Upon arrival in Wadi Halfa, we sought out a fixer named Mazar Mahir who had helped some of the other travelers we’d met along the way. By pure chance we ran into him at the open-air restaurant we stopped at for dinner. We pitched our tent in his yard and he got the paperwork organized for crossing the border the next day and even fed us breakfast the next morning. If all that Mazar did for us wasn’t enough already he even managed to find a half used front tire for the bike left by another traveler. This totally saved our bacon, since the front tire was already starting to show steel belting and there was nowhere in sight that we might find a new one. Thanks Mazar!





Getting out of Sudan was harder than getting in and we were glad to have Mazar at our side during the two hour-long process.





I’d intentionally left Egypt off of the Carnet, since they required a deposit of 800% of the vehicle's value. Not that it mattered anyway, since the document was already expired. So off we marched into the quagmire of Egyptian customs holding a document with Egypt clearly crossed off on the back cover, expired by more than two months, and containing a bunch of new pages that we’d obviously altered, printed, and inserted ourselves. This seemed like a terrible idea.





Getting through Egyptian customs mostly involved walking back and forth between offices having people fill out the same information on different forms and put their super special stamp on it. It started simply enough, with the man holding the exit stamp examining the Carnet. He shuffled me off to another office to fill out another form and then to an office that contained a guy with no forms and no stamps who seemed to simply look after a box of money sitting on a table. They told me it would cost t $75 USD to stamp the Carnet. I still don’t know whether or not I got the standard western tourist routing or received special treatment because they noticed the discrepancies on the Carnet. This was only the beginning of a process that eventually produced a dossier of a dozen forms each filled out by a different guy in a different office. Each of these form filler-outers had a big boss who required some baksheesh for final approval. I sweated every single one as the Carnet sat there on their desk, just waiting for our forgery to be discovered.





We finally got to the biggest of the big bosses, a large, slope-browed fellow who seemed to have his game face on. He sent me back to the first office that I’d visited four hours prior to get another stamp on one of the bits of paper in the dossier. By the time I returned it was time for lunch. After an hour, the big boss of the big bosses returned from lunch and quickly noticed that my California bike registration was expired. I thought it only a matter of moments before he examined the Carnet closely enough to notice that it too was expired. When he pushed the Carnet aside, I willfully resisted the urge to snatch it from the desk. The seconds that ticked by felt like minutes as he scowled at the other documents. He finally looked up, smiled and boomed a hearty ‘Welcome to Egypt” and sent me off to collect two car sized license plates that we’re supposed to carry around with us now. I would have accepted a car-sized spare tire to carry around if it would get us away from that border.








We spent two days riding along the banks of the Nile and the canals the radiated away from its life-giving waters, turning barren land into cultivated fields flanked by villages. Wild camping was no longer a very good option as alongside the Nile there was rarely a break in the villages, so we rode long days to reach Luxor where we would catch our first views of the remnants of Egypt’s ancient civilizations.











We rode to the Nile's west bank of and up into the Valley of the Kings where all the tombs of famous pharaohs like Ramses III and Tutankhamen can be found. During the Middle Kingdom of the Egyptian empire, royalty had become wary of conspicuous above ground tombs like the great pyramids of Giza. To thwart would-be raiders and conquerors from making off with all of the pharaoh's treasures bound for the afterlife with them, they constructed their tombs well hidden below the mountain in the Valley of the Kings.





Wandering the ruined temples of Luxor is nothing less than spellbinding, with everything constructed on a colossal scale. As we walked through the relic of Karnack, I marveled at the fact that everything we stepped through was built by people’s hands, thousands of years ago. Imagine an adventurer coming from some small village far away to set eyes on this place at the height of it’s glory. They would have heard stories of the place from others, but I can’t imagine that words could convey what they would have found here. It sets the mind to wonder what will be left when our time is finished. Will a future civilization wander the ruins of Manhattan wondering what life was like for people strolling across Times Square?














Egypt generally appears to be not far removed from a police state, with frequent checkpoints outfitted as bunkers with healthy garrisons of personnel, armored vehicles and heavy artillery. You get the feeling everywhere that they are prepared for some massive civil unrest to kick off at any moment. In fact, we weren’t able to get far from Luxor without a full police escort. Annoyed, I asked, ‘Why do we need an escort?’ From the scowling police trooper came the curt reply ‘Danger for you’. To us the prospect that there was some particular danger to us as tourists seemed a bit silly but we weren’t given much of a choice as the police truck carrying two guys with assault weapons in the back became a fixture in my rear-view mirror.





We lost them a couple of times, which was a welcome reprieve so that we could stop for something to eat, take a photo or just have a piss without an audience. But each time we would pick up a new tail at the next checkpoint. Their demeanor and the way that they passed us off from one group of police to the next at each checkpoint began to feel like we were espionage agents being covertly delivered to a safe house. Whenever they deemed to drive in front of us, the guys in the back of the truck were making this expression with their hands that I normally associate with Italians talking animatedly about food, with the palm upturned, fingers squished together, and the hand bouncing up and down while staring our direction with a pinched look. People were doing this to us in all different contexts so we had absolutely no idea what they meant. We figured it either meant slow down, speed up, or they'd just had some really good felafel for lunch.





In their zeal to protect us from other Egyptians (that so far had only wanted to buy us lunch, have tea, and take photos with us), the police created a real danger for us. When we were delayed at checkpoints waiting for the pass-off to the next group of police heading into the town of Asyut, the sun went down and forced us to ride for hours after dark. About half of drivers in Egypt prefer not to use their headlights, and some of those are motorbikes riding the wrong way along the shoulder of the road. People are constantly having near misses and we saw two motorbike accidents on the roadside. Islamist extremists notwithstanding, this was probably the most dangerous thing that we could choose to do in Egypt. The cloak and dagger routine didn’t end when we found a place to stay in Asyut. We managed to lose them coming into town, but before long we peeked out the window to see the police truck sitting in front of the guesthouse. They even insisted on following us to dinner and a restaurant half a block away, within sight of the guesthouse. The next morning there they were, ready to resume the spy game routine all the way to Cairo.





Our campsite in Cairo was a dusty compound attended by a huge, lovable Rottweiler called Magic who spent his nights trying to bulldoze his way inside our tent. Cairo is a city 20 million strong and we didn’t relish the prospect of making our way into the heart of the city to visit the museum, so we camped outside the city and took the train in. Temperatures plummeted when the sun went down and we spent our nights shrinking to the bottom of our sleeping bags trying to keep out the cold.





Traffic in Cairo generally does not stop, but only slows down, and the only way to cross five lanes of traffic is to simply walk out in front of cars hoping for the best. It seems to defy reason, but you constantly see people walking straight into the street paying no attention whatsoever, talking on their phone, wholly dependent on the drivers hurtling towards them not running them down. We called them blockers. After standing by on the curb waiting for breaks in traffic that just didn’t come, we got a sense of the rhythm in Cairo, and like the locals, we stepped out into traffic leaving our fate to Allah. With the aid of some good blockers we were walking… like Egyptians. Sorry. Had to be said.





At tourist attractions like the Pyramids of Giza, we were often asked by Egyptian tourists if they could take photos with us. There weren't many western tourists around, but still it was fairly baffling for us. Jamie and I are now surely plastered on random Facebook pages across Egypt.





As we rode north from Cairo out onto the Sinai Peninsula, the landscape became increasingly desolate and militarized. We rode through a tunnel that went beneath the Suez Canal, and tried to take a road across the north end of the Sinai, but were turned back at a heavily armed military post. Instead, we had to ride all the way to the southern tip of the Sinai and come back up the other side. The scene became distinctly more biblical feeling.





We finally arrived at our destination of Dahab, a windsurf and diving mecca of sorts, and found a place out of the wind to park it for a few days. We found some masks and snorkels and rode up and down the Red Sea coast looking for interesting bits of reef to explore with the mountains of Saudi Arabia across the water as a backdrop.

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two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

great trip report, you got any more pictures of Dahab? I spent a summer there in '98. Dahab and Terrabin great fun snorkled everyday morning and evening for over a month.

Just got back to Dahab -more pics coming....this is an easy place to stuck around, eh?

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Having been landlocked since leaving the Kenyan coast, we set off for the Middle East in the hopes of some waves to ride in the Mediterranean Sea and found ourselves tripping over one archeological marvel after another along the way.

Tramping the Hidden City

Within an hour of getting on the bus headed North from Dahab in Egypt, we passed a great spot for a photo, I had to take a piss, and the guy behind me was jamming his knees into the seat. I was missing our free and easy style of motorbike travel something fierce. Given that Egypt is our best bet for finding a boat to Turkey, the difficulty we had entering Egypt with the bike the first time, and the fact that she is traveling on falsified documents, we decided not to push our luck trying to get the bike in a second time. We’d love to continue riding north straight through the Middle East, but the situation in Syria would make that a less than festive affair. So for the next couple of weeks we were backpackers, relegated to public transport.






We left the windswept Sinai Peninsula and crossed to Jordan where the temperature dropped as we gained altitude until we finally were driving through snowdrifts. We’d ventured into these mountains eager to reach the hidden city of Petra. The next day we woke to a white world covered in six inches of fresh snow and all the roads closed. It was clear that we weren’t going anywhere soon as we huddled around the kerosene burning stove in the central room of the guest house, which was the only heat source in the place.





The next day the weather broke and after sliding our way down some icy streets, we began the trek towards the entrance of the slot canyon leading to the ancient city of Petra, which fortunately sits just below the snow line.








Pink layers of sedimentary rock flowed on either side of the passage (the Siq) leading our way down a canyon, which for me was fantastic enough in itself to make the journey.








While I’d seen pictures of the of the rock carved buildings of Petra and remembered the scene in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade that featured the city, I was still unprepared for the view peeking through the end of the canyon.





The ancient treasury building stood before us glowing pink in the mid-day sun, its 2000-year-old craftsmanship perfectly preserved by the overhanging rock. I keep using this word lately, but I just don’t know a better one to describe the feeling – it was spellbinding.





The Treasury was just the beginning of the city, and as we wandered forward the canyon opened up and lots more ancient buildings could be seen ahead.





We were allowed free run of the place and found ways to climb up to any of the buildings perched above the canyon floor that we pleased. Most of the other buildings in the city were less well preserved than the Treasury as none of the others featured the same protective overhang that would have shielded them from weathering.














We hiked up the canyons radiating out from the valley floor get a view of the city and its surroundings.








Petra was constructed in somewhere around 312 BCE as the capital city of the Nabataeans and was a center of their caravan trade. With towering rocks above a narrow passageway and a perennial stream, the city could be protected as well as a fortress. The site was unknown to the western world up until 1812, when the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt publicized its existence.





After a day of our own investigations, we left this wonder of the world to the next round of explorers. Trotting back up the canyon in the afternoon, when the late morning rosy glow of the treasury had faded to dull beige, it was hard not to start singing the Indiana Jones theme music on the way out.

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two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

Accidental Pilgrims

After spending so much time in Africa, arrival in the state of Israel induces a mild culture shock. Everything is well organized, roads are perfect, and there are dudes in full spandex pedaling $4K road bikes around. We got a change of pace from not understanding Arabic to not understanding Hebrew. We thought that Egypt was tight on security, but Israel is on another level with soldiers everywhere, who carry their weapons even when in transit. Jamie made it through the border OK, but they were less sure about me, with lots of questions about where I'd been and what I was doing there. They kept us at the border for nearly three hours while they checked me out. Israel was also a shock to our budget as everything was much more expensive than we'd become accustomed to. We told ourselves that it was well worth the trouble since as we may never be in this neighborhood of the world again.





Jerusalem is a global focal point of history, culture, religion, and politics. In this city, these elements converge in a concentrated stew of people, traditions, and buildings, all of which portray some facet of the the stories born here. The layering of cultures and their artifacts continues to the present day with views of the Tower of King David alongside modern high-rise buildings and modern technology spilling over stones put into place millennia ago.








Muslims, Jews, and Christians all live side by side here, each with deep historical and spiritual connections to the city and its holy sites. The Temple Mount is the supposed site of the creation of Adam from the dust of the earth, Abraham’s binding of Isaac, the First and Second Jewish Temples, storage of the Ark of the Covenant, and Muhammad’s ascent to heaven.





Before destruction of the First Temple, The Ark of the Covenant containing the stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments was stowed in its inner sanctum, the Holiest of Holies, where only the High Priest was allowed. Since no one knows exactly where the Holiest of Holies was located, many Jews don’t visit the Temple Mount for fear of inadvertently treading upon it.





The history of Jerusalem is a dizzying who’s who tour of ancient civilizations that began at the first settlement of Gibbon Spring around 3500 BCE. It’s taken me a while to keep it all straight, but went something like this:


King Solomon built the first temple forty years after King David had conquered the city in 1800 BCE and everything was groovy until Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians showed up in 560 BCE to tear down the temple and sent the Jews into exile. After the Persians took the city from the Babylonians, the Jews returned and built the second temple in 516 BCE and a couple centuries later Alexander the Great rolled in to take charge. When the Romans finally arrived in 70 CE, they destroyed the Second Temple built by King Herod, then came the Byzantines in 324 CE, followed by the Muslims in 638 CE, and finally the Crusaders in 1099 CE (insert Monty Python Joke here). Saladin took Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187, followed by the Mameluks of Egypt, until the Ottomans absorbed it into their empire in 1517, and everything was cool for 400 years until the British conquered the city in 1917. With the rise of the Zionist Movement, the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, and then the six-day war of 1967, the region has remained a hotbed of conflict throughout the 20th century with Jerusalem and its sacred sites at the center of it all. If you’ll look at a map you can see that the disputed Palestinian Territory of the West Bank virtually encircles Jerusalem.





Religious pilgrims of one sort or another, many of whom had traveled far to visit their sacred places, surrounded us wherever we roamed. To me, the structures we wandered through were the subject of histories and stories that just never seemed like real places. I suppose that its just a normal side effect of being on the road for a long time to feel like everywhere you’re headed is just another new place to find some food and somewhere to sleep. But Jerusalem made us pilgrims of our own sort as we wandered around trying to connect this real place and people living their lives to events that transpired millennia ago and generated one of the most important human mythologies.





The lower portion of Western Wall of the temple was the only structure left standing after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE and always holds crowd of people praying.





We visited the hall of the Last Supper. But it was lunchtime.




I lit a candle at the Church of Dormition, resting place of the Virgin Mary, pinch hitting for my Mom, who was raised Catholic.






We walked the Via Dolorosa, the path that Jesus walked carrying his own cross. The path leads to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built on the site where Jesus is believed to have been tried, crucified, buried, and resurrected. Christians offer prayers and rub handkerchiefs on the Stone of Unction, where Jesus’s body is said to have been anointed before burial.








There’s all kinds of cool stuff in there – the Prison of Christ where Franciscan Friars allege that Jesus was held, the Rock of the Cavalry that bears a hole that is said to have been where Jesus’s cross was raised, and tombs of the Crusaders.








We usually had no idea what anything was and gravitated to anything that a crowd was staring at and put on our own solemn stare hoping to be within earshot of a tour guide. Are a few explanatory placards too much to ask for the uninitiated? Now I can hear you thinking, “Ancient ruins, historical sites, and churches are nice and all but I can see all this stuff in National Geographic with better photos than yours. What about the surf?! Where da waves bro? “
A Mediterranean Baptism

We’d been landlocked since Kenya and I’d never surfed in the Mediterranean Sea, so we were pretty keen to find a wave. We enlisted the help of our friendly neighborhood Couch Surfer, Guy, as our host who gave us a spot to crash in his ocean-view apartment and a crash course in Israeli culture and nightlife.



We found some boards to ride and spied some little waves that looked like just enough to keep the surf journey stoke alive.





Swell is generated over relatively short fetch in the Med compared to the open ocean, so the waves tend to be of the short-period gutless variety. I’ve had more exciting surf sessions, but we weren’t complaining. Jamie hasn’t been surfing very long and the small waves were just about her size. For me, it felt fantastic just to be in the ocean riding waves again after months of riding through jungles, mountains, and deserts.





When we’d had our fill of Mediterranean peelers, we headed for calmer and denser waters at the Dead Sea. Filling a depression along the Israel-Jordan border created by tectonic rifting, the shore of the Dead Sea boasts the lowest surface elevation on the planet at more than 425m below sea level.





Pretty sure I’m going to be in trouble for posting that one.


Since it became disconnected from the Mediterranean Sea about two million years ago, its inflows have historically been balanced by surface evaporation, causing salt and mineral concentrations to rise, so that it's now almost 9 times more salty than the ocean. It stings like crazy if you get even a drop in your eye, and it counter intuitively leaves an oily-slick feel on your skin when you emerge from the water. With most of the Jordan River (its main input) now being diverted for agriculture, the Dead Sea is drying up and its surface drops about 1.2 m every year and makes it even more briny. The super high salt and mineral content of the water makes it very dense and you float to the surface like styrofoam, which is pretty fun.





Having left our camping gear in Egypt with the bike, our budget could only stand so much tourism in Israel, so we hopped back on the bus and retreated to the Red Sea of Egypt. As it turned out, the waves we rode were just icing on the cake of our vagabonding trip through to the Middle East, which included more history and culture that we could wrap our heads around in two weeks. When we returned to Dahab on the Sinai Peninsula, I was relieved to find our beloved motorbike safe and sound right where we’d left her and ready to go for a ride. Unfortunately, we’ve now just about run out of Africa to ride.

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I haven't been here for a while, but it gives me time to catch up...such a change for you from Africa to Israel, I imagine!? Where are you off to next? Are you heading northward back to Europe (maybe I missed it if you already mentioned it, so sorry for sounding ignorant and asking a question you already answered!)?

Hey folks,

We've had some downtime on the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, so Jamie put together a little film of our time in the Ugandan jungle with our fellow primates.


Meet the Nshongi Group | bugsonmyboard

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hey yuma - absolutely an abrubt change. We're now looking for a boat to get across the Mediterranean to Turkey and we'll ride onward towards Europe after that. Still a bit cold hope we don't freeze in the mountains of Turkey

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So, you started out with a surfboard in Africa. Now you will be two up in Europe with no surfboard anywhere. I guess I should start to feel cheated by the title of this thread.
However, if you keep the pictures and the narrative going you, and your retinue of assorted women might be forgiven.
Which is to say how is Turkey?

Oi Vey!
Hey ms. Concha ... you really should READ the report before coming out of your shell! Unbelievable!

Seriously - I miss my surfboard! But it was a long way with no waves across N. Africa without a wave in sight. May need to change the title of the blog from 'bugsonmyboard' to 'bugsonmybroad' tho.

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two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

Perched at the edge of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula we’d run out of Africa to ride. With Syria off-limits, if we wanted to keep our wheels rolling, we would have to find a way across the Mediterranean.
Downtime




The problem was that shipping companies seemed to change operators every couple of months and most information was out of date. So, we had some down time in Dahab figuring it out and enjoyed every day that we didn’t have to wake up and ride somewhere else. We rode the beaches fringed with aqua blue waters,





snorkeled to our heart’s content,





attended the local camel races,





and provided Dyna Rae with some much needed TLC. She got some shiny new spark plugs, an oil change, and a valve adjustment.





Top dead center baby.



Prophetic Highs

We finally got motivated to get off our lazy hummus munching arses, tear ourselves away from our regular falafel stand, and go check out Mount Sinai. This was the peak where Moses stayed for forty days and forty nights before he descended with some stone tablets and laid down the law.

"And the LORD said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there: and I will give thee tablets of stone, and a law, and commandments which I have written; that thou mayest teach them. And Moses rose up, and his minister Joshua: and Moses went up into the mount of God. “ Exodus 24:12-13

With the rules so etched out by none other than “the finger of God”, there were no more excuses for coveting your neighbor’s hot wife in yoga pants or bearing false witness about borrowing his lawn mower. A short time later the confessional was invented.





Instead of a welcome home party, Moses returned to find his people worshiping a golden calf. Not so much an animal lover, Moses broke the tablets in anger and had to write up some new ones that were placed into the Arc of the Covenant which later disappeared from the Holiest of Holies at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on the destruction of the First Jewish Temple, and was perhaps spirited away to Ethiopia where they won’t let tourists on motorbikes see them. This trip is really coming together.


We had a heck of a time getting to the holy mount when the big boss at the first police checkpoint insisted that our Egyptian documents for the bike were expired and we would have to pay a fine. We were delayed for an hour sorting it out with him before we were allowed to get underway.





As usual, we had underestimated the task before us. It was a 2,600 foot ascent to the top of Mt. Sinai, which we decided to begin at 2 in the afternoon...wearing motorcycle boots.








As it turns out, in addition to jungle gorilla tracking, dual-sport boots are also pretty functional footwear for biblical mountain climbing. Having neglected to bring my warm jacket, I also wore my moto jacket to the top.





As we made the summit and gazed across the incredibly rugged landscape that held such massive historical and religious significance my mind mostly dwelt on what terrible shape I was in after sitting on a motorcycle for 3 months. While I moaned about my poorly functioning body, Jamie basked in the late afternoon glow pondering prophetic thoughts. Or maybe she was just knackered too. And wishes I would stop taking photos of her.





Our young Bedouin guide had to get us moving from the summit so that we didn’t get caught out there in the dark. Most of the folks in this desert are Bedouins, descended from their nomadic ancestors that date to biblical times. While most have abandoned the nomadic lifestyle, they still retain many elements of the traditional Bedouin culture and traditions. We descended as quickly as we could with the peaks that towered above our paths catching the last golden rays of sun.





It was just about dark when we got to the bottom with the temperature dropping rapidly. We’d planned to ride back to Dahab that night, but the cold and prospect of being held up by the police after dark had us hunting for some sort of accommodation nearby. We found a Bedouin run place, with beds for only $4 each and a fellow who could whip us up some vegetable soup for supper. All that we missed were our toothbrushes.





After another week of our leisurely lifestyle in Dahab it was finally time to get underway. Our original plan had been to take a boat from Port Said in Egypt to Iskenderun in Turkey, but the operator had since changed the story saying that they couldn’t take us as passengers. This meant that we would have to be in Port Said to load the bike, take a bus to Cairo, fly to Istanbul, then to Adana, and take a bus to Iskenderun. This all would have to happen in the 24-hour period that the ship would take to get there, which would cut it very close. With loading delays common in Port Said, it seemed like we wouldn’t be able to book flights ahead of time, unless we wanted to risk missing a flight to load the bike.
Reunion and Farewell




The new plan was to get a cargo freighter from Haifa in Israel to Greece that would take us as passengers (since none go to Turkey), then take another boat from there to Turkey. This would have us riding back to Haifa, where we’d already been, but this was now our best option, so we mounted up and rode north along the Red Sea.





I much preferred Israel by motorbike than on the bus as we did it our first time around. Actually, I think that I prefer anywhere by motorbike. I love being able to stop when strange things appear at the roadside. Not sure what’s going on here.





We headed to Mitspe Ramon and stayed at a Bedouin camp situate at the bottom of a massive crater and cooked up supper. BBQ pro-tip - the secret perfectly grilled broccoli is appropriate eyewear.





The next morning we wandered the desert and took in the silence and solitude.






Life finds a way in the Negev desert.





We headed out to the coast just north of Gaza to rejoin a couple of friends that I’ve been crossing paths with for more than a year across Africa. I first met the Belgians Steven and Sita in Dakar, Senegal, driving their towering Mercedes truck dubbed ‘Izzy’, across Africa. Since then we’ve met again and again in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Togo, Angola, and the last time I saw them was in South Africa. We caught up with them just north of Gaza to swap travel tales.





In Dakar, we’d camped in a restaurant parking lot together for weeks and I would take shelter in their truck on chilly evenings. Since then I’ve been up on Izzy’s overlander wall of fame with other friends we met along the way.





The Belgians reported surfers running this way and that in the days before we arrived, but when we got there all that was to be found on these beaches north of Gaza were some tiny little peelers.








While camping in Mitspe Ramon, we’d met Sharon and her dog Simba, who invited us to come stay at their place in Tel-Aviv. Tel-Aviv is the cosmopolitan city of Israel and we missed it the first time around, so we were happy to have the opportunity to check it out. We wandered the old town of Jaffa and the beaches of Tel Aviv and Sharon brought us to a place with some awesome hummus. Simba mostly barked at us ineffectually.





From Tel Aviv, we headed to Haifa to board a cargo ship bound for Lavrio, Greece. For three days we endured rough seas in the Mediterranean and were happy when our world finally stopped moving beneath our feet.





After nearly a year and a half on the African continent, 35 countries and 36,000 miles, it finally vanished in the rear-view mirror. While in the midst of it all, I found my fair share of frustration about scary highways, oppressive heat, dense city traffic, bungling bureaucracy, and corrupt officials. But in between all of that were uncountable memorable moments on the road and in the water and some of the most wonderful people I’ve ever met. I suppose that Africa is a package deal and you just have to take it all as it comes. I miss the madness already.

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hey folks - West African motosurfing shenanigans in the latest issue of Overland magazine along with co-contributor none other than the godfather himself, Austin Vince. I'm not worthy!

http://overlandmag.com/shop/overland-magazine-issue-10/

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The local weekly paper back home in Santa Cruz - the 'Good Times' rang up for an interview for this weeks issue - In case you happen to go on a ride and find yourself at a coffee shop in SC this week ...

She got a few things wrong, but ya know, its Santa Cruz - we've got disc golf to play and drum circles to attend.

Surf Safari | Santa Cruz Good Times

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Hi Gary, just had a read of your latest posts. Looks and sounds great. We met you in Senegal at Zebrabar (we were on the strange tandem bicycle). Seems like an age ago. Safe travels.

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