Â
|
 Trip code: |
 LA11C |
| Accommodation style: | Camping |
| Length of trip: | 11 Weeks |
| Starts in: | London, UK |
| Finishes in: | Accra, Ghana |
| Pre-departure Meeting: | Held at the Departure Point at 17h00, Day 1 of the tour. |
| Departure point: | Â |
| Check-In Time: | Â |
| Departure Time: | Â |
| Countries visited: | Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, Ghana. |
| Â | Â |
Â
SIDE TRIPS/OPTIONAL EXTRAS:
| Morocco – Volubilis Roman ruins | US$ 8 |
| Morocco – Marrakech – Guided tour of Medina – barter!!! | US$ 3 |
| Morocco – Fez – To see the best tanneries | US$ 1 |
HIGHLIGHTS
Fes/Meknes/Marrakech, Morocco
Atlas Mountains/Todra Gorge, Morocco
Desert Crossing, Mauritania
Beaches, Ivory Coast/Ghana
Slave Forts, Ghana
Kakum Forest Reserve, Ghana
On this West African expedition you’ll visit Casablanca, Marrakech, Todra Gorge, the Royal Cities of Meknes and Fez, Volubilis Roman ruins, High Atlas Mountains, Forests of Equatorial Africa, Ghana Slave Coast and voodoo markets.
Our trips are different from our other departures and other holidays you may have taken – we go through areas where no tourists go, the roads can be bad, food can be limited to what we have stocked on the truck, campsites are few and basic, visas can be hard to get and communication to the outside world limited or unavailable at times. On this trip we guarantee; we’ll break down, that we will have to wait some where we don’t really want to be for visas spare parts or just for someone to open a closed road and we’ll have to dig the truck out of mud and sand.
The Expedition might overrun so finish late; the route can change due to rains, closed roads visa issues, breakdowns and borders.
To join this expedition you need to work as part of a team and to share with the others on the trip. Some of the things you’ll never forget are the satisfaction of getting a 16 ton truck unstuck, cooking over open fires after collecting the firewood, pitching a tent and getting it right even when it rains, going to sleep when its dark and waking at dawn and wanting to get out of your sleeping bag to start another day in which you have no idea of what will happen, washing in rivers, not washing and not caring that your dirty, living outside for months, seeing more than you have ever before, trying to learn French Arabic or Swahili and having people understand what you say, finding out just how far places are away from where you started and how different places can be and how unaffected out of the way places are from the world we normally live in. Most people find it a lot of fun, though of course hard at times.
We start the trip at Gibraltar. Crossing the straits of Gibraltar to Morocco, we visit the coastal capital city of Rabat and visit Casablanca. Meknes, on the high plains is of the many ancient walled cities with covered markets and a labyrinth of narrow winding streets. We visit the ancient Roman ruin of Volubilis, followed by Fes, Marrakech and the Atlas Mountains.Â
An accordion content area
We pass into the Sahara Desert and follow the Atlantic Coast. It is never forgotten; oases with cool water surrounded by palms, stretches of sand as big as a small country, old forts, camel trains following centuries old trading routes, and a night sky undiluted by city lights. We are touching on the western fringes of the Sahara Desert here – an enormous desert which, incredibly, is the size of the United States We go miles off road, sometimes digging the truck out of the soft sands to get through. – and have to contend with sand dunes, salt pans and mud flats before crossing over the Senegal River to Senegal.
We enter the Sahel; the vast semi arid desert that separates the Sahara from the forests of black Africa and cross the Senegal River into Senegal. We reach St Louis on the coast and the capital Dakar with its great night clubs.Â
We follow the border of Gambia to the west of Senegal and head south; down the road less travelled to the mountainous Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire. Ivory Coast and the magnificent Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro, modeled on St Peters Basilica in the Vatican. Then to Abidjan, with an impressive skyline of high rise buildings, and oceans where we can camp on the beach.
 Both routes meet in Ghana being the first English-speaking country Ghana, is a particular favourite, the people are so warm and hospitable – lots of fantastic seafood too! The tree-top canopy walks of the Kakum Forest Reserve and widely available drumming lessons are now a firmly established. We cross the jungle to the beaches of the Gold Coast and visit the slaving forts.
For an updated dossier and information on visas, vaccinations, spending money, optional excursions and other useful information please contact us.
Of all the trips we run this is the most likely to have a change of route due to local conditions and visa requirements.
Africa is an unpredictable continent. We do not have a fixed itinerary so please treat the information given as a guideline only. Although our information is written in good faith at the time of printing, our route may vary at any time due to weather, politics or road conditions.
