You've helped us before, you can help us again!

Surprisingly enough, this post is not about money. Although if you haven't given us your money yet, you should be ashamed and the donate button is RIGHT THERE. ------->

No, what we need advice on now is much much more fun but challenging in it's own way. Whatever are we going to wear?! Obviously along the way I'm going to look the best I've ever looked in shorts, tracksuits and T-shirts of somewhat dubious cleanliness vintage...but what about the parties! As we're previously discussed Lyn, Robs and Laura like dress up so we can't be out-done. However, we're also on a pretty tight space budget so we need awesome costumes fashioned out of things that can be squashed up into tiny spaces or that we can reasonably pack into the car. Here are the themes - suggestions anyone....?

From here.

1) Crew Theme - we'll, we're Penny Pitstop and the Pedal Pushers - this seems like it should be fairly easy. Although I'm not sure pedal pushers are actually in fashion and therefore they can't be that easy to find. Perhaps I can just roll up my track suit bottoms. That's hardly inspired though....
2) Animal Kingdom - Lyn thinks zebras, Robs like lambs, I want to bring my stuffed toy giraffee on the rally and am totally going to use this party as the excuse. This is early on in the rally so we won't be able to use it as an excuse for our crazy "wind-swept" hair and general bedraggledness (watch out for the end of rally)
3) Royal Gala - Robs and Laura live in London, we watched the flotilla in the pouring rain - if anyone can do royal surely we can? Maybe I'll buy my mum that royal novelty tea towel that she wants - use it in the rally - and then hand it over at the end...?
4) Ai Kariba Kariba - Lyn has the sombreros, all we need is an excuse to fit them into Constance. Any suggestions? I don't think holding a bottle of tequilla counts as dress up, but it is mexican....
5) Almost full moon - I'm thinking there's a werewolf reference here that we could totally work to our bedraggled good. Thoughts?
6) Only being announced on the way....

I've said it before and I'll say it again - hell yeah!

Top ten Tuesday: Our Put foot bucket list

Well we feel that we’ve done quite enough stressing of late about all the things we still need and the all things we still need to get done. I'd much rather think about all the rad stuff we’re going to get to see and do. Here’s Put foot HQ’s must-do list for Southern Africa:

Our personal bucket list includes some of these classics of course - but with a few more food and drink based experiences..

1.   Jumping for joy at Etosha pan.

2.   Feasting on some Namibian Biltong.

3.   Cooling off in the Ngepi camp’s floating swimming pool (read croc-proof cage).

The famous Ngepi camp near Popa falls.

4.   Feeling the spray of the Zambezi as it tumbles over Vic falls.

5.   Taking a dip in the devils cauldron at the top of Vic falls (although this is apparently only possible in Oct - Dec. Sad face.) 

Flying tourist courtesy of Google images. From here.

6.   Taking part in the 2012 Put foot rally shoe drop at Senkobo Basic School.

7.   Staging a pirate take-over of the Kariba ferry.

8.   Tasting the fabled Malawi gin in an mgt.

Gin + sachet = genius

9.   Skinny dipping in Lake Malawi.

10. Enjoying an R&R (Raspberry and Tipo tinto rum) with some scrumptious prawns on the beach in  Moz.

Travelling hungover...

We’re going to do our best to try avoid this but one has to prepare for every eventuality. So, using this fantastic article on surviving travelling on a hangover that Lyn found on the Matador Network as a guide here's how we'll cope...

The hangover cometh.

The Put Foot Rally Shoe drop 2012

Well, as you've no doubt figured out by now, we're pretty damn excited about road-tripping around Southern Africa. The parties - the wildlife - the thrill of knowing that if Constance breaks down there is no possible way we can fix her... But it's not just about the thrills - the most important thing we'll be doing along the way is taking part in a shoe drop at Senkobo Basic School in Zambia.

Photo © Put Foot Foundation

Fun fact Friday: Checkpoint 5 - Malawi

Malawi will be the penultimate country that we’ll be travelling through on the Put Foot rally. No doubt there are many great (and better) reasons to visit Malawi but mostly we’re super-excited because:

1.  Who wouldn’t want to visit the place known as the ‘Warm heart of Africa’?

2.  It looks like the kind of place where one might suntan on the beach whilst being served cocktails

Not bad Malawi.

and  3. The Checkpoint party is full-moon themed and is going to be epic

Full moon and full set of toes.

The country was established in 1891 as the British protectorate of Nyasaland and in 1964 became the independent nation of Malawi. The capital is Lilongwe which has an estimated population of 821000.

Much of the country is plateau - the Great Rift Valley runs from north to south and in the mountainous sections surrounding the valley, plateaus rise from 900 to 1 300m above sea level.

Now for fun facts!

• Lake Malawi is sometimes known as the Calendar Lake as it is around 365 miles (587 km) long and 52 miles (84 km) wide. It is the third largest lake in Africa and the eighth largest lake in the world.
• The only Carlsberg factory found outside Denmark is found in Blantyre, and they do free tours on a Wednesday afternoon. Alas we will miss this, but now you know - should you ever find yourself in Blantyre on a Wednesday afternoon.
• Who does the lake belong too? Tanzania claims that the border runs through the middle of the lake, based on the border set out between the German and British territories prior to 1914. Meanwhile Malawi claims the whole of the surface of the lake (excluding the Mozambican part). The dispute stems from when the British captured Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and placed all of the water under the jurisdiction of Nyasaland (now Malawi).
• The lake is of big interest to scientists as it is the site of some 'exciting' evolutionary happenings amongst some fish. These fish (Cichlids) evolved rapidly into a large number of closely related but diverse species. Lake Malawi is home to several hundred endemic species of Cichlids - and they are fairly good-looking as fish go.

Not for eating

As ever thanks to wiki and CIA factbook (here).

Papering the world with money

This rally is in large part about raising money and while I won't badger you about giving us your money in this post (subliminal messaging aside of course) I thought it might amuse you to see some awesome pictures of Zimbabwean money. Before we "dollarised" aka "admitted our money was useless and had to take on the US dollar" we went through many many iterations of the Zimbabwean dollar. Yes indeed once we had the $2 note then we had the one hunderd trillion dollar bearer cheque. How things change!

Image from here.

Sigh, that's not quite as funny. Image from here 

Image from here.

You should definitely read the whole article that goes with this.

 That's all folks, and of course, please do give us your money.

Do I make you horny baby?!

Finally a rhino story to smile about!

There are only seven (!!!) known Northern white rhinos remaining in the world, and in 2009 four of these were moved from the Czech Republic to the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. Their return to Africa was considered the last chance at preserving the genetic material of their sub-species - which has been poached to extinction in the wild. Experts believed that a return to their natural environment might induce hormonal changes to make the females (Najin and Fatu) receptive to breeding.

After a whole load of match-making by conservationists and a little bit of foreplay:

Fun Fact Not-quite Friday: Check point 3 - Zambia

This is a little late but, as they say, better late than never. Besides I'd say we're probably going to have to get used to late arrivals having looked at the route and the number of hours we'll spend in the car...not including border crossings...

The third checkpoint is in lovely Zambia, formerly Northern Rodhesia, which has been independent since 1964. Although it was only 1991 which saw the end of one-party rule and 1996 and 2001 elections were riddled with all sorts of problems. 2006 saw Levy Mwanawasa re-elected (after challenges back in 2001) in elections that were deemed free and fair. Mwanawasa died in 2008 and was replaced by his vice-president. The current president is Michael Sata who was elected in 2011.

Big thing in Zambia is copper mining which was privatised in the 90s which saved the government from losses incurred from running the mines as well as improving their output which has meant real GDP growth in 2005-11 of more than 6% per year. Copper prices remain high keeping Zambia fairly safe but as they rely almost entirely on copper a slump in prices would be bad news. Unfortunately even with impressive GDP growth, the high birth rate, relatively high HIV/AIDS burden, and market distorting agricultural policies haven't decreased the high poverty rates.

Total Area: 752,618 sq km (that's slightly larger than Texas) - 39th in the world - made of 743,398 sq km land and water: 9,220 sq km.

Population: 14,309,466 (July 2012 est.) - 69th in the world
Birth rate: 43.51 births/1,000 population - 4th in the world 
Life expectancy at birth: 52.57 years 207th in the world

Favourite line from the CIA world factbook about Zambia - contained in transnational issues, the illicit drugs section - "major consumer of cannabis"

And now, Five Fun Facts:
1) Zambia’s name comes from the Zambezi River.  Zambezi is from a local word yambezhi “heart of all”
2) Livingstone, which is the 3rd checkpoint used to be the capital. No it's Lusaka.
3) Zambia and Zimbabwe share Victoria Falls which is one of the seven wonders of the world.
4) Not so fun - has been known to suffer from acid rain due to the extensive mining.
5) Transition to independence was peaceful - it was the 60s after all!

Top Ten Tuesday - Namibia

So this weekend we had a big planning session and there was much excitement! In preparation for this skype conversation I'd done some research on Namibia and can't deny that I got really really excited about all the epic things to see - giant sand dunes, bones of ships and whales, giant canyons, meteorites, many many animals - but unfortunately it seems we won't get to see all these things...insert sad face....indeed Namibia is a pretty big place and we don't have that many days to see it so we've had to plot a route that includes some of these things, but not them all.

That doesn't mean I don't get to highlight some of the awesome things in Nam (be we going there or not!) as a store for future adventures.

1) Etosha National Park

Ariel view from Wiki - look at that salt pan!

Totally doing this as it's one of the Checkpoints -  and we've scheduled in a day of driving through so we can see some of the awesomeness. Apparently this is one of the best places to see black rhinos and while it's not the size it was when first created (biggest game reserve in the world back in 1907 - those who've been reading the blog will already know that...) it's still pretty big with a 850 km boundary fence.  Dominated by a salt pan desert I'm really looking forward to seeing this having never seen such a thing...I think.

2) Fish River Canyon

Also from wiki.

Given that we start in Johannesburg and our car is only a 1300 power little lady without four wheel drive we want to stick to the big roads as much as possible so we've decided to cut through Botswana in an effort to get to the Namibian checkpoint rather than looping up and around to Etosha. This does mean though that we'll miss Fish River Canyon which is a shame because it is the biggest canyon in Africa and the second biggest in the world!  It's 550 metres deep in places and is 160 kms long and 27 kms wide in places. Interestingly 90kms of the canyon are privately owned so the public view points are near Hobas, camp site 70km north of Ai-Ais. I wish I owned part of the biggest canyon in Africa....

Lots more awesome pictures where this one came from.

3) Skeleton Coast
Another one we'll have to skip (boo) and perhaps my top pick for Namibia (so we'll just have to go back!) is Skeleton Coast originally know as "The Land God Made in Anger" by Bushmen of the Namibian interior and "The Gates of Hell" by Portuguese sailors. How awesome does that sound! The cold Bengula current hits the coast causing really dense fog which, back when boats were a more regular form of transport and people didn't know better about this area, lead to many shipwrecks - the skeletal remains of more than a thousand of which still litter the coast. Whale and seal skeletons from when whaling was still active also cover the beach so basically it's just all about the bones! I have a macarbe sense of what is awesome.

Wiki showing us the tourists that visit the meteorite.

4) Hoba meteorite
The way our route is currently planned we will get to see this which is going to be grand as it is FROM SPACE! It is the largest known meteorite (as a single piece) known on the earth. How cool is that?! Smart science people estimate that it fell less than 80 000 years ago and as it remains in tact it must have slowed to terminal velocity (I had to look this up but it means that the downward pull of gravity and the upward force of drag were equal leading to net force on the object as zero meaning it had an acceleration rate of zero and could therefore remain in tact...). It's flat on both major surfaces so it might have skipped along the top of the atmosphere like a skipping stone, effectively slowing down along the way. It's discovery was just by chance way back in the early 1900s when a farmer was tilling his land and hit this lump of rock and metal. Pretty cool!

Top of the plateau. Wiki once more.

5) Waterberg National Park
The Waterberg Plateau is largely inaccessbile and so in the early 1970s lots of endangered species were moved here to protect them from poachers and allow them to breed. It now supplies many other parks with these rare animals - which is pretty cool. It has over 200 different species of bird so it's a bird watchers paradise! Other than the wildlife interest geological this plateau is very interesting as the rock strata is over 850 million years old and dinosaur tracks were left there 200 million years ago!

Look at all those sand dunes!

6) Namib Desert 
The Namib Desert covers a long stretch with the Skeleton Coast along the North and the extensive Namib Sea Sand along the central coast.  The Sea Sand boasts the largest sand dunes in the world which would be really really cool to see! Due to erosion that happens in the Orange River Valley and further south lots of sand gets dumped into the Atlantic along this central coast and then is washed back up on shore thanks to the currents. The prevailing South West wind then picks this sand up into the massive dunes. Some well travelled sand basically.

This awesome image is from here.

7) Caprivi Strip
We definitely get to go through here which is cool. It's the little outcrop off the North East of Namibia named after Leo von Caprivi who succeeded Otto von Bismarck as Chancellor of Germany in March 1890. This section of Namibia is really interesting as it is wettest region of Namibia and very tropical with lots of rivers and swampy areas.  Beyond being a lovely place to see it has had a fascinating (and somewhat chequered histroy). Initially it was known as Itenge and under the rule of the Lozi kings. Then in the late 19th century the strip of land was administered as part of the British protectorate of Bechuanaland (Botswana). Then in 1890 the Germans wanted British Zanzibar and the Berlin Conference settled that Zanzibar could be British and the Germans could have Caprivi - hence its name as Caprivi organised the annexing of it to Nambia (at the time German South-West Africa). During World War I, the Caprivi Strip again came under British rule and was governed as part of Bechuanaland but it received little attention and became known as a lawless frontier. It's not that anymore (thankfully) but it has a certain ring to it....

Image from here.

8) Popa Falls
We intend to stop at these. They aren't really falls, but a series of rapids in the Okavango River, caused by a rocky ledge. They are most impressive in the rainy season when they drop three metres but otherwise they are just rather pretty and apparently, the place we have in mind has a cage for river swimming. Yes indeed, river swimming in the Okavango. EPIC!

This is the part we haven't seen I'd say....

9) Kalahari Desert
The Kalahari stretches through Namibia, South Africa and Botswana. Its huge size means it has really arid parts and really rather more lush parts. The more lush parts, are the parts we've seen as they encompass the Karoo - apparently known as the Succulent Karoo which has 5,000 species of plants, nearly half of them endemic - in fact, one third of the world’s succulents are found in the Karoo.


10)  Cities
We're going to miss the big three cities - Windhoek, Walvis Bay and Swakopmund - I suppose we should try and see these sometime but on this our African adventure we probably don't need to see another city. This being said - Swakopmund has an interesting museam and Walvis Bay has all sorts of adventure activity options and Windhoek is the main city, it must be interesting right? If I'm really honest though I'd say these are number 10 for a reason, probably a should-see even though I'm not that bothered that we're missing them. Apologies to everyone that lives in these cities!

As always the great wise wiki has given me much of this information. Blame him if it's wrong.

Top Ten Tuesday: Camping don’ts

I went on a camping trip this weekend and it reminded me of a few important things we’ll need to keep in mind whilst on the Put foot rally.

1. Don’t pack a wet tent away. Rocking-the-daisies dew has turned my once spotless mobile home into a black mouldy mess.
2. Don’t forget chairs. It works to have one chair that is superior to the others – whoever wins the day gets to have king chair and lord it over the peasants.
3. Don’t skimp on mattress – We might be bad-ass, but old bones and hard ground do not a happy camper make.
4. Location location location. Don’t camp too far from the ablutions, and don’t camp too close. A view is 20 points and shade is 10, a built-in braai is 5 and a slope is minus 5.

5. 

   Image from her

   Don’t forget to check for all the poles before you head off. You can fashion a pole out of a branch but it’s not pretty - and you’ll lose the respect of fellow campers who you might need to borrow a corkscrew from at a later stage.
6. Don’t forget a corkscrew.
7. Don’t underestimate the sun. It’s bright, and it rises earlier than you think. A well placed tree can do wonders and get you an invaluable extra hour of sleep.
8. Everybody needs good neighbours. Don’t camp too close to the ones with children, or the ones who look like they might feel the need to jol UB40 at 4am. Future neighbours beware: we fall with the latter.
9. Don’t go in there. Death Valley is not the hottest place on earth - black mould tent at midday can easily top 50 degrees. Enter at your own peril.
10. Don’t forget your sense of humour. Things are going to go wrong, your tent will blow over and your sleeping bag will be filled with sand from day 2. Mother nature will get under your fingernails and in your ears – if we wanted sterile we’d be going on a package tour instead of the put foot rally!!

Thanks Cyanide & Happiness

Top Ten Tuesday - Things We HAVE to do

With less than 80 days till we hit the road we've realised that the time for endearing photos of kittens has passed and we really need to get our thinking caps on. So, our top ten list of things we have to do before we get on the road:

1) Figure out what visas we need - Laura, having a different passport to Lyn and Robs, must take special heed of this one.
2) Get our jabs and certificates of aforementioned jabs. Apparently we need a yellow fever injection and apparently this is sore. Someone should have told me before I paid my deposit.
3) Settle the map versus GPS debate and buy whichever is agreed upon.
4) Plot a route and decide where needs to be booked in advance. 
5) Agree to allowed baggage amounts and sort out roof rack
6) Do inventory of camping gear and buy anything we're missing.
7) Get international driver's licenses.
8) Figure out how best to carry money, what form the money should take and how much.
9) Have car serviced and find relevant papers.
10) FUND RAISE!

Usually I find list writing soothing. Today I have found it overwhelming so to cheer us all up (and me in particular) I give you:

That is all.

Top ten Tuesday: Car-tertainment

There shall be no I-spy in the car so I’ve compiled a list of ten other options to keep us entertained during the long driving days of the Put Foot Rally. 

1.  Twilight audiobooks. Yes.
2. Learning a language cd’s – there have been debates over which language, but we could very well return from the put foot rally fluent in German. Drei Gin Tonics bitte.
3. Caraoke – Karaoke’s more mobile cousin. And yes, we will be compiling a video of this for your viewing pleasure.
4. The “what would your last meal be” game – we played the 3-course version of this on a garden-route road trip and there’s definitely room to expand.
5. The top 25 road-trip compilation tape – coming soon to a Tuesday near you.
6. I have heard of something called Car Cricket. I am still unclear of the rules but I think it's probably worth learning. It's probably the only cricket I will understand. 
7. Our very own desert island discs - if we were on a desert island what item  [technological, book, CD, DVD, as many options as we can think of] would you take.



The Daily Mail online (of course).

8. I say famous persons' name. You say another famous person's name whose first name starts with the first letter of the surname of the person I just said ie.Patrick Stewart; Sarah Jessica Parker. etc. Usually a drinking game but it involves much shouting so I think we'll enjoy it even without a sippie.
9. The association game. Bizarrely entertaining when you get going.
10. Mooning? Perhaps we shall hope that this is the entertainment that comes from elsewhere.

Top 10 Tuesday: Reasons to give us your money

With 98 days till we hit the road I thought it was about time to remind everyone why we're doing this and to give you ten reasons why you should give us some of your hard earned cash - at least I'm honest.

1) Rally contestant funds and other donations will help The Put Foot Foundation to put 600 pairs of shoes on underpriviledged kids feet. The Foundation itself works as an umbrella organisation investing in and supporting social development projects and so any money going to us and on to the Foundation is, as they say, for the kids.
2) A fully equipped anti-rhino poaching team - I'm not going to include links to all the horrible photos I've seen of rhions without horns, and baby rhinos next to their dead mothers - all I'm going to say is that poaching is a real problem and the Put Foot Rally organisers, in association with Project Rhino will put any monies we raise into helping to stop poaching. So if you're not too worried about the kids maybe spare a penny for the rhinos. They really are awesome and one of the closest things we'll ever see to a dinosaur.
3) We write this awesome blog which has entertained you with buzzfeed, animal facts, ridiculous fur-covered cars and promises to continue providing all manner of amusing, bizarre and sometimes important content.
4) We really really don't want to be the 3 girls that got lost leaving Johannesburg (you laugh, but this has happened to me before) AND didn't raise any money for the kids, or the rhinos. Save us from that shame at least.
5) The warm fuzzy feeling giving is meant to provide - why not test the theory by giving us some money. If you don't get a warm fuzzy feeing, don't admit it, that's not normal.
6) We're mad enough to travel 7000kms in 17 days in a Toyota Conquest which wouldn't be IDed if it was buying booze (it's definitely old enough). Surely that deserves some money just for comedy value.
7) We'll be really really happy.
8) And grateful.
9)  If we don't raise any money then this is just a glorified holiday and we don't take 3 weeks off, spend everything we have and create a blog for a holiday. That would seem...excessive. But if it's for the kids and the rhinos then our fun is totally definitely not completely selfish.
10) And finally, we're pretty. That's probably not a good enough reason. But it was worth a try.

Thanks in advance.

Most important  - this is how to give us your money:

1) Go to the Put Foot Give Gain account - HERE
2) Hit the DONATE NOW button
3) Don't forget our CREW NAME in the comments box
4) And you are DONE.

And we are smiling :)

Image from therealtimscott.com

Fun Fact Friday - Empty Namibia

Namibia has the lowest population density in Africa with only 2.6 people per square kilometre. This is the second lowest population density in the world after Mongolia, which we’ll be going through if we ever get to the Mongol rally - one day girls!

So basically Namibia is not a place we want to break down in – it could be a while before we come across another human being. But damn it is beautiful - can't wait!

THE ROUTE!

It's been announced! 

EXCITEMENT! 

With only 104 days to go till we hit the road the official Put Foot Rally route has been announced. Bad news is we won't be going through Botswana anymore (although this does mean an excuse to do a 2 week tour just of the Okavango in the future...poor me) and we'll miss Swaziland (I can probably include this on a different SA trip) but the good news is we pass through Zimbabwe - yes mum, you might see me on route.  The official CHECK POINTS in the various countries haven't been announced yet but a basic outline of where we'll be when is here:

Note the number of rest days, phew! And note the amazing places we'll get to go through and via - Caprivi, Etosha and Vilankulos to name but a few.  I'd like to state now, and for the record, that I am not strong on the navigation side of things but I am good at "planning" so get ready for a range of posts on the awesome things we are going to see enroute and why you should be pretty envious (as if you weren't already!).

We also end in Mozambique which will be awesome but also allows me to feel vindicated for not having booked my flights yet - that might have been a balls up. Procrastination saved the day - nice.

Top Ten Tuesday - Gin drinks

1. Gin and tonic – The undisputed queen of gin-based beverages. Originated in India where them colonials would mix their anti-malarial quinine tonic with gin to make it more palatable. The quinine in the tonic water keeps the mozzie parasites at bay, but while this is a great excuse to have a second (or third) you still need to take your malaria pills kids!
2. Gin and Dry lemon – What the barman will offer you when they’ve run out of tonic, and why not? It’s damn good.
3. Gin and Juice – Favoured by Snoop dogg and Katy Perry, tastes best when drunk out of a juice bottle at a music festival.
4. Gin fizz – Gin, lemon juice, sugar, and carbonated water. Or just mix Gin, Lemos and soda water, tasty tasty!
5. Gin and Ginger beer – This one's for our red-headed rally comrades the ginger ninjas. Good for day-drinking.
6. Pink Gin - Spice up your garden variety GnT with a touch of bitters, giving it a pleasing pink glow.
7. Singapore sling – A healthy swig of Gin, some Cherry Liqueur, a dash of Grenadine, top it up with Pineapple juice and lemon juice, and finish with a dash of bitters. Magic.
8. Mad glowing jelly – Add gelatine to your GnT, buy a UV light and voila! Full recipe from here.
9. On it’s own – Don’t do this.
10. The Hanky-Panky – A variation on the classic martini, the name speaks volumes.

Meet the Beast

Meet Constance the Conquest: the pluckiest adventurer in the team.

Give us a Grin :-)

Connie (born in ’96) joined the Sluis-Cremer family way back in 1999 when mum’s Toyota twincab was nicked, and has been a much loved member ever since. I learnt to drive in her – there is still a dent in her rear as a reminder to check blindspots before hitting reverse and when I was 20 she eventually became all mine. 

She may only be a little car with not much power, but she made the great trek to and from Cape Town every year I was at varsity, survived the many bumps and scrapes inflicted by my haphazard parking skills and kept on running when fancier cars have pootled off this motoring coil. Connie is proof that looks aren’t everything.

She might not have airconditioning; she might be rust speckled and dented, with windows that don’t really work. Her fabric might be worn and her boot small, but there is adventure in her heart.

She’ll look after the girls and get us to all the checkpoints. And at the end of the rally she’ll get us home again.

I heart my Connie Conquest.

Top Ten Tuesday - Things We Can't Survive Without

With the minidiots planning to fit everything they need for 17 days into a mini I think the pitstoppers can definitely manage in their Toyota Conquest, with space to spare, well maybe not space to spare but we can cross roof rack off the list of things to buy perhaps...

All this being said I've spent alot of time thinking about what I can't live without on the trip and what the first ten things I'm going to put in my suitcase are and I've narrowed it down to:

1) Headlamp - yes I'm vaguely frightened of the dark and if I'm going to get eaten by a lion in any late-night tent to bathroom rambles I want to at least see it happen to me. Perhaps I also need a little camera attached to the light for when they want real-life footage in my bio-pic.
2) A Kindle - apparently they have 6-8 weeks battery life and I can't survive 8 hours a day in a car without something to read. There will be another blog post (or 10) about what on earth is suitable reading material but that is definitely for another day.
3) Insect repellant - it may be winter, we may be hardy but I can't help it if my blood is sweet and I certainly don't intend to spend 2 weeks scratching at myself. My recent brush with bed bugs has once more brought the reality of insects and their bites to my coddled first world existance.
4)  Sunscreen - I don't deny I long to be nut brown but Lyn's nose peeling (not her fault, the fault of ten hours at the border - yet more content for another posting) has reminded me the perils of sunning one's self. There is of course the great fear of old-before-my-time skin (and there is no space for anti-ageing cream on this trip) and skin cancer. 'Nough said.
5) Passport - fairly obvious but important
6) Cold Hard Cash - I don't think any officials that might need a bit of palm greasing will carry a card swipe machine.
7) Address book with contact numbers written down in pen, on paper. I read recently that you know you're old when you carry a filofax (good thing I don't then) but we best have contact numbers somewhere accessible for the hugely unlikely (but then almost definitely going to happen) situation when not one of our phones is accessible (lost, stolen, not charged) and we really really need to call mum and there's somehow a payphone to hand, or perhaps a kindly stranger with a phone.
8) Headache pills - self explanatory
9) Wheel jack. We may not know anything about cars but we can change a tyre so we should at least be prepared to do that.
10) Duct tape and Swiss Army knife - homage to McGyver - he's gotten out of worse situations than we'll find ourselves in using these two items. Surely we can too, after all we're a scientist, a writer and an organising fundi. There isn't a lot we can't do!

Chez Penny Pitstop

17 days on the road is no joke. So the team is going have to think long and hard about what home comforts need a space in our car and what we'll have to do without. (No hairdryer you say???!!!)

So while we work that out here are a few putfoot homes we wouldn't mind finding under the Christmas tree:

Mammal Monday - it's a thing

I went to an exhibition at the Tate Modern this weekend and one room was devoted to the work of Vito Acconci and his performance pieces. The one that really struck me was entitled Sedbeed and given the nature of this blog it's probably improper for me to detail what the performance contained but in summary I'll tell you it was about an empty room, an artist under floor boards and the creation of human seed - for full details let the great-wise-wiki tell you more.

Now this exhibition happened back in 1972 and it got me thinking about how on earth anyone knew about anything before the advent of the internet. Nowadays you can't move for blogs about this, tweets about that and facebook event invitations, but before all of this how did people really get the word out about anything? And beyond this how did you know what anyone (except the critics and journalists who got to write about it) thought about exhibitions or shows or anything really. It's another question altogether whether we really care about what every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks about a thing but the scope of access we now have is pretty darn incredible. Only problem is, and you knew I couldn't be rejoicing in the interwebs without a little niggle, how on earth can one ever do anything original. Google even the whisper of an idea and you'll find someone's already done it, and probably better than you'd even begun to think of.

With this in mind we introduce (to the greater body of work already in existance) our contribution to #Mammal Monday and given that the Put Foot Rally is this year raising funds for a Rhino initiative we thought we'd start our with these little guys. How can you not support a charity for them!