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A ginger in Jinja
You’d think a ginger in Africa was a fairly rare phenomenon but we’ve met our fair share. In Sudan we met a fellow ginga who introduced us to a brilliant Tim Minchin music video which has become a bit of a theme song for our trip. It’s a song about prejudice. And gingers. It’s called Only a ginger can call another ginger “ginger”. Check it out, it’s a good laugh. Needless to say when we arrived in Jinja, the adventure capital of Uganda, we found ourselves singing the ginger/ginga/Jinja song quite a lot! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVN_0qvuhhw Jinja is located at the outlet of the ...
Monkeying around in the Simiens
One cold winter’s night in London we were sitting around our flat savouring our regular Monday night curry, watching the BBC’s Life series, as we did every Curry Monday. This week’s program featured Ethiopia’s Simien mountain range. An aerial shot swooped in to show a dramatic escarpment, sheer cliffs over a thousand metres high abruptly ending in jagged pinnacles of sedimentary rock, only to be met by gentle green grasslands of the high plateau. A hundred-strong troop of Gelada baboons grazed peacefully while langemeyer eagles soared overhead. The scenery was stunning. It was a distant dream of ours to one ...
Re~Cycling bikes at Glad’s House
On our journey south we are proud to support the UK charity Re~Cycle, who provide bicycle aid for Africa. Re~Cycle collects unwanted, but still usable bikes in the UK and ships them to various partner organisations all over Africa. This not only recycles the bikes and saves them from going to landfill in the UK, but also provides a cheap, sustainable form of transport for people in Africa. The bikes are packed into a container and shipped to the partner organisation. Upon arrival trained bicycle mechanics get to work and maintain and fix up the bikes to get them ready ...
Game on – Kenya with the whanau
After several weeks of roughing it, bouncing over 1000 km of rough, remote roads, wildcamping every night, covered in dust, sweat and our own stink (thank goodness Icebreaker sponsored us and provided us with so many unstinky clothes – simply perfect for a trip like this!!) living out of a rather cramped car in blistering hot weather eating VERY meagre, basic rations after running out of food….….. What better way to recover from our adventure than a full three nights in Samburu Game Lodge! We had the excellent company of the entire Horwell whanau (who were in fine form), a ...
Sidling Lake Turkana and scaling Mt Poi
Our journey through the Omo Valley had been a highlight of the trip so far, but the adventure wasn’t over yet – we still had over 600 km of rough “roads” - if you could call them that - through the wild and woolly northwestern corner of Kenya before we reached civilisation again. And what an adventure it was! The previous night spent wild camped in the desert close to the border had been one of the more unpleasant nights on the trip. While setting up camp we had heard a curious buzzing sound, like we were about to be ...
Into the unknown – the Omo Valley
After a long day on the road battling cattle and human traffic we navigated our way through the bustling city of Addis Ababa to Wim’s campsite. The bar was already occupied with our new found friends Andrew and Tina with their Sand Loving Land Rover, and Sam, our entertaining British travelling companion who was coming through the Omo Valley with us for the next couple of weeks. The Omo Valley route into Kenya had been on our minds for most of the trip as it posed the most adventurous route of our travels to date. We had read loads of encounters ...
Adventures on the roof of Africa
The image of Ethiopia many people conjure up in their minds is a far cry from the real thing. Before I went there I had always thought of Ethiopia as a barren, dry, flat desert with millions of starving people and a certain amount of banditry and despair thrown in – a view which largely stems from the images of famine from the late 1980’s. What we found when we arrived in Ethiopia was a country unlike any other in Africa, and certainly very different to what we had envisaged. You could call it a mountain kingdom, the roof of ...
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Brett and Ness are on a wee adventure…
The two greenturkeys and their trusty steed, Rodders, set off in February 2011 on an overland mission of epic proportions – across Europe, through the Middle East and down through Africa – rockin’ like Moroccans through twenty-nine countries and across three continents, climbing and adventuring along the way.
The main goals of the trip are to get out there and explore, rock climb in new and wonderful places, go adventuring, tramping, see the sunrise from the highest peak around, get to know the locals and their customs, make new friendships, learn new skills, and of course, have fun!
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As keen cyclists, we are supporting a UK charity called Re~Cycle who take unwanted bikes and ship them to impoverished areas of Africa to improve people’s opportunities and access to life basics such as water, work, schooling by providing them with a sustainable form of transport. We will be visiting some Re~Cycle projects en route, meeting up with local communities to see how people’s lives have been changed by having something as simple as a means of transport. We are also fundraising for Re~Cycle by doing challenges along the way, so please sponsor us!!
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Kia kaha
ness and brett
the greenturkeys
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