in Ghanzi, the Makgadikgadi and the Okavango Delta before heading up to Vic Falls.

The problem with this was that the best information we had said that the Bots border post closed at 6pm and we weren’t going to make it that day. We had to get across the border that day in order to make our trip into the delta. That wasn’t going to happen it was just too far in too little time. We called the old bridge backpacker’s in Maun and rescheduled our trip for the following Monday, this meant we had a couple of days to kill.

Our options at this point were to either head west to Spitzkoppe and do some climbing or North to Ethosha and check out the wild life and the salt flats. After a powwow we all decided that we’d prefer to head north to Etosha and check out the salt flats there.
Great except that the info we had wasn’t reliable. We were told we could make it from Windhoek to Etosha in 4 hours. It’s just over 400 k’s so this should have made sense, but for some reason it didn’t work out that way for us. It took us more than 6 hours to get there. This meant that we arrived too late to do anything in the park that day and had to do the park and get to the Botswana border all in the following day. Remember that the best info we had said the border post closed at 6 pm. Turns out this information is wrong and the border posts are actually open much later!

We had about 1000 k’s to travel before 6pm the following day. We chatted through a few options and all agreed that we’d be up before sunrise to make sure we were the first vehicle through the gate in the morning. If we were on the road by 6.30am we figured we could cover the 1000 k’s in just under 12 hours if we pushed hard. The problem was that in the park the speed limit is strictly enforced and for good reason. You really don’t want to hit a Rhino or an Elephant at any speed let alone high speed. We had to average 100 k’s an hour for 10 hours. With the speed restriction in the park forcing you down to about 60 kmh we needed the full 12 hours without any delays at all.

The plan was for me to take first shift behind the wheel while Ezan took photos of the animals as we drove. Then I’d sleep for a bit, while Ezan drove and we’d continue to swap driving and sleeping until we’d chased down the 1000 k’s. We spoke to a couple of over-landing guides and they thought we were nuts!! We knew it’d be hard but figured if we worked hard as a team we’d make it! For the first 400 k’s we made it!
I’ll let you know what happened next in my next post.

I just want say thanks to everyone who’s reading this for keeping patience with us and for all of the encouraging comments you sent us when we were down and out. It was those little comments that kept us going at times!

Next post coming soon, I promise!

It's been a mad few days. We've driven all the way from Cape Town to the Fish River Canyon making 3 stops and a border crossing in 4 days. First stop was the cederberg, a place I adore it's mind blowingly beautiful, the climbing and hiking is just brilliant, and add that to the fact that it feels so remote yet only a couple hours drive from Cape Town and that makes it one of my favorite places. 

The three of us had an absolutely rocking time, we left Cape Town quite late and hit the dirt road turning into the cederberg at about midnight, from there we drove for about an hour until we had all had enough and pulled up for the night. It seems to be a bit of a theme so far on the trip that we've had spectacular campsites. That first one really set the standard. It was underneath the tafleberg mountain and just perfect, plenty of soft sand to make sleeping comfortable and two massive boulders at one end with a tree between them. It was so good we used it for the first and second night. 

We got up at about 7.30 on day two packed up and heading up the wolf berg cracks up to the Arch. If your into climbing this route is about as good as it gets. The rock faces are huge and dramatic and the climbing difficulty varies a massive amount. There's also caves with Khoi San rock art that's thousands of years old, plenty of buck and other wildlife and spectacular views. That day was a bit of a hard shunt, about 6 hours of hiking, 3 hours of climbing including some really scary free solos. We also put in a abseil off the top of the arch and then turned it into a massive rope swing. That rope swing was epic, equal parts exhiliration and pure craziness, it was terrifying. The walk down was hard work, we came down partly in the dark and were all totally exhausted by the time we made it back to camp. 

The next morning I woke up with an intense craving for a cup of tea, this is an englishmans affliction. Nothing will stop us, not even a half an hour walk througha bog in the freezing cols predawn. This walk had to be undertaken in order to get fresh water from the river. After a quick breakfast 3 unwashed smelly and dirty boys hot the road for the .ong drive to the Namibian border. Driving the length of SA N7 highway is a real treat its pretty much mountainous desert the entire way, beautiful. 
We hit the border at about 8pm and as an international crossing its an absolutet joke and one we had a few laughs at. The SA side was pretty good, very formal and as you'd expect but the Namibian side was where the fun began. The border post is actually a construction site and its chaotic, you've got no real idea where to go and no signs telling you, we almost drove right around customs and through the post altogether, we actually stopped and turned around and drove back to customs after we'd realized we'd totally bypassed it and were through. I love border posts there always a little tense and exciting at the same time. I always put on my best smile and try to be as charming as I can, because who needs hassle. The Namibians were nice enough but a little ridiculous, most of our paperwork wasn't checked, all they seemed to be interested in was where Matt was from, how my camera could be so small and what I did for a living. As we were finishing up a customs official appeared and asked us "so where's the bottle of wine" implying that he was going to make it difficult for us if we didn't anti up. Unfortunately for our fat official friend we didn't have any wine so he had to settle for a couple bottles of beer. Yes I'm serious that really happened. 
Anyway once all that was over with we headed up to the fish river and the Ai Ais national park. The next 24 hours were some of the most brilliant I've ever had. We didnt know exactly where we were going so just kind of headed up the highway, out of nowhere the tar road ended and we crashed off it onto a crappy dirt road. In a bid to find get directions we pulled into a little shanty town and while no one could really help us out with directions we did find a little shabeen and had a quick beer! 
A sign that read 'Road Closed' seemed like perfectly good reason to us to drive down that road and what a brilliant move that was. It took us right along the side of the fish river in the lower stretches of the canyon. We pulled off the road at about 1am and made camp. When we woke up in the morning we found ourselves in a location beyond description. I'll let the photos tell that story. By this time it had been a few days since we'd all had a shower so we made good use of the river, I await the broke back mountain jokes. 

Every now and then you get the opportunity to do something that literally makes you jump for joy.
In exactly 1 week time I'm going to have that opportunity when myself' and 2 buddies set off on an epic road trip.

We’ll be covering nearly 6000 kilometres across 5 Countries in Southern Africa. Everything about this trip gets me excited, firstly there’s where we are going. If someone asked me to write a list of my top 10 favourite places in the world 3 of them would be along this route. Starting off from Cape Town we’ll head to the Cederberg in SA, Then the Fishriver canyon in Namibia onto a stop over at the Cardboard box in Windhoek, Ghanzi in Botswana, the Okavango Delta, Makgadikgadi and Victoria Falls on the Zimbabwe Zambia border. From there we’ll head back to Cape Town via Joburg and Bloem. It’s the perfect route!!!

Secondly there are the people I’m going with, Matt Guerrieri and Ezan Vercueil.

Matt is a recent university graduate from North Western in Chicago. He’s the youngest of the group and has an attitude that I love. He’s also a very switched on dude with a wicked sense of humour. Matt and I have been climbing together a few times, he has a fierce determination and just does not quit. A few weeks ago he took the worst fall I have ever seen. Matt got pretty bashed up and the shock alone would have dropped most people but Matt toughed it out.
We were in a really awkward spot and had to walk another 45 minuets out through dense bush. He must have been in incredible pain but not once did he moan or complain. He just got on with it and I was blown away by how gutsy this dude is.
 
Ezan is a very different character, He’s tall long haired, very athletic and can climb better than anyone I know. He’s just as tough as Matt but a little more on the eccentric side. He’s the oldest of us and has done allot of travelling around the world. He’s the most laid back guy I know and reminds me of the Character ’Odd Ball’ in the Movie Kelly’s Hero’s. 
Ezy is literally the stereotype of the old Hippy. He’s supremely creative, a great photographer and has an incredible sense of fun, the two of us are cut from the same cloth, he just seems to be able to do everything better than me!!

Thirdly there is the Van, pictured above. It’s the perfect road trip vehicle! A 1972 VW Kombi, modified, battered and graffiti up! She’s the original hippy mobile and all of us have fallen in love with her. 
 
 This road trip is going to be a once in a lifetime adventure. It’s the kind of trip that everyone dreams of; it’s like something out of a movie. 

3 dudes in a 40 year old VW Kombi across some of the worlds most beautiful landscapes. Each of us feels so privileged to be apart of this trip and we’re so excited by it that we’ve decided to try and do something positive with it. Ezan came up with the idea to name the trip ‘The Random Acts of Kindness Tour. The Idea being that for everyday we’re on tour we will complete a random act of kindness. This could be anything from giving a hitchhiker a ride to picking up litter to spending some time on a volunteer project. The only requirement is that it has to be for the benefit of the local community. If anyone out there has any suggestions on how we can fulfil this obligation please get in touch, we’d love to hear your thoughts. 

That’s an outline of the tour, ill be posting more in the coming days! 

Cheers
Terry 
Check out our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/RandomActsOfKindnessTour