The NLL Fanclub
See the new fanclub of the Naughty Lamp Lighters! Also the blog is updated up to mid Cameroon with many photos! We are working hard, besides enjoying the holidays, on the other stories of the beaches of Cameroon, gorillas in the rainforest and off roading in Congo!
A news page
Abuja, 25 January 2011. I added a news page to the website to give some short messages to the readers about new things going on. For instance, I added a photo page with most of the photos taken on the trip. This especially for all of the lazy surfers that just want to see what it is like in the world! See under Journal, Photos.
It took a while...
Lake Bosumtwi, 27 December 2010. The internet has been tough lately and we were unable to upload the new stories to the website. In Ouagadougou the internet available was too slow and in Ghana I bought a USB modem with G2/G3 internet connection but I was unable to make a connection with my servers for the website. But finally I made it! We try to upload more regularly but it is not always possible. You can now start to read the new stories!
In the meantime I changed the website around, we only keep the new journal up to date (the old blog format from google gave to much problems and was a lot of work). In the near future I try to make a photo page for all of you who are in a hurry and not in African speeds!
I hope you can enjoy the site with the new stories once again. We would like to wish you all a happy and adventurous 2011!
Journals
Lisbon, 17 October 2010. Yes, we are on the road! We keep our blogs updated as much as we can. You can find it under journals.
It seems that when using Internet Explorer it gives some problems to get the blog on your screen, this has to do with your security settings in Explorer. A short procedure (in English versions, otherwhise just try to translate...) how to change these settings, can be found here. Or just use Firefox or Chrome or so.
I hope you enjoy our adventures!
It's time!
Ven-Zelderheide, 6 October 2010. After many days preparing the car and packing up all our belongings, we are finally ready to hit the road! Today is the big day we cross our first border, although I doubt we will notice anything of it… We keep you updated on this website through blogs with adventure stories and photos, so check again in a few days!
Work on the car
Ven-Zelderheide, 12-17 July 2010. Stanley spend almost a week working on the red Landrover. Read all about it here. Niels managed to put the new planned route in GoogleMaps. Also our Guestbook is active for you to send us messages!
Change in route
Amsterdam, 15 July 2010. We decided to make a 'slight' change in the route... Before heading to Asia we will make a detour via South Africa. It’s a major change from what we had in mind but we were struggling with some administrative tasks for some countries of the intial plan and many borders in the Sahara desert are closed, forcing you to head back to Spain the same way before going further in Northern Africa…. Also the new route gives us the opportunity to visit West Africa in more detail, like Mali, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Gabon. The maps on this website are unfortunately not updated yet, but when time permits I will make the change.
Pre-trip to Ireland
Amsterdam, 27 June 2010. It's been a while but in early May we drove 3,000 km across the UK to the northern part of Ireland. You can see some of the photos here. Driving with fully packed cars, in cold weather, far away places, we all enjoyed it! Ireland has many things to offer: friendly people, great music, always busy pubs and fantastic views!
Part two...
Even before heading off on the first trip, from which you can read all the stories here, the thought of exploring Asia in 2010 came up. As our book ends with 'End of part one...' it is time to get started again!
This time the preparation will be taking more time since there are 2 vehicles and 5 persons involved and many more countries to visit. Senna joined the team last September and Niels has bought a similar Land Rover (Defender 110 300TDi). Instead of the 14 countries from 2008, the idea is to visit the Festival aux Desert in Essakane (near Timbuctu, Mali) in January 2011 and explore Asia (Stan countries, China, Mongolia, Russia) in order to cross the Bering Sea to Alaska.
We hope to keep you all updated on all our adventures all over the world! Our pre-fun stories we try to write in the preparation section, as well as the maps. In time we will extend this section with all we learn during the preparation. I hope to be able to update the Google Earth with our actual route from the GPS, but bear with me that we're not really the experts in web designing...
Currently, we are planning the route in more detail, but with some borders being closed and politically unstayble regions the administrative work increases. Also, the cars need some attention. Elise (Niels’ Land Rover) is leaking at the clutch after some wild off-roading. Red still has some of the defects resulted from the previous trip. But then again, there is always something going on with these cars…
The first pre-fun adventure takes us to England and Northern Ireland in early May. It's a perfect opportunity to see how well we are prepared for the expedition or that we still have sooo much to work on...