Independent overland travel through Africa in a Unimog called Moglet

Well its been another really busy few weeks, with no time in the evenings for website updates. We've spent a total of 5 weeks at Jason's dads - much longer than the original 'few days' estimate, but time well spent, I think.

We went back to the Cambridge clinic for another round of jabs, and Jason needs to have another one in January which we can get in any travel clinic in the UK. The GPS has been sorted (after much clambering about on the roof!), and the ongoing slightly leaky roof hatch has also been resolved with liberal use of a very watery crack sealant. Which is good, as it means we no longer have to perch a bucket on one of the seats every time there's a chance of a shower!

Jason's been turning his hand to anything that needs doing, from laying a piece of carpet (£12 bargain offcut!) to help make things more cosy, to fitting an external shower hose and head, so we can rinse off outside if we get particularly mucky. Also completed in the last few weeks was a Premac water filter to replace the ceramic one already there - the existing one is very good for 'civilised' travel, but the Premac filters down to 0.1micron, which gets out all the bugs and beasties from any water souce, anywhere. The kitchen tap was also changed for something newer and lighter, and the filtered water tap was also changed while he was at it.

We've been investigating changing the gas system over to Gaslow, which allows you to keep your own gas bottle and just have it refilled, rather than the exchange system which is more typical - the problem with exchanging is the quality of the cylinder you're likley to get in African countries. The Gaslow hoses are also fully flexible braided stainless steel, rather than rubber or reinforced rubber, so they're much less likley to get damaged when we're on rougher terrain. The issue we've found though is there's a maximum permissable hose length of 4m in the UK, and we need something more like 5m. So, for the time being at least, thats not an option. Possibly we might get a 4m length made up (you can only get this much by special order for the manufacturers) and then top and tail it with a rubber section, but that then means we need to fudge around with lots of connectors so we'll see...

As a final stage in the preparation, Moglet has been scrubbed and waxed, then coated with a winter-proofing solution, which will hopefully help her stand up to the rigours of gritted roads for the next month or so. So, I think we may be ready to head off.....