Things I have learnt about my traveling companions in the first week of CMJJJ

Isn't it amazing? You think you know someone so well and then you spend a little time crammed into a go-kart and all of a sudden little things start to show...

Lets start with Julia/Gulia/'baby come Bach' - Turns out that our mother hen is a bit of a spas when it comes to having to keep hold of thing, catch things, move things and generally in situations when some semblance of spatial awareness is required. I have never witnessed such poor hand-eye coordination in my days, brilliant!
Julia is a delight when it comes to interaction with real people. For example, she called a lady "ma'am" the other day. No problem you would think so long as that lady was elderly and deserved of such formal status. This lady was about 25 and making coffee in a backpackers kitchen. No wonder she was pissed off. Ah Julia.

Interesting fact about Julia: She has broken both arms during a push up challenge.

On to Ciara/OD/Irish/SPEEDBUMP! - Who knew she was actually a lesbian?!!!!! And she punches like a Minotaur and there is an end to her tether after all. She hates to be called "princess". LOL.

Interesting fact about Ciara: Ciara, as we know, has a very small head which got lost somewhere in her helmet during rafting, but as a baby had the same sized noggin and has only just started to grow into it.

Finally on to John/Bray/Monkey Bray/Brazier Krane/Independence Bray/Slaphead - Bray is dad. He likes to be organized and very,very loud. Turns out this is also true when the fucker sleeps. Snoring as a term simply doesn't quite measure the man. He also loses things, but I know you are all sitting back and saying "but James, we always knew that". But I for one had hoped that it was just a phase only to be disappointed. The things John has lost so far: all travel documents including bookings and maps, his phone, his car keys (as I sit here they remain lost), his head torch and his shoes.

Things he has not lost: his phone number to any fit birds.

Bray also has Tourette's, a terrible social-impairing affliction and rather rare which is perhaps why none of us had registered it yet until he bellowed "Sexy Car Fucking Tit" at a fellow Rav driver in Maun who cut us up. We were quite startled.

Interesting fact about John: Has only been skiing once yet has managed to break 5 pieces of ski gear. Plonker.

So that is pretty much it so far.
Bye!

Lunch of kings

So we may be traveling in not the most professional of offload vehicles, not equipped with anything useful for getting ourselves out of bother and targeted with smirks by almost every South African in a monster 4x4 but we do smash lunch, OH YES!

Thanks John for the poached eggs!

my heroine. and mechanics. 29/6/2013

not an update as normal.

This is a comment on our star. the key player without which we would be in major trouble. she has had us doing some walking. its proper slow.
She is small, a bit odd shaped and curvy in funny places but she has been amazing. 
noooo, its not Ciara. or Julia. come on guys imagination please.

she has been overloaded with the toughest jobs and a lot of stuff. we broke her cigarette lighter. she has been smashed through sand,  her bum is clean due to the sand scrub its had. she has been invaded by monkeys (really, no kiddin).

NOOOO honestly i'm not talkin about either Ciara or Julia. come on...

She is of course, Ravlon. and she's awesome. will be proper sad to leave her behind. Think she'd fit in in SF...

Her first and reverse gears have been ragged about. The front plastic sump guard has been pushed inside out.The exhaust is half the size it was in circumference. she is dusty and has been effectively like that for over a week. her rear diff is hurting and the dust and sand has made everything that little bit less functional.

Today though, she boosted over 700km and smashed the 2000 mark total for our trip. She has made hair dressers around the world more proud of their vehicle. She has stuck two fingers up to the Toyota exec who wanted a 4*4 for women to drive around town.
Admittedly, she needs a wash, but then so do we all. 





and on mechanics...
We took her to Toyota, Maun. Babusi (service admin guy) was sound as. A mechanic fixed our lighter/power source. no charge. He rang around southern Africa and local dealers for parts. at 530pm on Friday we pitch up again and he sorts out contacts in Swakopmund down the line.

They are used to travellers of course. but he was class, the most chilled dude in the world. He also introduced James and I to Question. You will learn more of him later.

John

Day 5 (Monday 24th June): Hornbills for brekkie and lost in the 'marsh' (please note: embellishment may follow)

Hi everyone,

My name is James and I’ll be scribbling up the next days worth of CMJJJ blog. I’d better be good as my last blog had me in trouble with Ciara, the mopey cow.

After what had been a MAHOSIVE day for the gang, especially a v-shagged Ravalon (didn’t she do well?) we all crashed out pretty well in les tents. Morning time and, as standards, Gulia went off on her tod for a stroll to search, presumably, for some small furry animals to chuck on the cinders of our dying campfire.

SOMEONE (not mentioning any names) managed to ‘spill’ some rice after dinner the previous evening which had attracted a number of feathered friends. Hornbills (comical toucan-like birds) had been tucking in since they had risen from their slumber and we were positively surrounded. If you ever run into Hornbills, they are frikkin comedy. Managed to get them to eat bread (much to Gulia’s annoyance) from a) my crutch and b) Bray’s bonce. LOL. Brazier, Irish and I smashed back a hearty brekkie before packing up and leaving camp. On our way out we had to pop in to the camp office to see ‘Morpheus’ and give him our docs. Ciara took the lead here while myself and Bray nipped in a quick workout using some handy elephant remains (pictures to follow). Morpheus pretty livid that we (Bray and myself) had , and I quote, ‘disgraced’ his office by rocking up topless and hench. Apologies Laurence Fishburne double. And so onwards to find the marsh road (not the sandridge one as the Rav would just sink again).

Plenty of wildlife on offer here as we spotted giraffe, wilderbeast, various antelope, MORE FRIKKING ELEPHANTS, some dolphins, a duck, and a tall balding creature with a habit of providing awkward moments merely by talking…oh wait, that would be Bray. Julia decided to chase after some giraffe in true gung-ho American style. Her shock and awe tactics had little effect though.

The marsh road began in earnest after the spotting of said safari creatures and to put it bluntly, the marsh raod is about as exciting as it sounds – NOT VERY. Still this may be down to the fact that we saw little and got lost a few times. Nevertheless this is Afrika after all and so even the hard-packed, dust-as road through dying shrub still held some desperate beauty.

At one of our most desperate moments, when all notion of direction and position had all but dried up, Bray clocked a couple ragging the shite out of their Landy towards us on a faint dirt road. He promptly waved the driver down and asked whether or not we were on the right road to the south gate (can’t remember the name). The bloke said ‘yep’ and then, being the good citizen he is, Bray kindly informed the driver that he was going in the right direction and to just ‘keep going straight’. Bewildering advice since a) the driver hadn’t even asked for directions, b) he obviously knew where he was going, and c) we hadn’t gone straight at all. Nice one Bray! Cue much banter in his direction.

The drive continued through an ever-changing landscape until we reached the gate, downed some lunch, got laughed at by more South Africans for having a go-kart instead of a real 4x4 and tried to figure out just how so much dust had got into the Rav. Luckily one of the South Africans had a motorised pump that Ciara managed to flirt her way into lending us in order to get our tyre pressure back up for the better roads ahead. Of course myself and JB as the muscle of the tour felt like right mugs as we had to just sit back and watch a bloke who knew what he was doing do our job, AGAIN.

The lady at the gate had told us the turn off was ‘7.4 kilometres away on the left’. Easy enough directions to follow you would think right? Not for us. We ended up off the road about 3km down and once again stuck in the sands of Botswana. Got out and after going back to clarify her seemingly baffling directions we headed off and found the road proper. Nice drive to our camp at North Gate (think that is right) where JB was presented with a golden opportunity. The lady at the gate was slender, easy on the eye, wearing knee-high leather boots and simply gagging for a bit of our loveable rogue. Thanks to his ‘pals’ he was set up on a speed date over the collection of some firewood. One word – MUG. Didn’t even get her number! Minus lad-points and the shame of tour fineage to follow. Tisk tisk.

Camp turned out to be ace. Different to Savuti in that it was more wooded and in a salt-pan. Settled down for the evening back round a campfire as standard. Bray was almost cuddling up to a hyena by the fire at the end of the night which made him ‘slighty surprised’, but he thought he could ‘have it’ if needed. Lad.

Woke in the middle of the night to see an elephant smashing up trees around our camp. All seems kinda normal now.

I’m done.

The day of Sand. As Cross put so well, a day when emotions were all over the shop.

Got another early start (seeing a trend?) and headed for Botswana-still mapless. Crossed the Zambezi river on a ferry. Some lovely photography and monkey swimming ensued. We decided after 1200km it might be a novel idea to get a map of this huge wilderness we were about to enter-in The Rav…

Thoroughly impressed with the Botswana border crossing, roads and generally organization, lovely people. AND FREE. No visa. Great news.Photo's are not in the right order.  The ferry is obvious, the other two are from near Kasane.

Hit Kasane which was bonkers. A tiny town but KFC, SPAR, Barclays. Who’d have thought. 10 am chicken was obviously a disgrace but good all the same.  With a map, we were fearless, time in hand, bellies full, Monkey having a right old time. Should have got a clue from the guy at the first park gate. “I would say you should not stay in Sivuti”. “is that a 4*4?”
What does he know Bray says. Confidence in Ravlon we all had. Still, headed for the easy road just to be sure. Then the tarmack ended and we found the beach. Ok, not the beach, but the Sandridge Road and we learned very quickly how to dig out the Rav. Emotion downer. Looks of concern. Stuck after 500M on the first hill. Many KM to go. Hmmm.

Still, we nailed it. Dug the Rav out 5 times, even the suspension and undercarriage were getting buried. We realised at this point that a shovel (was on the list) would have been good and the when a car drives over big sticks they can be dangerous. Ciara still harbours Bray anger for that one me thinks. 
Bray indulged in some serious rally off driving and offroading. Don’t fret, we apologised to Botswana for mowing down the plant life and don’t think we hit any animals.

We saw some massive elephants, they kept appearing out of nowhere. We made the gate at 4:45pm. Left it 5pm. Still 35 km to go. At this point one of the cool things about travelling like this happened (not for the first or last time). We were lucky that some SA guys were driving out at the same time. They had a) knowledge and b) equipment. So with our tyres down by a full 1 bar more and 45 ish minutes till dark, We hit the pedal to the metal.

“Can’t say enough how cool my travel companions are. I was definitely feeling like I might lose the plot at times but whenever we hit trouble, everyone just piled out and got stuck in. It was a definite thought of mine that after travelling so far we simply had no choice but to continue on. The banter and positive chat meant it was still a heck of a lot of fun. What we are travelling for. 

the Ravlon. beached.

At times driving the Rav was just ridiculous. Sliding and smashing through Sand in 1^st and 2^nd gear all day. 70 odd KM took all day but we made it. Made it to one of the most immense places I’ve seen in Africa.” John ‘cheesy’ Braychild.

Our first Botswana beer. St Louis. Tasted awesome. A huge elephant came through camp at about 7pm. COD and Cross made it into the car just before  it walked past. The footprints were no more than a metre from the Rav.

Stars, a fire, our first camp meal. We really were winning.

CMJJJ 1 – Zambia 0. WIN WIN WIN.

An early start got us to Pam's Bakery (‘meat’ pies) for breakfast somewhere on the outskirts en route to Livingston and told a police office to get serious when he insisted on a fictitious tax. He wanted us to loan him our passports?!?! We rolled into Livingstone past a cultural parade with dancers on floats. Feeling confident, we decided to go rafting on the Zambezi in the gorge under the falls...uh, yeah. RAFTING IS AWESOME.
Our guide Steve was a hero, no rapid was too big for us and over we went in the very first one. Nice and refreshing/bloody scary and unexpected? (naïve we were) -felt like being inside a washing machine.
Bray and Cross were up front. Apparently in charge of ‘rhythm’. Fell in a few more times before the day was over. Rapids named Oblivion, the three ugly sisters and where 16a is Terminator 1, and 16b is terminator 2 were always gonna be fun. Steve wiped us out again on 16b. Brayzer experienced freefall. Nuts.  We've still got the bruises to prove it (injuries are becoming a big theme). After rafting 15km down the river, we went to see the falls themselves. Ever signed a waiver to get in a cable car? No? come to Zambia.
Impressive doesn’t cover it.
Heading back to town, we came across a herd of 20 elephants near road construction-neither the elephants nor the road crew seemed particularly concerned.
Our accomodation was cool and the whole of Livinsgstone sound. Zambia quite like Malawi just bigger. Absolutely nothing between the towns except some long bits of tarmac. Road improving all the way.

Sorry still no photo's yet. It is an issue of computer tech. they are coming soon. we do realise a blog is much better with photos.

How to drive rather a long way without a map...In Style.

Step 1. Have a sense of humour
Step 2. Ask random people for directions (especially mini bus drivers)
Step 3. Just be awesome.


In preparing for this trip we put together a pretty exhaustive list of stuff to bring. Guide books for every country, quality maps (thanks Nik and Suz), machete, car, passports etc.

Turns out we didn't bring it all.  So we drove all the way through Zambia without a map. Any map. like zilch. A random cash transfer at 60km an hour and a helpful taxi man got us on the right path to a really cold night in Lusaka.

Can't believe I am actually writing on a blog...KILL ME! Can we please get this taken down ASAP?



Disclaimer: JDC does not know how to work blogs. They confuse him. This makes him angry.

3 days and counting. How to prepare for an epic drive? hmmm...

Why of course, enlist the help of super heroes to ensure safe travels. Cutting supermans hair was in exchange for full African rescue cover.
Ciara is currently embracing anything driven and so has become Speedbump Girl. She is our new mascot/savour.

Thor.

The Birth of Blog

HELLO!

So this is what it's like to do a 'blog'! Exciting stuff!

HERE GOES!

What do I do now?
I'll post a picture:

TAAAADAAAA!

Ok, so, yeah, blog.

In this blog we will try and document the big adventure that will be our Southern Africa Road Trip otherwise known as 'CMJJJ' which is a very clever play on our initials and also sounds a bit dirty which makes us laugh because we are very immature. 

Here is a brief introduction to the CMJJJ crew:

This is me. I'm the most intelligent, talented, resourceful and responsible member of the team. By far. I'm the glue that holds it together, the vital cog in the wheels of our adventure. The others don't appreciate it and call me a pisshead. I'm still not entirely sure why. On the trip, I will be referred to as 'Irish' (imaginative much) O.D. and ODonaHOO. I have crap nicknames. I provide the spreadsheets, a powerful phone torch and a very authentic Chinese accent.

This is Julia aka Goolia, Bach, Me Julie, PuppyBurner. She's from New Yoik and has pyromaniac tendencies especially towards small dogs. She enjoys fireworks, explosions, the smell of singed puppy hair and organs and rugby. Julia has been learning to 'drive stick' especially for this trip and will be allowed to try out her new skill once we get to the Namibian desert. Maybe. We hope to meet Julia's brother in Cape Town. He recently blew up a dolphin.

James Cross aka Seamus, Crossy, JC,  is from Cambridge, Engerland and is a tree-humper and a jock. He likes throwing and catching balls, running as fast as he can and lifting things. However, he also suffers from chronic flatulence and is very easily distracted. SHINY THING. He is not allowed to be in charge of anything. Plans are underway to attach a sidecar to our trusty motor in which to house Cross and the toxic gases that emanate from his ass. Cross' challenge for this trip is to teabag a live, wild, conscious, adult crocodile. Eeeeeeezaaaay.

John Bray, better known as Senor Managemente, Braychild, Brayzer Krane, Brayzin' Squad, Bray of Pigs, Bray's Anatomy, Monkey Bray, Independence Bray, The Bray after Tomorrow, Brayzy in Love etc is from the North of Engerland. Braychild's hobbies include football, tambourining and lurking. He has been known to lose the glasses from his face. Braychild's challenge for the summer is to vomit in every country. Check out johnvom.com for more details. Bray is pictured here with the love of his life, the Ravlon. The Ravlon will be our mode of transport for our 45 day adventure.

So there we are.

Where we plan to CMJJJ

This is the route - kind of.

It may indicate us driving off road or into the sea at stages but that's because I drew it on Paint and my hand wasn't very steady.

It looks like a lot...because it is A LOT.

It's highly likely that at least one of us will go completely insane. My money's on Bray.