‘
Following the success of Stone’s sell-out talk at the RGS last week, he agreed to repeat the talk for some friends at Diageo Africa who couldn’t get their hands on tickets. The “repeat for friends” snowballed a little and Stone now finds himself presenting to much of the international office. Diageo has a significant presence on the mother continent, and an equally significant commitment to bringing clean water to 1m people in Africa each year in partnership with a number of organisations through their “Water of Life 1m Challenge”. One of those organisations is AMREF.  

We learned to love clean water in Africa!

Now having spent almost a year and a half in some  of the most remote places on the continent… we can really appreciate the value of clean potable water! Which is why we thought we’d get involved and use the Diageo talk to do our bit for AMREF.

The closest surfschool to London (in Bournemouth), Surfsteps Surf School were quick to come to party and donated a couple of free surf-lessons to raffle off for those who are inspired by Stone’s talk, valued at £70. We’re selling the tickets at £2 for one, or £5 for three tickets, and are going to keep the raffle open for a week, closing next week Thursday 2 April 2009 at 17h30 (UK time) when we will draw the winner. 

YOU CAN ENTER ONLINE BY SIMPLY DONATING £2 HERE.

Stone in French Congo… maybe he could use one of the Bournemouth Surf School lessons himself instead of giving them away? 

Surfsteps Surf School in Bournemouth are open 7 days a week and really accessible from London. They’ve got all the gear and do water safety, beach awareness and then all the necessary stuff (just like in the movie “Point Break“) to get you up and riding by the end of your lesson! As a bonus they’ve just added stand-up paddle-boarding if you want to give that a whirl before you cough up your life savings for the board and paddle!

www.bournemouthsurfschool.co.uk

Thanks SurfSteps for helping us raise a little bit of ‘tom’ for AMREF!

One of the blogs we follow is called ‘Moving Sushi‘. It’s a buddy of ours from University, Mike Markovina, and his girlfriend Linda on a very similar route to us, documenting the state of fisheries up the West coast of Africa. We have a good chuckle amongst ourselves as each new post comes out, documenting many of the same obstacles we encountered ourselves, as they move North.

Markovina employs novel up-close techniques to research fish in Africa…

Needless to say they’ve just hit one of our favourite obstacles. Here’s what they had to write about the Mayumba mud puddle…

We chopped our way through fallen trees and climber over maddy banks and small rivers and then there it was, the infamous mayumba mud puddle from hell, which likes to eat cars. It did not help that a couple of elephants decided to take a bath there and leave great big holes in the mud, which one had to avoid. I know there are 3 guys reading this and smiling as they had a car eating experience here in June 2007. We laid down all the wood we could find and carefully guided the car onto it, trying to avoid the mud, this was not to be and we were instantly stuck at 3pm. Getting out of the car to check the problem I was obliterated by horse flies, probably my least favorite animal in the world. We dug, and winched and jacked the car for hours. We inched half a meter at a time. At times like this it is important to stress and drink cold beer, so we did, drink beer that is.

Thankfully Markovina had some previous experience with the puddle. After Stone famously walked 32km’s through hippo and buffalo-infested jungle to find cellphone reception to call the Wildlife Conservation Society outpost, approx 100km further North - it was Mike who the park manager despatched by quad-bike! Mike was working as an ocean conservationist in the area at the time, and had previously worked together with Stone on the University of Cape Town surf club committee… coincidence!

Gabonese highway…

When we attempted the same road circa June 2007, the intel we had received advised: “not to attempt route without a chainsaw, and a strong spade“. We had neither. But we were still intent on tracking the coast as the only other road North was a few-hundred-kilometer diversion inland. So we borrowed a machete from a generous biologist in the Congo, and set-off with little more than a scrappy page of directions and a lot of canned beans…

The note should have rung a warning bell. Part of it read: “…they will have to get off on a busted up sh#tarse piece of crap road that takes off to the right. It is hard to spot and they will have a hard time accepting that it is a road at all…” Apparently this is how an 8-mile road that takes 3 days to pass begins!

Anyway we eventually emerged from the jungle across the border - filthy, cut, bruised, and carrying numerous new parasites… but with a great adventure under our belt.

Mike & Linda -  we’re stoked you had the same fortune… and also stoked that our dignity is somewhat redeemed by the fact that we were not the only one’s eaten by the hungriest car-eating mud-puddle in Gabon!!!

A part of the story which is often forgotten is that on the same day he walked 32km for help to freeing our landcruiser from the mud, Stone twisted his knee badly on a quadbike, putting him out of surfing for the next month! Tim and Lurks were stoked to finally have someone to film…!