The North Cape

Yesterday we clocked in at the North Cape at around 13.30 – a good thirty thousand kilometres and six and a half months after we’d left Cape Town on February 1. We popped the champagne and toasted ourselves to a long and extraordinary journey that took us to twelve African countries, a few stops in the Middle East and friends and holidays on mainland Europe.

After Switzerland and France we hit the road and cruised through Belgium, Holland and Denmark. Norway met us with lots of rain, cold nights (our tent is built for Africa, not Scandinavia). However, yesterday, when we reached our final destination on Cape To Cape – the sun came out. As it should!

Now we will trickle our way back to the southern parts of Sweden, but we will talk about the trip, look at pictures, re-read our journals and laugh at silly internal jokes for a long time to come (please let us know if we become completely unbearable).

Cape to Cape is a once in a lifetime journey. For all of you that have not done it yet – try it out. It’s worth it.

Our blog and our website will not die completely just because we are home, we’ll let you know if and when our next project is due because here we are wondering quietly: what’s next?!

A return to France

Two years ago we visited Cancale after our wedding in Sweden – and now we are back. After a few days in Bourgogne and the Loire valley we reached Bretagne today and savoured a Galette Normande with a cup of real French cidre, sitting at a small restaurent just off the quay. Not bad, rather the opposite.

We are enjoying France immensely and I never thought that I would get so hooked on burgundy wines! Well, I guess it is never too late to learn and after having visited a few vineyards in the area around Beaune I am utterly impressed.

We have had many curious neighbours at the campsites in Europe – but the contrast to the spontaneity we experienced in South Africa is striking. People (bar the French and the Brits) get quite embarrassed when we greet them instead of ignoring their stares. Well, today the experience was quite the opposite, a Land Rover pulled in and three minutes later its owner and his friend were at our spot chatting about the trip, the car and the technical challenges. A Land Rover is in deed an icebreaker.

Some of you might wonder what we are doing in France and why we are not on our way to Finland and Norwaywell I guess that was the original plan. But we are slowly running out of time and we dearly like this part of Europe, we have friends in Normandy, the food is great and so is the wine and the peopleso to answer the question what we are doing here, the answer is simple: because we can!

The next few days will take us to Normandy, through the Benelux-countries, Denmark and Norway. Sometimes mid-August we hope to reach the North Cape. If not before – we’ll hope to be in touch by then.

In the land of fondue and raclette

Switzerland is a fascinating country. Not very big but stunningly beautiful and with an intriguing mix of languages, religions, cultures and people. Spent our first night at Flims – a ski resort that turns into a bicycle Mecca in summer. At first we thought that we were bang in the middle of the Romansch speaking area. The team running the campsite spoke Romansch and German – but their first language was Romansch, and when we were going to order bread for the following day, the list was all in Romansch. But the host was nice enough to translate it all into English

But then we walked some three kilometres into the village, and apparently we crossed some kind of line, because now Swiss German was the first languagevery confusing. The waiter (himself of Dutch origin) at one of the cafés explained a bit about the language. In some schools Romansch is the main language of instruction, but not in Flims where the children are taught in German. However in Laax (less than ten kilometres away) they are taught in Romansch.

Now, Romansch is spoken by less than one per cent of the population, that is less than 800 000 people but they don’t speak the same dialect. There are in face twelve dialects – that they now try to get down to five.but it is not very easy, the waiter said, because some dialects are only spoken in isolated pockets of the canton of Grison.

Well we didn’t quite get it at the end so we decided that we must dig deeper into the Swiss soul – and started with the cheeses. Nothing beats and old and mature Gruyère

Back in The Old World

We have been quiet for a while – but that is what happens when you are sitting on a cargo ship that is crossing the Mediterranean Sea. We embarked in Israel and headed for Italy – it took us a week. A week of relaxation, good food and time to work – we had thought. Hell no. It was a week of poor food, sleep, nausea and us watching The West Wing…

But we are here now, in the land of Parma ham, Parmesan cheese, pasta, pizza and frescos. Spent the day in Bologna, admiring the buildings of the Old World, savouring on pasta Bolognese (the real one) and real Italian ice cream. It is not bad in the Old World after all

Israel was an interesting place – but not very friendly. Not until arrived at a campsite at a beach and we suddenly heard: I saw you in Long Street!

Sometimes there are words that you hear and understand – and yet you don’t. This was one of those moments. What on earth did he mean by: I saw you in Long Street.

Well, it meant exactly that – he had seen us in Long Street in Cape Town in January, and he was the owner of Mama Africa and he chatted and invited us for a beer. And suddenly it felt very homely and friendly again.

What else from Israel? Well, it is an interesting place that could have been a great place for showing that history does in deed teach us a thing or two. It could have been a fantastic place to show that reconciliation and tolerance is the key to development, cooperation and peace. It could have been. It is not. And we fully understood why when we saw the so-called security wall that Israel is (unlawfully according to the UN-tribunal in The Hague) is building to seal off the Palestinian territories from Israel.

Whatever the reason – a wall that is more than eight meter high is not the solution to peace and stability. Isn’t that obvious?

An album from Jordan

Andreas has uploaded more pictures from Jordan and Egypt, in addition to that the album Behind the scenes has been upgraded with new pics from our trip. Click on Fotoarkiv (the old Multimedia tab) and see what we have been up to.

Into the Holy Land

Just realised that it has been a while since we wrote on the blog, but our internet connection in Jordan was not the best and then we went to Israel and spent the first two nights at the lake of Galilee – without internet. But first things first.

Jordan will definitely end up as one of our favourite countries on this trip. Relaxed, fairly well organised, good food and nice people. It was great to finally see and camp out in Wadi Rum – but I guess that we would have appreciated it even more had it not been for all the desert driving we have already done on this trip.but, hey, spending a night in a desert nature reserve is not bad at all. And in the morning when we woke up and climbed down from our roof-top-tent, three curious camels were watching us – probably wondering what we were doing there!

Went to see some more ³old stones² in the shape of a crusader castle in Karak and spent a night at Feynan eco-lodge before heading to Amman. It was really nice to see how the city has developed, more cafés and restaurants, some of the old parts completely revamped and hip. Wild Jordan still served some of the best juice in townif you are in Amman, try the strawberry juice with lime and mint.

We also discovered the shopping centre around circle number six (could have been any where in the world) – and after some really good Lebanese food we headed for the border. It took us two hours to drive there – and five hours to cross. Everything in the car had to be taken out and scanned, then the car was checked separately behind closed doors, our water was tested, our books scrutinised – but the people doing it were correct and tried to be as efficient as possible. So we left the border post one experience richer – and sat foot on the Holy Land.

First impression? This country has the ugliest bank notes so far!

Over the Red Sea

It wasn’t planned to happen as fast as it did, but when we arrived at the ferry terminal in Nuweiba we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of the process of getting the car out of Egypt. Our original plan was to scout around the first day in Nuweiba to get a grip of what papers we needed and what authorities we had to see…but with our lack of Arabic and the port authorities lack of English that was difficult to explain – so instead of preparing the crossing, we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of the paper work.

It must be noted that the authorities in Nuweiba are much more helpful and efficient than their counterparts in Aswan – and in this port there is no self-declared-all-mighty fixer but a correct officer from the tourist police who took us through all the steps one by one (without hinting of a little something in return)…and there were many of them – steps to go through that is….

I am not sure how many pieces of papers that were signed and how many stamps that were made in our documents but after some two and a half hours (this all took place within the harbour so no long distances to cover) we finally could reverse on to the ferry. And eventually we left Egypt. On time? I don’t know. Because I don’t know when we were supposed to have left – we were given three different departure times and none of them corresponded with the time that we actually left the harbour.

It was great to arrive in Jordan. Organised and efficient. Found a good spot to set up camp just south of Aqaba – a friendly place just by the beach called Bedouin Moon Camping. So we decided to stay a couple of nights, celebrate the Swedish midsummer and enjoy the Red Sea.

Cape-Cairo

Cecil Rhodes dreamt about connecting the British colonies with a railroad running from Cape to Cairo. He never managed to complete his vision but we have just managed to complete the journey.

When we drove towards Cairo the other day, suddenly the Pyramids appeared before our eyes almost like an illusion. But it was not, there they were, some 4 000 years old piles of stones if you like.or if you look at it another way, one of the great monument of a culture and civilisation that lived here, on the same spot as where we have set up camp. We could even get a glimpse of the Pyramids from our campsite (that is if you stand up and stretch a bit to make yourself extra tall).

The following day we tried to beat the crowds and went to the ticket office just as it was about to open, and to our amazement there was no crowd to beat. It was only I, Andreas and the Sphinx. No buses. No tour groups. Only a few vendors and some camel- and horsemen offering a ride. For the first hour we were basically alone and that was great.

Ever since I was a child I have heard and read about the Pyramids, now we are here. In Cairo. It took us four and a half months to complete our Cape to Cairo and now we are ready for the rest. But to be quite honest Africa was always meant to be the highlight on this endeavour and it feels a bit emotional that we have just completed that stretch. Now, there are more challenges that lay ahead but we will leave the African continent in a matter of days. And yes, it feels a bit sad. And yes, we are a bit proud.

The system

So we tried to beat the system – it didn’t work. This is in short what happened.

After we arrived in Aswan the fixer called Khemal (as my Arabic is all but non-existent this is probably not how you spell his name, but this is what it sounds like) enters the scene. This was expected as the fixer on the Sudanese-side, Mazar, had told us that Khemal was the person who could speed up the paperwork in Egypt.

Well, it turned out that Mr. K did not speak much English, he had an arrogant attitude and we got bad vibes. So we thought it was better to try and do all the customs paper, the traffic police, the insurance and the new number plates without a fixer.

Now the car finally arrived yesterday and after much discussion with port authorities we managed to get it off the bargethanks to the kind Mr. Nasser and a Mr. Ned and a Mr. Hassan that helped us with the language.

Today we were supposed to do the paperworknow it turned out that everyone in the port wanted Mr. Khemal to do it for us.

We managed to complete the customs form, but then it was just a jokewhen the traffic police finally arrived we couldn’t get our form, because the only person who had forms were Mr. Khemal, and we couldn’t get our car checked, we couldn’t get number plates, we couldn’t get insurancewell, we couldbut then we had to go back into town to get the right form and find the right person and then maybe it could be donetomorrow (and this was now our own fault as we had not hired Khemal to do it from the start, we were bluntly told).

It could be all arranged today – if only we asked Khemal who, against a small fee (it was actually quite small) would help us.

So we gave up. The system had beaten us and we had to ask Khemal to please arrange with the paperwork

Two hours later we could leave the port ­ much thanks to the three Jordanians who helped us through the language barrier, without them I think we would still have been in the harbour trying to understand what was going on….

Crossing Lake Nasser

It is not possible to drive from Sudan to Egypt – so we had to take the ferry. It looked quite good on the picture that was printed on the ticket. It didn’t look as good in reality. We had opted for second class instead of a cabin (in hindsight this was not our best decision during this trip) and put down our bags and blanket under one of the lifeboats – the only place where we could find some shade and waited for the ferry to get going. It took some three hoursbut then we were on a steady course towards Egypt.

It was great in a way. To sleep on deck under the stars. People spread their blankets (or card board boxes) everywhere and just went to sleep. It was a bit hard as well, but we managed to sleep for a few hours and when we did not sleep we could watch the stars. Early morning the men started their prayers on deck, now the picture became even more surreal, the night, the stars, the moving boat and men in jelabiya praying. Then came the sunrise, the breakfast (beans and bread) and Egypt. A slight chaos broke out as we were disembarking, but this is Egypt. It was expected.

Unfortunately our car could not travel on the same ferry and we are now waiting in Aswan for the barge that transports cargo (and our car) over lake Nasser to arrive – hopefully that will be Sunday.

So what do we do in Aswan in the meantime? First of all we had to find out what the time was. This could, in many people’s eyes, sound like a fairly simple thing to do. Not so. In Egypt they have had daylight saving time up until last year – something that must have been very confusing for the Egyptians a lot. Our mobiles were not totally in concurrence the one with the other. Neither were the hotel we stayed and the restaurant where we had supper. Was it the same time as in Sudan? Or the same time in Europe? No one seemed to have the answer. Andreas searched on the internet – and got even more confused at first. But after an hour – or was it two – agreed that the hotel was right. And one of our mobile (don’t remember which one) had also picked up the right time, the same as in Europe!

So once we had finalised what the time was we could finally start exploring Aswan, the Corniche along the Nile, the old Souq and the food

We don’t have pictures yet to show you, but click on Fotoarkiv (the old Multimedia tab) and you can now see some video clips from our trip in northern Kenya