A man who grew up in a rough neighbourhood of Glasgow, Scotland, and who, as a child, trudged through knee-deep snow and dodged freezing rain, years later emigrated to South Africa and met a young woman who spent her childhood holidays in the Kruger Park and her every available moment in the pool – come rain or shine.  The woman’s name is Sandy and the Scotsman’s name is Alan.

Sandy Says…

Together we dipped our toes into the world of overland travel with our first Isuzu KB Bakkie and roof-top tent.  Then followed a Mitsubishi Colt ClubCab, which took us to more adventurous places. Getting more and more challenged, we bought an Izuzu Double Cab 4×4 and travelled extensively through Namibia, Botswana, Malawi, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.  Once we had managed to break the chassis on that vehicle with our adventures, we bought a Mitsubishi Triton L200 CR.   I don’t remember on which of our first cars we had to manually engage and disengage the wheel hubs, but I do remember walking through water barely over ankle height and wondering if it was too deep to navigate.  As a side note, Alan did the checking once of much deeper water and – whilst halfway across the river – up popped two crocodile eyes not far away!

Our stock-in-trade answer to any vehicle problem is to break out the gas bottle, make some coffee and dig through the ammo box to find the biscuits.  Then we think about a solution to our problem 😊

After many episodes, mistakes, learning curves, fun, excitement and laughter, the idea of essaying ‘Cape to Cairo’ became a reality when Alan bought a Unimog cab and chassis and built up a proper overlander vehicle.  We took a year off – Alan left his business with a ‘trusted manager’ and I passed my clients into the care of a fellow graphic designer.  We dived in Lake Malawi, trekked the gorillas in Uganda, watched the sunset over the Ngorogoro Crater – and too much more to detail in this short space. Let’s not forget that Alan was over 60 at the time!

The trip was phenomenal.  The experience was beyond words.  We met the most awesome people and we did the most amazing things.  Yes, we’d do it again – and this time we wouldn’t even wait to pack.  We would just go.

Coming back was eventful too – the ‘trusted manager’ had bankrupted the company and we had to start again from scratch.  I was more fortunate, as the chap who took over my clients wanted to emigrate to Ireland, so I got them all back again 😊

Life moves on, the years pass and today we have an Alan-converted Ford Transit Campervan. But there is no chance that this will be our last vehicle:  Alan is already planning the next one, which will of course be bigger and have 4 x 4 capabilities.