smlobx
Lost again
First, thanks to Ski for allowing me to share our recent trip to Africa even though it's a geographic stretch to consider it the West. Secondly, I would like to thank many of the members here who helped me pick up a new camera (Nikon D500) and a fantastic telephoto lense, the 200-500 mm.
Like many of you, We love to travel to remote areas and love to be hands on in making that happen. One item on my bucket list is to go to all 7 continents and Africa is one of the few remaining so we started looking into a trip there. Once you start investigating the options you quickly find that many of these "adventures" are canned in that you are driven to a lodge and then driven into "the bush" on daily game drives...not very hands on..Eventually our search led us to a little Expedition company based out of Switzerland, Geko Expeditions (www.gekoexpeditions.com). Since we had never been to the continent we did not feel comfortable taking this on completely by ourselves and Nicolas Genoud, the owner of Geko seemed to have the right blend of knowledge and freedom that we were looking for.
We booked the two week trip and eventually met him at the airport in Kasane, Botswana which is located in the Northeast corner of the country. We flew in a day early to allow us to get over the jet lag and at the same time we're able to meet the other participants, a recently retired couple from France and a retired neurosurgeon from Switzerland. We instantly bonded with each other even though we had some language challenges as we were all overlanders...the international language! It turns out that the other members of our group were very experienced in Overland travel in Africa having made several trips to the continent so any concerns about Geko were quickly dismissed.
The next day the trucks we had rented showed up. The 79 Series Toyota Land Cruisers were only a couple of years old and came equipted with everything we would need on our trip including roof top tent, full kitchen kit, two stoves, a 50 L fridge, two spare tires and 4, 20 liter fuel cans that we would fill up with diesel before we left. We rented the trucks (or cars as they are called over there) from Bushlore (www.bushlore.com). The trucks themselves turned out to be the most rugged vehicles I have ever driven and I'm sure that any American vehicle would not have survived what we put these vehicles through. Having said that the 4.2L non turbocharged engine barely had enough oomph to do the job but we made it!
I will post more in the next few days but I wanted to tease you a little bit with the following pics...
Like many of you, We love to travel to remote areas and love to be hands on in making that happen. One item on my bucket list is to go to all 7 continents and Africa is one of the few remaining so we started looking into a trip there. Once you start investigating the options you quickly find that many of these "adventures" are canned in that you are driven to a lodge and then driven into "the bush" on daily game drives...not very hands on..Eventually our search led us to a little Expedition company based out of Switzerland, Geko Expeditions (www.gekoexpeditions.com). Since we had never been to the continent we did not feel comfortable taking this on completely by ourselves and Nicolas Genoud, the owner of Geko seemed to have the right blend of knowledge and freedom that we were looking for.
We booked the two week trip and eventually met him at the airport in Kasane, Botswana which is located in the Northeast corner of the country. We flew in a day early to allow us to get over the jet lag and at the same time we're able to meet the other participants, a recently retired couple from France and a retired neurosurgeon from Switzerland. We instantly bonded with each other even though we had some language challenges as we were all overlanders...the international language! It turns out that the other members of our group were very experienced in Overland travel in Africa having made several trips to the continent so any concerns about Geko were quickly dismissed.
The next day the trucks we had rented showed up. The 79 Series Toyota Land Cruisers were only a couple of years old and came equipted with everything we would need on our trip including roof top tent, full kitchen kit, two stoves, a 50 L fridge, two spare tires and 4, 20 liter fuel cans that we would fill up with diesel before we left. We rented the trucks (or cars as they are called over there) from Bushlore (www.bushlore.com). The trucks themselves turned out to be the most rugged vehicles I have ever driven and I'm sure that any American vehicle would not have survived what we put these vehicles through. Having said that the 4.2L non turbocharged engine barely had enough oomph to do the job but we made it!
I will post more in the next few days but I wanted to tease you a little bit with the following pics...
