Still alive

My goodness cellphone data can be hard to find. I’m currently in Mauritania. Border crossing was fine. Spending two nights in this camp before moving on. One night in bush camp and then maybe two nights in a real camp ground!

On the road again!

 Fortunately the last resort fix, fixed it. We’ve been on the road again for an hour and all seems good. We’re operating with only 3 brakes, but as i understand those are only used for slowing down and stopping, something we’re not going to do now we are running behind!

Stuck!

 Truck is broken down, we are on the side of the road with some issues. Our driver has been working hard, but there are problems that just can’t be resolved.

We are on the last shot, otherwise it’s setup tents and sleep here on side of road!

Plans are in progress. This sort of thing is expected — this is Africa

Goodbye McDonalds, goodbye shopping centre

We’ve just left a big shopping centre car park. It had a McDonald’s and large supermarket.

It’s the last time we will see them for about 5 months(!!), until South Africa!

Yes, yes, I did have a Big Mac, because why not? 

We also picked up the last of our personal supplies we think we will want. I still have a lot of locker space, but I like it that way. I wanted to find a fly swatter, but we couldn’t. Maybe we will find one later.

Photos, Video, Data and wifi

 I had thought I’d have lots of downtime to process photos and video, but given it’s quite difficult to writing on your phone when the truck is in motion (and using an iPad almost impossible) there isn’t much. Except for rest days (where we stay somewhere for two nights) it’s pretty much get up, pack up, breakfast, drive, lunch, with a couple of toilet and/or view stops, arriving hopefully before sunset, setup, dinner, chat with people, sleep, and repeat.

That’s not to say it’s not enjoyable, just that there isn’t much “sit around doing nothing” that isn’t driving in the truck. The only real time is skipping the camp fire chats.

But regardless of that, even if I had the time to get the photos and videos sorted, my cellular data is slow and limited (5GB per month), and of course there is no wifi out in the bush camps!

Though Liz tells a story of a trip where the first bush camp a person asks what the wifi is there. She legitimately didn’t realise there wouldn’t be wifi everywhere.

Cooking

 Cook days

I’m currently in Cook Group 2, self named as (Gordon) Ramsey’s Chefs. Ironically named as none of us consider we can cook. So how does it work? It depends what meals you’re on this week. It’s common to do dinner and the following breakfast, but some are lucky enough to do lunch and dinner (avoiding that extra early wake up).

Each group decides what they will cook, with the only stipulation being there needs to be a vegetarian and meat eaters options, with protein for both. 

During the day your group heads to the local markets and buys the necessary ingredients. That has been supermarkets, but now it’s local markets with whatever is available.

About 30-60mins (or however long you think it’ll take) before the meal your group gets together and assembles the kitchen with the required equipment (burners, pots, pans, tables, plates, knives and forks, etc). Then it’s a simple matter of cooking for 24 or so people!

The scale is not something I’m used to. Just how much water do you need for 4kg of pasta? Even with the good burners, boiling that much water takes forever and moving around these large pots with hot food is a real exercise in safety. 

Eventually, hopefully, you’ve managed to get all parts of the meal heated and hopefully none of them have cooled down in the process. “Grubs up!” and everyone serves themselves.

Everyone is responsible for washing their own dishes, with the cook group responsible for washing and putting away all of the cooking stuff.

The pack down can take almost as long as prep, as each item needs to be washed and dried, then the jigsaw puzzle of putting it all back into the truck is quite the challenge. The smarter groups clean as they go!

Breakfasts can be hard for those who like a sleep in. If we want to get on the road by 7:30am, then it’s 06:30am breakfast, and you need to pack up your tent before breakfast, so if you’ve planned to cook anything special it can be as early as a 5:30am start. Now we are bush camping a lot breakfasts have become a lot simpler. Toast and hot water is typically the hot things.

Things get easier as we get faster at everything and as supplies become even more limited.

Breakfast so far has been cereals, fruits, as well as a main like scrambled eggs, baked beans, or fried eggs on toast.

Heading to Western Sahara

 So I’ve been done with a cold that’s making the rounds, it’s knocked me down, but fortunately we have just had 2 full days rest before heading out tomorrow. We will be going for 6 days of bush camping (no facilities).

Getting WiFi, even at the camp grounds, is very very slow, so I’ve been unable to upload much at all.

I have however managed to upload two early videos of the truck I’m travelling in.

Inside of the truck https://youtu.be/fuXZaRRrfyI

Outside of the truck https://youtu.be/zWg604PPxzw

A combination of being sick and busy on the road otherwise has meant I’ve not been able to produce the videos I’ve wanted to do — but that’s good, better to be busy than bored.