Sadly I didn’t strike oil in the garden this morning and we’re not moving to Beverly Hills (more like Halton Hills). The Land Cruiser is, errr, packed and we’re off on our “oh my god, are we mad?” trial run tomorrow. There are about 3 cubic centimetres of space left…

We’re back from our trial night in De Hoop Nature Reserve with (most of) the Lloyd family and we have a result: we’re ready – mostly. De Hoop was really impressive: lots of wildlife (zebra, eland, ostrich, lynx, scorpions, baboons and more), enormous dunes and a beautiful old Cape Dutch…

So, you think you can just hop in a car and drive around Africa, huh? Well, you can’t because those government employees in their adjustable swivel chairs have decided to make it bloody difficult. There are a number of administrative and bureaucratic hoops you have to jump through before: Car…

We are taking our 3 boys out of school (Grades 3, 1 and pre-R/pre-kindergarten) to do this trip for 3-6 months – a form of home-schooling only without the home bit as such. They’ll eventually be enrolled in school in Canada when we get there for the beginning of the…

After a day of pawing through the fine print of our existing insurance policies and giving myself a series of mahoossive headaches, I discovered that our normal health and car insurance essentially won’t cover us for our trip: no offroading, no leaving neighbouring countries, no voluntary assumption of risk (risk,…

Ben: This is madness my parents are running about packing tents, food, water and toys. I like the toys and the food but why bring water when you can bring chocolate milk? I’m wondering if we are going to have enough food for the trip. I don’t really care if…

It is said that changing jobs and selling/buying houses are the two most stressful events in life. We’ve got those two well-covered and if you add putting your children in life-threatening situations, we’re heading off the scale. Over the past couple of weeks we’ve been discussing and vaguely planning what…

I ain’t no dummy when it comes to cars. I can usually identify a coil, fuel filter, solenoid, air filter and petrol tank – and have more than just a vague idea what function each performs. In short, I can fearlessly feign that I know what I’m doing with the…

Theoretically, we’re leaving in the morning. Or maybe in the afternoon. Or maybe on Thursday morning. Soon anyway. The plan (yes, we had one) was to be on our way to the bustling metropolis of Springbok, Northern Cape at around 10am on Wednesday. In the past few weeks we’ve had…

Well, everything didn’t go quite according to plan today. The banks were oddly reluctant to part with our money. The police made a meal out of fingerprints. The medications were only to be found thinly across five pharmacies. The police clearances were really hard work. But as tomorrow’s a public…