Transafrica: Ideas made in Africa

A refreshingly different facet of Africa illuminate the three travelers of "Ideas Made in Africa". The three students are traveling with a Mitsubishi L300 4x4 on Africa's west route. Currently they reach Cameroon on their Trans Africa journey.

On their way to get in contact with company founders and local start-ups. Contact with young Africans who make self-employed with their idea.

Where most travelers rather seeking privacy, or rather search in small villages in contact with the local people, immerse yourself these three travelers, in the bustling cities, conduct interviews with young entrepreneurs, illuminate their everyday life, corporate structure and business idea.

The three along the way are well equipped to document their research trip in image sound and video. The three students will use the experiences and research result for they university degree. This fact opens many doors for them and creates contacts and points that they can visit.

We readers can look at a different perspective to africa, while reading here, really a new facet. Photos from the cities , from a bird perspective grant date from Africa rather unusual insights .

The trip reports are written thrilling, let a dip - and at least for me a little admiration comes to how fearlessly they move through the African business world.

To raise additional funds for their journey , the three also go for a Overlander still quite unfamiliar way : through a crowdfunding platform they are on to be generated 3000 Euro .

As a supporter of the project, you can get different things depending by the amount of contributions: from a postcard to a photo book , a dinner or a lecture.

Die Website / Travel-Blog:

http://ideasmadeinafrica.alfahosting.org/wordpress/?lang=en

The Crowdfunding Projekt at startnext

http://www.startnext.de/ideasmadeinafrica

Currently their crowd funding project just started - they got 340 Euro of the 3000 who are required. I hope they will get everything together.

Howto reach the eastern route of africa

This article shows how you can reach the eastroute of africa as self driver. How you can reach or avoid egypt. You can read an many places that it is not possible today, therefore I try to show here what options are known and give you links to travelblogs where the travellers had choosen that option.

There are actually severall options

- Arrival across Tunesia and Libya
- Arrival across the ferry from Turkey to Egypt (Iskenderun, Damietta)
- Arrival across the Taba border at Israel / Egypt (not by 4x4)
- Arrival across the Nuweiba border, ferry Jordan - Egypt (not by 4x4)
- Avoiding Egypt (bypassing via Jordan via Jordan/Sudan and Saudi-Arabia/Sudan
- Shipping the car from Jordan (Container) to Egypt (Sokhna)
  (Shipping will give you many more options anyway)

The problem of 4x4 vehicles are just at the sinai, from Israel and Jordan borders. From Lybia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia or Sudan you can enter Egypt too by 4x4.

Here is a List of travelers who did that borders recently, where you can optain fresh experiences about border crossings, bureaucracy, Visas and Paperwork generally.

Panamericana Roadtrip - tips and tricks for overlanders

The Panamericana is a Road Network who cross two continents and 12 countrys. Just a small part between isnt connected, the darian gap.
 It is one of these famous routes like the Silkroad or a Transafrica over east or west who let travellers dream about, to drive there sometimes in their live.

Each year severall travellers start a trip on one of these parts of the world The Swiss television did in its format DOK a documentation about the "Panamericana" in 7 pieces at the year 2011, which is still available online. Absolutely worth seeing, is very well suited as an appetizer in the preparation of such a journey.

Therefore we plan on our next journey we read many blogs of other travellers. So i search for informations about south america, and found the website

http://panamericanainfo.com/en/info

Many helpful blogs of travellers are linked there in details. Blogs who are helpful for Paperwork, Visa, Border crossings. Blogs who had collected GPS Waypoints of Wildcamp-Spots ore places who the travellers meet each other, so called "overlander hotspots". Blogs who had written in details about shipping costs and handling.

In short, a very comprehensive compendium of such a journey. From crossing the darian gap till many border crossings, very helpful informations.

There are also special themes linked deeply. Like travelling with dogs, travelling with kids, garages and mechanics in south america. This website is a little time machine for us overlanders, save us hours of searching at the internet.

Such projects live from us travellers. If you start your journey, I hope you remember about where you get so much informations, and you can help us others with updated informations.

Also the africa overland Network has a category "Panamerica / the Americas" http://www.africa-overland.net/The-Americas who is worth to visit, because some travelers are listened just on this website.

Also if you find there many blogs of travellers, here you may find some futher ones:

http://www.panamericana2010.de/Links/links.htm

Webcommunities:
http://panamericanaforum.org/index.php?mode=index
http://www.südamerika-forum.de/
http://www.amerika-forum.de/forum.php

Offroad training and school

These Videos are made at the famous 80s. They show us, how we have to use our cars on different terrains. In the beautiful australian landscape we can see how these beautiful old cars do their job! The Video teach us the basics of Offroad driving in a good way.

I guess also skilled drives find some reasons to watch these Videos besides of the cars and the funny hairstyle.

I think many of us travelers drive off road because they have to do it, to reach their targets. Not because they love to drive offroad. So they have to learn to drive off road during their trip.

Because of this we have these myths about these hardcore off road tracks in Cameroon and the Congo`s. Because they are heavy if you are not trained for these terrain.
If you had some experiences, you like to drive off road these tracks are fun and not really dangerous.

Inexperienced Drivers will choose there a wrong driving style, the wrong speed and take there to much risk. Therefore: try your car before you start your big trip. The local Offroad Clubs they will be happy to train you and help you to be prepared.

Ebola outbreak in West Africa

In Guinea, the Ebola virus has broken out. Since in the meantime, cases have been confirmed in the capital, the risk of spreading is given to neighboring countries, even in Canada there is a West Africa-traveler in quarantine because he showed the symptoms after return.

Here is a contribution of the SRF:

http://www.srf.ch/news/international/ebola-fieber-erreicht-guineische-hauptstadt

For all who are traveling just to the West Route and West Africa, this means that the borders can be closed at any time to prevent a further spread.

2009 Angola had, for example, respond to an outbreak in DR Congo in this way (https://de.globalvoicesonline.org/2009/01/15/angola-mit-ebola-um-die-ecke-sind-die-grenzen-geschlossen/).

Who is just getting started or who plan a Trans-Africa soon, should probably watch at a safe distance the development of that outbreak. Or avoid that area with driving to Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin and Nigeria bypassing the region.

 1976-2008 Ebola Outbreaks: Wikipedia http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebolavirus

So far, it never came to a broader distribution of this viral disease, against which there is no vaccine.

The virus is transmitted through blood and body fluids, so we overlanders belong probably not  to the classical risk group. 

The ferry from Iskenderun (turkey) to Damietta (egypt)

You can read in many blogs and websites, that we overlanders can't travel with the ferry, that we had to ship the car and take an airplane. These Informations are pretty outdated, when we watch these pictures:

 

A swiss guy who blogs under the name Cruise-the Planet did the crossing from Iskenderun (Turkey) to Damietta (Egypt) at march 2014. And he had manage it to stay in a cabin. Great news for us Overlanders!

At the Port in Iskenderun (Turkey) you can organize everything for the ferry. If there is no cabin-space left, you can organize there a flight and the whole transfer.

There are not many cabins, so you better should book the cabin early, or bring the time with you to wait for the ferry coming back. Or to be a lucky guy who get a cabin without a reservation like this guy.

The cabins are for two persons, if you travel alone you will have to share them. There is no entertainment or so, but you will get some food.

The first stretch from Iskenderun to Haifa (Israel) needs around 20hours. In Haifa the ferry does a stopover and some cars and trucks leave the ship, new one comes. After that the ferry needs around 12 hours to reach Damietta (Egypt).

The whole process is described thrilling, of paid bribes to a small odyssey until the vehicle finally could be driven out of the harbor.

Here is the Link to the Blog:

http://cruise-the-planet.ch 

Translated to English with: Google-Translate

A beautiful well written blog, i hope that google Translate did the job for you readers! Many thanks to Lukas, for allowing me to use his pictures!

Using an Euro5 Diesel car for an worldtrip?

The discussion what is better for an Worldtrip is endless. An Petrol car can handle bad fuel much better than modern diesel cars. For many years also mercedes use only their petrol based cars on their Mercedes Experience Tours in Africa and South America.

But today they use also their Common-Rail diesel cars on their Mercedes Experience Tours 



Source: http://www.unep.org/transport/pcfv/

What happens? I think the experience of worldtravellers, the escort cars on the paris dakar has showed, that it is possible to use newer cars. And what it need to use these cars abroad.

It is a fact that modern diesel with Euro5 exhaust emission standard and an managed diesel particulate filter "DPF" can`t handle bad fuel, or the using of the engine in regions 2500m above sea level.

At the following i will show you samples where the people get stranded, but too what you have to do, that you can using modern diesel on worldtrips - without hassle.

There are many well documented samples, where the travellers had breakdowns because of this:

An VW Crafter with Euro5 had many trouble and some expensive repair bills in south america:
http://b-u-globetrotter.de/Crafter.htm

The pensioner caravan through mongolia (many different brands):
 Rentnerkarawane durch die Mongolei

Another VW based story from 2014 from south america:
http://peterundsandra.blog.de/2014/01/16/16-januar-17601441/

Here an Euro5 G-Class PUR Mercedes story, they start an africa roundtrip and had just reach eqypt as they had to remove the Euro5 stuff and to do an downgrade to Euro3 without DPF:
wegaufzeit

Mercedes Sprinter 316 CDI mit Euro5 had too trouble in South America:
http://www.sb-beutel.de/Argentinien-Kolumbien

These sample shows us, that you CAN NOT use an modern Euro5 car in South America, Asia or Africa.

When you study that samples in details you will see that it is possible to avoid these breakdowns. Mercedes has special parameters and upgrades for some of their diesel based cars, all other (also other brands) have to do an downgrade to Euro3/4 and to take out the DPF.

With the older Euro4 Standard the diesel particulate filter "DPF" was not managed, therefore you can use these without much preparation, you can replace the DPF with an pipe.

These samples of travellers shows us too, that you had to do additional filtering of the fuel, to avoid that water or dirt can reach the Injectors, because that will cause too breakdowns and expensive repair bills.



Fuel filtration and water separation helps the injectors

In most of these samples the people had ask the seller and manufacture of the cars before that trip, if they can use the car on their worldtrip without special preparation.

They had say "no problem".. Also if you contact Mercedes, VW and others directly, you will will hear "no problem". Here you can show them, that there is a problem. 

You have to find someone who has experience with that, what is not easy. Maybe you contact one of these travellers who had use your brand and contact them - they will have these contacts of professionals who was able to help them.