About Us

Objective

In essence; we aim to make it from Cape Town, South Africa to Cairo, Egypt via tuk tuk (aka auto rickshaw) in the Period between the 20th of December and the 14th of April. For those of you that are unfamiliar with a tuk tuk, please see picture below (picture will be updated with our vehicle once it is acquired.)

Our goals for this trip can be categorized in two different ways: concrete and abstract. Our concrete goal are as stated above, to get from Cape Town to Cairo via our own independent transportation. We feel the tuk tuk is the ideal vehicle for traversing the entire east coast of Africa given its great off-road capabilities, supreme safety record and it immense storage capacity. However, motorcycles may become more practical. We'll see.

The other half of our goals are more abstract which is the reason that, for the first time in either of our travel careers, we are keeping a blog. We feel that Africa is a relatively unexplored area by North Americans compared with that of Europe, East Asia, and Latin America. We hope that our blog may help to portray a picture of Africa as it is not shown on news channels. This blog will not focus on any one topic in particular, instead we will just write what we see, experience and feel. Daily life of two people driving an awesome vehicle though various regions and cultures.

Who We Are

Sam

I was born in Ottumwa, Iowa, but have lived most of my life growing up in Columbus, Indiana. I haven’t lived in either of these places for more than a month in the last year and a half as I have been travelling and working odd jobs and volunteering. In the past couple years I have been  a kitchen manager for a brew pub, a plumber, a prep cook for the Seattle Golf Club, a field instructor for a camp with kids with learning disabilities, a Christmas tree salesman, and worked logistics for the Northwest Outward Bound School. I have also volunteered on two farms in Costa Rica and an eco-lodge on an island off the coast of northern Panama.

I graduated college in May of 2014 with the prestigious degree of General Studies with a minor in International Studies. Needless to say I have a tough time deciding on what I want to do and also have such a wide array of interests it makes nearly impossible to make long term commitments. I took African Studies courses, psych, sociology, biology, anatomy and physiology, African drumming, human rights, philosophy, rock climbing, ice climbing, mountaineering and outdoor leadership courses. I have also taught outdoor climbing and map and compass courses. My degree actually fits me quite well. It may not land the dream job, but I am a more rounded person because of it and am happy with what I’ve learned.

In addition to academic exploration, I have always been interested in travelling and exploring different places. I have traveled this country pretty extensively and have traveled some in Central America. I feel this trip is the next step. This trip idea is a culmination of my studies and travels thus far and will be the wildest thing I have ever attempted and am both anxious and excited.  

Matt

Well, I'm from north Idaho. Moved there when I was 10 in the summer of 2000. I seem to have rejected the standard life, by which I mean graduate high school, go to college, get an internship, get a career and get married with a gap year or two thrown in there. My whole life is a gap year.

I graduated high school in 2007, a year ahead of schedule cause I always considered that place a waste of my time. Since graduating I've lived in the US in Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, North Dakota, Alaska, and New Hampshire and outside of the US in India, The Netherlands and the Czech Republic. I've traveled all over western Europe, dabbled into eastern Europe, seen much of Morocco and hitched rides on sail boats down the west coast of Mexico. Throughout all this I've never lived anywhere longer than six months apart from the nine months of college I did in Colorado and the two years of university I had in The Netherlands.

I've never completed my degree in International Relations and International Organization and, frankly, feel I have better ways to spend my time. I've tasted many different options for life through various jobs and circumstances, such as Quality Assurance for video games, dish washing, fighting wild fires in Idaho, working the oil fields in the Bakkan, homeless on the streets of Paris and in the dirt of Mexico, academia in Europe, as a dog musher in New Hampshire, English teacher in Prague, and most recently working within Outdoor Education in Oregon.

I drown in routine and abhor normal. I need to be working toward something. Need to be on the cusp of a change. I seek out all things new and different and alien. I want to see and experience all things in life for myself.

Like Melville said;

'Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.'

Call me Ishmael.

Why We're Doing This

There are a few different reasons why we want to do this trip and there are lots of reasons people travel. For work, to study, to volunteer, and to go on vacation are common reasons.  I think it's important to note that we are travelling for the sake of travel. We simply want to experience places we have never been. There is something amazing about being somewhere completely new and leaving your old habits and comforts at home. 

Another reason is that we want to see Africa for ourselves, first hand. We have grown up with a culturally appropriated image that Africa is this dark, terrible place that is unsafe for outsiders to travel to. With that being said, it is important to acknowledge that Africa is less safe than, let's say Canada. We will be way out of comfort zones and long way from home. Dangers such as dealing with corrupt police and getting mugged are real, though the danger of navigating Ethiopian traffic in a tiny 3-wheeled vehicle that doesn't even have seat belts, much less airbags, is of much greater concern to us. It's also important to note that Sudan and Egypt aren't the most politically stable and with a growing threat of extremist groups in the Middle East, we are going to pay close attention to the situation of these countries before entering. And on that note, Africa is not the massive Ebola ridden war zone that it is commonly portrayed as on CNN and Fox News and this is the Africa we wish to explore for ourselves. 

We certainly are not the first to explore this idea. In fact, this is one of the first things established in any intro African Studies course. However, for those of us out there that have not taken an African Studies course, all we have to go off of are headlines on CNN that talk of civil war, refugee camps, famine, poverty, AIDS, and Ebola.  It is less common to hear about up and coming entrepreneurs, smiling faces at markets, and general hospitality that is a common human trait regardless of geography.

Lastly this trip is enticing for the shear adventure of it. Being in a distant land, using a vehicle that may likely not make the entire distance, shutting off our phones and computers, making connections with strangers, and using extreme resilience are all apart of it. This is what adventure is. Stepping out of your comfort zone and going for it knowing failure is a possibility.