Scott ,

Thank you for your message about my tribute to Bill. Sorry for taking so long to answer your question about Africa. Thinking about Bill and Africa reminds me about my seven and one-half month long journey there. For being patient, I will describe my entire African journey. If you get bored, skip to the last part where I was crossing the Sahara.

After we graduated I spent 25 years in northern California, 23 in Sacramento and 2 in San Francisco. I love adventure sports and did a lot of white water rafting. I was a white water guide on the weekends on rivers in northern California. I had my own rafts and rafted most of the popular rivers in the western US.

In 1984, I was a guide on the Omo River in Ethiopia, Africa. I took my backpack with sleeping bag and camping gear and lived out of it for seven and one-half months during my stay in Africa. The Omo River was the most remote commercial white water river trip in the world. It was a 300 mile long expedition that took three weeks with no contact with civilization. If you got injured, there was no help. The local natives had never seen white people until 1974 when the first raft trip was made down the river. Ethiopia is the only country in Africa that was not colonized by the colonial powers. This why parts of it were so out of touch with people who had never seen white people.

The Omo River was full of hippopotamus and crocodiles. A hippo had attacked a raft before and partially crushed it with its powerful jaws. Hippos spend their days on the bottom of the river to stay cool. Natives have hit them with their dugout canoes. This angers the hippos who overturn the canoe and crush the natives in their jaws. I had hippos chase my raft when I got to close.

As hot as it was, we never swam in the river because of the crocodiles. I had a crocodile attack my oar. He grabbed the oar blade when it was under water. I thought the blade hit a rock because it wouldn't move. I pushed down on the oar handle. The oar lock acted like a fulcrum, and the blade raised out of the water. The blade was in a croc's mouth! Fortunately, he let go when he was exposed above water. They are shy and don't like to be seen until they have you in their mouth!

When I finished the Omo River raft trip I went on some safaris in Kenya, Tanzania, and Botswana. I went scuba diving off the coast of Kenya and climbed Mt. Kilamanjaro and Mt. Kenya. I visited Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe and went white water rafting on the Zambesi River which flows over Victoria Falls. We started rafting at the foot of the falls. I visited the Okavanga Delta in Botswana. It is a 15,000 square kilometer wetland formed by rivers flowing out of the rainforests in Zaire to the north. It is a maize of thousands of waterways and islands. This is one of the least known, but most interesting places in Africa.

I went on a two day overnight hike in the jungle in the mountains of Rwanda to see a large family of gorillas in the wild. This was a fascinating experience. This is the area where "Gorillas in the Mist" was filmed.

I went on another mountain expedition in Uganda in the Ruwenzori Mountains. The mineral rich soil and wet climate near the equator make them home to some of the most unusual plant life in the world. Some varieties of house plants in the US grow twenty feet tall there. I have a picture of a tree whose trunk appeared to be over three feet in diameter. The tree was only 8" in diameter. The rest was moss!

Then I spent almost a month in Egypt. I saw all of the antiquities, scuba dived in the Red Sea, and visited remote oases in the western desert of Egypt that required several days of hard travel to reach. A highlight experience was climbing Mt. Sinai in the middle of the night and watching the sunrise. It was the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen, a crimson colored sun over brown desert mountains. The same sunrise that was witnessed by Moses on the same spot over 3000 years ago. Since I love to climb things, I climbed the great pyramid of Cheops in the middle of the night to watch the sunrise from the top. Climbing it is illegal, so you must climb it in the middle of the night when the guards are not there. You pay them off with a bribe, "baksheesh," when you come down in the morning.

I toured all of Tunisia which has a lot of history and was very interesting. I toured northern Algeria and then went to Tamanrasset, Algeria in the Sahara. It is the last town with any kind of a real road to it. The Hoggar Mountains are near Tamanrasset. They are a barren, jagged mountain range unlike any other mountains I have ever seen. Neil Armstrong visited them on a world tour after his pioneering trip to the moon. He told the local people that the mountains reminded him of the moonscape. I took a 4x4 jeep tour through the mountains for a week.

Like everyone else, I had always heard of Timbuktu, but I didn't know where it was until I went to Africa. It is on the southern edge of the Sahara in Mali. I was determined to get to Timbuktu. Traveling back to Algiers and flying to Bamako, the capital of Mali, and then traveling to Timbuktu was a very long trip. Traveling across the Sahara directly to Timbuktu looked much shorter on the map. The shorter distance on the map was very deceptive. This turned out to be the most hazardous adventure of my life!

Trans Sahara crossings are made with four wheel drive vehicles. They are well planned and well stocked with food, water, spare parts, and an enormous, adventurous, irrational, almost foolhardy sense of wild abandon. I stayed in a campground in Tamanrasset until I could hitch a ride with some people making a crossing. I took the first ride I could get. A big mistake. I joined three Frenchmen who had two Peugot sedans, two wheel drive not four wheel drive. I quickly learned that a two wheel drive car goes absolutely nowhere in deep sand.

We had a Michelin guide map which gave a general direction across the roadless desert. If the wind hasn't blown away the last tire marks of the previous vehicle to cross ahead of you, you usually follow the tire marks. Not necessarily prudent because the previous person can be just as lost as you are. We followed some tire marks out of the last small outpost of life. We were constantly getting stuck in sand. Again and again I laid on my bare stomach in the sand, scooping sand out from under the differential and rear axle. It was the most discouraging, frustrating, experience of my life.

Two days later we came across a sign. We couldn't believe there was a sign in the middle of the desert. The Algerian Army crosses this route and uses the sign as a guide to a border army station. The sign said we were headed toward the wrong border crossing on a route the Michelin guide said was very dangerous with soft sand. The route we were on was considered impassable in two wheel drive sedans. The safer route was a long way north of us. We were over half way to the border crossing so we decided to continue.

At one point the three Frenchmen wanted to go in one direction and I wanted another. You often see tire tracks going in multiple directions. People have gone the wrong way, gotten lost, ran out of gas or water and died. When the wind blows away the previous tire tracks, you see nothing but flat sand all around you. I actually used my compass and map reading skill gained from plebe map work and army training to convince my French companions the right way to go. I literally charted our course across the sand with a compass like you would chart across an ocean.

We hit a rock and knocked a hole in a gas tank. This could have been the beginning of the end. However, one of the Frenchmen knew a quick fix. He took a bar of soap and rubbed it over the hole. This scrapped soap off the bar to fill the hole. Soap is insoluble in gasoline. The soap repair held the rest of the trip. A good trick to know.

Later, one of the radiators in the two Peugeots developed a leak. The three Frenchmen wanted to pour our drinking water in the radiator. They thought we were close enough to the border crossing to reach it before we ran out of water. I stood in front of the radiator and said "no" we don't put drinking water in the radiator that we know is leaking. The last thing you do crossing the Sahara is waste water. If you have a problem, you stop and wait. Hopefully someone else will come along. One of the Frenchmen knew another trick. He tore open a cigarette and put the tobacco in the radiator. The tobacco shreds worked their way through the radiator. When they came to the hole, they plugged it! Amazing!

We were saved by a bar of soap and a cigarette. We were very relieved to make it to the border. The Algerian Army said nobody had ever been there in two wheel drive sedans before. This was a distinction I would just as soon not had!

Unfortunately, the Algerian Army would not let us cross the border there. We had to travel to the border crossing where we had intended to go. It was the only legal border crossing. The only route to it, which happened to be used by the Algerian Army, was across sand that was too soft for two wheel drive sedans. They suggested we get a local nomad to guide us. We hired a Tuareg nomad to travel with us. The Tuaregs are nomads who live and travel on camels in the Sahara. With the help of the Tuareg nomad, we made it to the correct border station.

At this point I left my three French companions. A Tuareg nomad who had traded his camels for a large open bed truck came through the border station when we were there. He was traveling from the Libya oil fields to western Africa across the desert. His experience with camel caravans taught him where to go to avoid impassable soft sand. For a price, he carried cargo and west African natives from the Libyan oil fields to their homes in west Africa. The natives had been working in the Libyan oil fields and were now traveling home. The natives rode in the open back of the truck. I paid him to let me ride in the cab with him and his driver.

There were no landmarks. The sky was completely overcast so you could not get directions from the sun. Yet the Tuareg nomad always knew the way to go. For centuries they have been traveling across the Sahara with camel caravans. Somehow they find their way to the few and far between waterholes.

I assumed his truck was in better condition than the sedans I had been in. When we got ready to leave the border station, all the natives got off the truck to push it. He had no starter! They had to jump start it every time! Fortunately it was diesel and would start by going only two miles an hour.

The desert nomads travel for days with little more than strong tea they make. The driver often stopped to make tea. An hour later we would stop to pee. The driver and most of the natives were Moslems. Therefore they stopped five times a day to pray. We were always stopping to drink tea, to pee, and to pray! Progress seemed painfully slow.

Then a radiator hose burst! I knew they didn't have spares. No problem. The driver took an old inner tube and cut a section of it to replace the radiator hose. It worked! The African natives are amazing. They don't know much about an internal combustion engine, but they can keep a vehicle running forever.

The nomad truck owner bought a goat from another nomad we came across in the desert. They slaughtered it and hung the carcass on the truck for the flies to feast on. When people on the truck got hungry, we would stop for them to cook some of the goat. I suddenly became a strict vegetarian!

We stopped at one oasis to get water from a single well. The water was brought up in a goat skin bag that was lowered down the deep well on a long rope. The bag was very heavy when it was full. The other end of the rope was run over a pulley at the top of the well and tied to a camel's saddle. The camel owner road the camel away from the well to raise the goat skin water bucket. They let the camels drink from the same goat skin waterbag. I never expected to share my water bag with camels. They thought nothing of it. This was the only water source so I filled my canteen after the camel was finished drinking. I used iodine drops to purify water.

We finally made it to Goa, a town on the Niger River in Mali. I was very relieved. A few days later, I got a ride to Timbuktu. This time I rode in a four wheel drive jeep across the desert. What a difference!

I visited Timbuktu and other interesting sights in Mali. Then I visited Dakar, Senegal and traveled throughout Morocco where I visited Marrakech, Fez, Rabat, and Casablanca.

Most of my travel in Africa was overland rather than by planes. I usually traveled in hot, crowded old Peugot taxis with natives. They put up to nine people in a sedan with luggage on top. Nobody bathes. You often travel for hours with your nose in some native's armpit. You don't journey overland across Africa to be comfortable. It's an adventure.

Anyone can stay in a four star hotel and go see convenient tourist sights in an air conditioned tourist bus. I find that boring. I prefer to experience the remote, less civilized, more adventurous parts of the world rather than just seeing pictures of them in National Geographic.

Give me a call if you are in my area.

Best Regards,

Gary

gsharp@mindbase.com

561-750-0013

6930 Barbarossa St.

Boca Raton, FL 33433