One of the greatest pleasures in finishing phase 1 of the AfricanSurfer trip is the fact that now we get to randomly bump into old friends and strangers who we got to know and love en route. Just like last weekend when Stone happened to bump into Marco searching for waves somewhere north of Lisbon. [...]
1 Comment‘ 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 [...]
0 CommentsThe Royal Geographic Society (RGS) in London is probably one of the most famed exploration institutions in the world. It’s halls have been graced by the likes of Charles Darwin, David Livingstone, Edmund Hilary… and soon, AfricanSurfer! Darwin: “Damnit – wish I’d taken my surfboard with me on the HMS Beagle!” In the mid 1800′s [...]
4 CommentsOne 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 [...]
2 CommentsWe were checking out some of the well known ‘Earth from above‘ series by Yann-Arthus Bertrand on one of our favourite photo-blogs HERE the other day, when it dawned on us… hey… we’ve actually driven past many of these places! And so was inspired this post of interesting things we passed on our trip up [...]
0 CommentsWe took a bit of flack for our recent appearance in a golf magazine, albeit we maintain it was a great piece of literature! Anyway we’d like to redeem ourselves by pointing you to some recent coverage in Port Elizabeth’s biggest surfing blog, Rail-to-Rail. We’re happy to emphasise that Rail-to-Rail is in no way related [...]
0 CommentsApologies for the brief hiatus in posting. The AfricanSurfer crew has had to give in to The Man for a few months to pay off the indulgences of our 15-month trip. Don’t worry, it’s not all over just yet. There are a few exciting projects in the pipeline, so watch this space. For those of [...]
3 Comments“From the beach meanwhile, might be seen boys swimming into the sea, with light boards under their stomachs. They waited for a surf; and then came rolling in like a cloud on the top of it.” Captain James Alexander of the Royal Navy on an expedition in Ghana, circa 1832 This quote was ferreted out [...]
1 CommentThree months after we made it to London the press coverage just keeps rolling in from the strangest places… If you’re in South Africa you absolutely have to check out Golf Punk magazine for prehaps the best photo-spread of the trip so far. We’ll upload an online version soon. Don’t ask how we got a [...]
1 CommentA company Original Volunteers, and we assume many agencies like it, offers a service whereby you pay £27 a day to the agency – a European-based organisation – so they can organise for you to volunteer to assist building houses in some rural areas of Ghana. While we are sure that the volunteers who take [...]
1 CommentFor anybody who has visited Nigeria, it is difficult to think of a more captivating first line for a report than this: “These photographs came about after a friend emailed me an image taken on a cellphone through a car window in Lagos, Nigeria…” We were put onto this piece of journalism last week while [...]
0 CommentsOne of the great advantages of the AfricanSurfer trip is that we made a bunch of cool friends up the coast of the African continent. One of the disadvantages is that as we sit working at our desks saving up for the next trip, we now get a regular stream of emails from them updating [...]
2 CommentsLast week I was on the phone to a journalist from one of the biggest surf magazines in the world (watch this space…) and he asked: “When did you first realise that you were going to make it all the way to London”. I remember the day well, and told him a story that went [...]
2 CommentsThis is a hopelessly late invitation, but for those of you that happen to be in London and read this over the weekend, you should come and join us at The Hub (just behind Angel Tude Station) for breakfast on Monday morning. If you can’t make it, we’ll be sure to give you much more [...]
1 CommentIf there was ever any doubt which candidate AfricanSurfer.com is going to endorse in the US election its been put to rest with this latest bit of news courtesy of our buddy Seth at the newly relaunched 2oceansvibe.com: Photo: AP That’s right, Obama is a bodysurfer! This shot was taken at Sandy Beach in Hawaii [...]
3 CommentsWalk around a weekend market in any European city, like I just did, and you’ll be struck by how wealthy, orderly, neat and pleasant it is. It made me realise that most Europeans witness no poverty in their day-to-day lives: for many of them the world’s major problems are abstracts that exist only in the [...]
2 CommentsWe were amazed at how few tourists we came across on our expedition through central and west Africa last year. That’s not to say we didn’t meet any foreigners: Each capital city had a handful of very accommodating ex-pat surfers – like these guys, these guys, these guys, these guys and these guys; We crossed [...]
0 CommentsThere are several obvious downsides to the three of us being here in London. The most obvious ones are that we no longer spend our nights camped in spots that look like this like this: Somewhere in Africa. South of the Equator And we no longer spend our days surfing waves that look like this: [...]
1 CommentThe other day our good friend Heidi (of the Currie Clan) sent us a link to the Google Earth ‘challenge, a competition whereby the general public can sit in front of a computer to find potential new surf spots on Google Earth. The winner of the competition got to go to Africa (pic from Surfing [...]
1 CommentOne-and-a-half months of our 15 month trip was spent in a suburb of Dakar called Ngor village. It was the longest we spent in one place. When our friend Zulu Cloud flew in to visit, he summarised Dakar as “Colourful. Colourful people, colourful culture, colourful place.” Add to this some great waves which happened to [...]
2 CommentsThe primary objective of our mission up the west coast of Africa was to find surf. This can sometimes be thirsty work, so one of our secondary objectives was to find beer. We quickly discovered that along with casava root and Laughing Cow cheese, beer is a staple in much of sub-saharan Africa! We were [...]
5 CommentsA short while back we spoke about AfricanSurfer threads, most notably Lurkers’ never-say-die Volcom jumper. We can only hope that Lurks is not wearing it to his job interviews as he scours the London city for hopefully lucrative contract work to repay some debt… Tim in Cote d’Ivoire circa October 2007 – no t-shirt required… [...]
1 CommentPost-trip we get a lot of common questions. “How much did it cost?“, is one we prefer not to think about too much… along with: “so what are you going to do now?“! “Where are the best beaches in Africa“, on the other hand, is a subject we could happily rant on about for a [...]
1 CommentOne of the major observations we made on our 15-month surf trip up the west coast of Africa was the continent’s propensity for improvisation. The Africa we saw generally didn’t have access to many products nor resources but an appropriate substitute was always very close at hand. AfricanSurfer.com teamrider Stone ‘improvises’ over a close-out section [...]
1 CommentUPDATE: The radio interview is available here now! Look under “Thursday 10th July” – we come up 16-minutes into the program… ****** Quick heads-up: While Stone frolics on the beaches of Portugal, Tim & Lurks have been hard at work throwing out an AfricanSurfer vibe in London. As a measure of our success, the national [...]
3 CommentsAround this time last year we were in the jungle in Gabon and we wrote a post where we said we’d rather have have been stuck in the mud in the fields of Glastonbury 2007 than stuck in the mud in Mayumba rain forest – as we were at the time. Well, one-year later, and [...]
1 CommentThose who have followed our whole trip online have often asked how we managed to stay so ‘plugged-in’ during our long voyage through some of the most remote places on earth. It was actually quite easy: the ever-present African-village-internet-café and our roaming and local sim cards kept everyone in the loop – mainly using AfricanSurfer.com, [...]
0 CommentsSooo… what’s the most rational thing one can do when you come off a 15-month sabbatical surfing your way from Cape Town to London? Book another holiday, of course! That’s why, as you read this, team AfricanSurfer is tearing it up at Festivals around the world. Lurks and Tim are at the infamous Glastonbury fest [...]
1 CommentWe have recently taken to “couch surfing” our way around London for places to stay. Stone has been acting as a self-appointed live-in babysitter for his new nephew Felix who has a sweet pad in Notting Hill, and Tim has been depending on the generosity of those friends and family who live near enough to [...]
3 CommentsIt took all of about 14 months to do it, but finally somewhere around the south of Spain – about the same time we realised exactly how expensive Europe was going to be, and hence how short our budget was going to last – we agreed on a date for our arrival in London. Bear [...]
1 CommentWhen we left Cape Town in March 2007, we were barely prepared for first stop, Namibia, let alone the rest of Central and West Africa. Most certainly Europe had not even crossed our minds at that stage. “Europe… it’s civilisation, it will be easy!” And although we had a bit of a shaky start on [...]
3 CommentsRegular readers of our blog will have realised that we each have one “warm” article of clothing. Tim’s is a old ripped up khaki jacket, Stones’ was a long-sleeved white Woolies vest (right through the snow-capped Atlas mountains until Marc lo Porto donated him a hoodie a few weeks back) and Lurks… well… Lurks has [...]
2 CommentsNote from the Editors: We are finally in London and phase 1 of our epic trip is done. However, the blog goes on! Here’s what’s coming… A few remaining posts on our lastweek in France. The crazy AfricanSurfer arrival party in Camden, from which we are all still recovering. Our re-integration, or lack of it, [...]
5 CommentsWe first met Caroline in Essaouira in Morocco. We were trying to secure a few nights in the wonderful Dar Afram hostel. Tazz, the owner, was really apologetic about the fact that he was fully-booked – a pretty regular occurance we were to discover – but he mentioned there was an American girl arriving who [...]
1 CommentLurks: “So Mark, should we try and find you something a little more up-market for your weekend here in Hossegor ?” Mark: “No not necessary boet, I want the authentic AfricanSurfer experience…” …and that’s exactly what Lurkers’ brother, Mark Fleming, and close friend Nick Aplas got when they flew into Southern France, from London, to [...]
2 CommentsSomehow, we’ve made it to Paris. In true AfricanSurfer style this was not without drama. Our one and only remaining windscreen wiper lost its’ mojo somewhere near Bordeaux, leaving us a few hundred km’s of showery French springtime weather to navigate our way through using the ingenious ‘Tim-screen-wiper‘. Not quite as effective as the more [...]
3 CommentsAfricanSurfer in the vibe… Whoa, it’s all happening. We’ve had some good media coverage on our trip, Zigzag, SA 4×4, the BBC and Reuters spring to mind. Everybody knows, however, that you haven’t really made it until you’ve cracked 2oceansvibe.com – Cape Towns biggest blog. The vibe just down the road from Vince’s place…! 2oceansvibe [...]
0 CommentsIt’s happened once before. When we were on the coast between Nigeria and Ghana we were so caught up in the cultural and hedonistic frenzy that is the Kingsley Holgate expedition that we forgot to blog about Togo – a small sliver of a country nestled next to Benin. Because we’re racing towards London now [...]
0 CommentsAs you may know, we’re having a party to celebrate the culmination of 15 months on the road from Cape Town to London, on the first ever trans-African surf trip. Although we were actually supposed to arrive in September 2007, this time we really do intend to arrive in London on June the 7th 2008, [...]
2 CommentsIn his backpacking documentary ‘A Map for Saturday‘, Brook Silva-Braga – who we met in Dakhla – talks about ‘24-hour friends‘. These are those people you coincide with on the road, have a great time with, and then bid farewell to as each party continues in their own direction. And no matter how fantastic or [...]
0 Comments“Good day lads, anything to declare? Are those tents on the roof? I must just let you know that no camping is allowed in Gibraltar…” The border official was addressing us with in pristine, polished queens’ English, before proceeding to pull us over after regarding Tims’ SA passport with a certain degree of skepticism. “Not [...]
2 CommentsSurfers have simple needs: …a large rambling house on the beach Guests at the SurfCastle just have to stroll down from the house for a surf …with an interesting history Our friend Joao’s family has been all over the surf in this region for decades … funky décor Sea views from every window …a few [...]
2 Comments“…yes, every now and then we get a chance to travel a bit… but it’s mostly Cor. He does all the really crazy stuff. He’ll go anywhere in Africa… warzone or not, he’s the one that goes…” We were asking Sergio, the mechanic working on our vehicle in Gibraltar, about the African travel opportunities associated [...]
2 CommentsShortly before Christmas 2006 we sent out a group email titled “West coast of Africa 2007 – get involved…” to a few hundred folk on our mailing list, inviting them to come along on our little trip. Team AfricanSurfer, April 2007. This is Stu’s place near Etosha in Namibia, where the trip was conceived, and [...]
1 CommentIt’s no secret that, bordering on the Med, Tarifa is not exactly a world-class surfing destination. Kitesurfing and windsurfing, maybe… wave surfing, not so much. And while we’re on the topic, you may be surpised how many people we’ve had to explain the difference to on this trip: Random subject: “oh, you make surfing? It [...]
4 CommentsWhen we left home in March last year, we were just planning to see if we could make it from Cape Town to London in our ancient truck… interested if we would maybe find some good waves to surf along the way. Then things took a turn. Maybe notoriety is a more accurate description than [...]
1 CommentStone grew up in a city in South Africa, Port Elizabeth, more fondly known as ‘the windy city’. Prior to departing on this trip all of us were based in Cape Town, well known for the infamous ‘Black South-Easter’. We’d like to think we know a little bit about wind… Sometimes, when the Levante blows [...]
0 CommentsI remember quite clearly a scene, from one of the million-or-so surf films we’ve watched in our time, of one of those big Hawaiian chargers talking about the act of wave-riding with your friends. Inbetween clips of some big tropical waves somewhere he says something along the lines of (in gruff voice, dark sunglasses, pensive): [...]
0 CommentsWhat’s the least you expect from family? In an incredible display of commitment to the cause, one of the AfricanSurfer crews’ siblings flew most of the way around the world to welcome the AfricanSurfers to Europe. Normally domicile in Los Angeles, Calif. Rob Fleming, caught connecting flights through Europe, the Middle East and the Indian [...]
2 CommentsTarifa is the Southern-most peninsula of Spain, and thus also that place where the Mediterannean meets the Atlantic ocean. This is the second time on the trip that we’ve been on a peninsula where two oceans meet – the first being Cape Point in Cape Town from where the trip began over one year ago. [...]
1 CommentSo, as you know, we’re in Europe – somewhere in the South of Spain right now. Last week we had our first surf in the Med. It looked like this: The Med last week: inviting… …but we went anyway. This is why we didn’t call it EuropeanSurfer.com This shot – in a howling onshore wind [...]
0 CommentsWe’ve had a few headlines on our expedition lately. The BBC termed it: “The great African Surfing Safari” Reuters headed their piece: “Searching for perfect surf along Africa’s coast” But this headline in Durban daily paper the “Express” has to be our favourite yet… ‘ Excerpt from the Express (thanks for the clipping, Guy)… The [...]
2 CommentsEarlier on the trip we talked about that winged migration which occurs, often in rather spectacular fashion, up and down the coast of West Africa. Another migration which we haven’t talked about much is that of the human kind. We met our fair share of Africans en route with a shared desire to one day [...]
4 CommentsThe first time we tried to get into Morocco we couldn’t. We had to beg the border officials in the Sahara to allow us in and they eventually did, on our second attempt. Then, seven weeks later when Tim tried to get out of the country, they wouldn’t let him out – even begging and [...]
3 CommentsSo we made an important discovery the other day. That being that the word “kif” (or any combination of letters producing the same phonetic sound) means the slang version of “good” in all of French, Arabic and… wait for it… AFRIKAANS! Don’t have any idea how that came about, but we’re all stoked we can [...]
4 CommentsAfrica has a number of problems. Too many tourists is not one of them. We were sitting around the breakfast table engaging with a highly-qualified German woman working on a stint as a professor at a Moroccan University. Morocco is the only African country she has ever visited. She seemed a little repulsed by the [...]
0 CommentsIt’s been a couple of weeks already since we dropped Ian “Wheet/Sweetmeats” White off at the Fes train station in the early hours of the morning to make his flight out of Rabat in time. Ian is a good friend of ours who also happens to be an excellent photographer who joined us for 3 [...]
3 CommentsWe’re actually in Moulay Boussalam, north of Rabat, at the moment. But here’s a flashback from a few weeks ago. A post that we really should have done then but it’s taken us a few weeks: a) to recover, and b) to digest and process the very cool time we had in the Moroccan seaside [...]
4 CommentsOne BBC radio interview in the can, another with Reuters about to commence in the next few minutes and a week with an embedded journalist? Sounds like AfricanSurfer Media may be going mainstream. Hanging out on the beach with local Dries, near Rabat… Perhaps our new friend was just being polite when he offered us [...]
5 CommentsWe’ve been hanging in Rabat for the last few days for various reasons, and it’s been really great because as with so many things on the trip we’ve once again proved to ourselves that prejudice is such a bad idea. This word shouldn’t even exist. From our guidebook and various people we’d spoken to along [...]
4 Comments“and after that, my friends…“, Ahmed pointed at the map of the coast north of Casablanca: “…bon courage, you are in civilisation!“. At the time we were in the tranquil seaside village of Mirleft, south of Agadir. Ahmed is a well-respected local surfer who had kindly agreed to give us a good deal on a [...]
4 CommentsAs you may know, we’ve had our friend Ian “Sweetmeats” White travelling with us for the last month. Not only does he bring the proportion of Chartered Accountants in the group to 3 out of 4, but the man also takes a mean photograph. Wheet, about to take another mean photograph It was great having [...]
1 CommentUnbelievable… 21 countries down, many with some of the worst reputations in the world, the AfricanSurfer crew have finally arrived in London, England. After surfing too many unridden perfect waves in central and west Africa the crew have decided that life is not all about nature, surfing, meeting interesting people and generally following their dreams. [...]
3 Comments27 March 2007 – Cape Town, South Africa The sun is setting over the idyllic waters of Camps Bay, as our surfboard-laden 1981 Toyota Landcruiser pulls out of the driveway and sets out North along the N7 highway. Destination: London. Timeframe: 6 months Bye-bye Camps Bay, 27 March 2007… 27 March 2008 – Fes, Middle [...]
5 Comments“You know,” Jakke the Belgian Hippy said as we stood on the rocks at the end of Imsouane Point, “when you look at this from here, it’s really just a big playground”. The ocean in front of us was full of bearded travellers on single-fin longboards, Germans on fishes, grandfathers on twin-fin eggs, and Swedish [...]
8 Comments“Easter… c’est quand le bunny arrive est cacher le oeuf cholocat!!!” (Easter… it’s when the bunny comes and hides the chocolate eggs!!!) We were sitting around a low-slung table in the middle of the Vagabond cafe and I was jokingly trying to explain (complete with flapping bunny-ear hand movements) to our new surfer friend, Juan, [...]
6 CommentsHere’s two things you may or may not already know about the medieval Moroccan city of Marrakech: 1) Someone told us that the name is derived from the arabic ‘marra’ meaning something along the lines of ‘walk’, and ‘kech’ meaning ‘sleep’, together referring to the city’s original status as a stopover point for travelling traders. [...]
6 CommentsYodit Eklund is a valuable girl. Sure, we were impressed by her Berkley education, the fact that she is solidly multi-cultural (Ethiopian, French, American & Swedish) and her surfit of creative ideas, but it was when we were strolling with her through the Medina here in Casablanca on the weekend that we realised her true [...]
5 CommentsA good few months back now, while on the road in Mali, we bumped into and blogged about a biker called Alan. So while we were driving North up the West coast of Africa in search of the perfect wave, Alan was riding South in search of the perfect cup of tea. We were wondering [...]
1 CommentSheez, anybody know what day it is today anyway?!! It’s been a positively mad last 48 hours. In fact I think I need to stabilise myself on the wall as I type this, hold on… OK that’s better. Between when we stepped into the Cruiser on Friday afternoon in Taghazout, and stepped out on Saturday [...]
4 Comments“it was a present for my 40th birthday… apparently it cost EUR600″ We all stood a little dumbstruck, staring blankly at Gert for a moment as if he’d just been beamed down from a spaceship in the sky above the campsite. We weren’t sure whether to be more shocked by the fact that this man [...]
2 CommentsYour nominations got us to the finals – now it’s time to VOTE! Like Barack Obama storming the walls of the old order in the US Democratic primaries, AfricanSurfer.com has just vaulted into the stratosphere of the blogosphere. Thanks to the numerous heartfelt nominations from our devoted readers we’ve made it through to the finals [...]
3 CommentsHide-and-seek with nature is no easy game, but searching for waves, it’s fun all the same. Green shrubs peak out as the sandplains give way, goodbye Sahara, we’ll meet another day. Over fields through rivers, we must be getting warmer, so why when we look, it’s around the next corner? If the ocean could talk [...]
1 CommentA couple of months ago we scooped our first South African magazine feature in Zigag, Africa’s premier surfing journal. Now it’s the turn of the diesel-heads to get their fix of the AfricanSurfer expedition. The March issue of SA 4×4 magazine features a glorious 5-page spread of Patrick Cruywagen’s experience travelling with the crew in [...]
0 CommentsThere’s a Moroccan saying that translates to: “Those who do not travel do not know the good of men”. The phrase has been on my mind for a couple of months so it is fitting that its meaning has become real for me here in the land of its origin. We began our second effort [...]
3 CommentsIt was sparked by meeting our first ever ‘meteorite smuggler’ at Camping Baie des Levrier, and escalated through various weird and wonderful events since. Although there is basically nothing there, driving the stretch of coast we just have between Nouadhibou in Mauritania and Dakhla in the Western Sahara, one just gets the feeling that this [...]
0 CommentsI remember reading in a West Africa guidebook that Noudhibou, which is the north-most city in Mauritania, is one of the region’s major traveller’s crossroads. According to the guidebook Busua in Ghana, Bamako in Mali and Cotonou in Benin are others. To me, Noudhibou – a dusty and unappealing little town – didn’t merit this [...]
4 CommentsMauritania? It’s that country full of sand dunes with no beer, right? Yip that’s what we thought too. But we’ve been very pleasantly surprised by this country that receives more coverage on Taliban threats to tourists than it’s real attractions, which have been some of the most interesting we’ve encountered on this trip. It is [...]
1 CommentThis story begins early this week when we had packed up our camp under the lighthouse at Cap Blanc and headed back to the city to refuel for the 400km trip to Dahkla in Morocco’s Western Sahara. The border formalities on the Mauritanian side went smoothly but, once we had crossed the rocky 4km no-man’s-land [...]
0 CommentsLast week we went to camp at Cap Blanc lighthouse in Noudhibou. It’s the only surf spot we’ve found or heard about in Noudhibou that you don’t need permission from the army to visit. Cliff-camping, Mauritania-style The point at Cap Blanc is home to a wave that has serious potential but wasn’t all-time when we [...]
0 CommentsAs recently as 2 years ago, one of the bigger obstacles in attempting a trans-Africa expedition, such as ours, up the West coast of the continent was the fact that there existed a 600km stretch of Sahara in Mauritania through which no formal road passes. Thus the requirement for a fairly risky desert-dash between Nouakchott [...]
1 CommentAnd so, the On-the-Virtual-Terrance-of-the-Maison-du-Mouton-Interview-Series continues with Mike “The American” Dvorak. Mike is a teacher at the international school in Dakar in office hours, but during off time he transforms into the peak-cap-wearing surfer we met in the water at Club Med. A peak-cap-wearing surfer, that is, who regularly makes drops like this with his trusty [...]
3 CommentsYou’ve laughed with us, you’ve cried with us, you’ve recoiled in horror with us, and you’ve shared some incredible waves with us thoughout the 11 months of this crazy expedition of ours. Now you’ve got the chance to Get Involved! Simply click on the big button below to nominate us for the South African Blog [...]
2 CommentsThere has been a lot of hype about Mauritania. Many people in Senegal warned us about the risks faced by travellers here but we’ve found most people to be welcoming and friendly – apart from the unscrupulous border guards who tried for several hours to extract bribes from us. Unsuccessfully, I can happily report. We [...]
1 CommentFourteen years ago, a young, blonde Swiss girl was invited by her boyfriend to accompany him on an overland expedition in Africa. Her name was Ursula, and – imagining long beaches and exotic wildlife – she gladly accepted Martin’s invitation to join him in his Range Rover.What she didn’t realise is that Martin was on [...]
4 CommentsWhat to do in St Louis, Senegal, when there’s no surf – go birdwatching of course! We didn’t realise it before we got here but Northern Senegal is home to supposedly the 3rd most important bird reserve in the world. It makes sense when you think about it – the area around the Senegal river [...]
1 CommentSalam Gaye is one of those guys who’s going to make it big. To be fair, he already is big. The man has a personal roladex of 3000 contacts (and a mailing list of 20 000 names “just in case he needs them”). He lives with his wonderfully hospitable family in a beautiful house in [...]
1 CommentWe were lucky in December that our arrival in Dakar coincided with the 3rd (and final) edition of the Senegal surfing champs for the 2007 year, held not far from the apartment we were renting. To witness such a gathering of surfers, at such a slickly run event was something we havent seen since SA. [...]
0 CommentsBecause we spent all of our time in Dakar surfing, playing table tennis with Mike and drinking Moroccan tea at Sufjan’s restaurant… Stone, Cara & Kingdom, minding their own business at Sufjan’s place… …we didn’t get round to blogging much about what two months in Dakar was actually like. To remedy this oversight, we present [...]
1 CommentTo start – good news, we’ve uploaded some new photo’s to the web from our last couple of surf-filled weeks in Dakar. If you’re not part of the Facebook group you can access the public gallery HERE. Anyway, as surfers, one of the things we’ve noticed as we’ve rounded the bulge is that all of [...]
1 CommentWe’re always happy to get some feedback on our blog-posts. It reassures us that it’s not only our mums and dads that visit the site, and makes the work that much more worthwhile. So first up, Hugo. You may remember we first met Hugo in Benin where he was living and working. He had procured [...]
1 CommentSo finally we’ve had a chance to rummage through all the fan mail. Needless to say it took a little while. Anyway, you may rememember a couple of weeks back we initiated the ‘AfricanSurfer Academy’ at the 2nd grade class of the International School of Dakar where we preached a little about African travel and [...]
0 CommentsWe’ve got another confession, the AfricanSurfer crew are complete coffee junkies. Thanks to spending a large part of our working years whiling away the hours at the Coffee Bean on main or the Monmouth in Borough market – we’re a sucker for good ground beans in some hot water, preferably with a touch of milk. [...]
0 CommentsWe’ve been living in Dakar now for about one-and-a-half months, and it’s time to move North again in the next day or two. Those who have graciously accommodated us earlier in the journey will know all-too-well that we usually have a big problem leaving anywhere. But here in Dakar we have really been pushing the [...]
2 CommentsThis won’t be the best blog post we’ve written. This is why: When we got up this morning – admittedly a little late – The wave outfront the Maison du Mouton was firing. Properly. Apparently some pros travelling with Surfer Magazine had been on it early but by the time we got out there it [...]
0 CommentsThe Maison du Mouton has been good to us – but the trip must go on – so at some stage next week we’ll depart the dusty alleys of Ngor and make our way towards Mauritania. Those enjoying the “On-The-Terrace-of-the-Maison-du-Mouton Interview Series” needn’t fear, however. From today, the Terrace goes all virtual with an exclusive [...]
1 CommentWe first heard of this strange French movie, ‘Brice de Nice’, over a very extravagant and memorable Lebanese-style meal with Nabil and his wife in Abidjan. Quite a lot of the conversation revolved around surfing, and whether or not “we had to wait a long time for the wave”. This was all a little confusing [...]
0 CommentsA couple of weeks ago we were fortunate enough to bump into an American ripper in the surf who called himself ‘Mike’. Turns out Mike is a Grade 2 teacher at the International School of Dakar. Today we presented to his class of 7 & 8 year-olds on our journey so far from Cape Town [...]
5 CommentsSurfers from Finland? Ya… that’s what we thought. We first met Anssi and Jaakko around a rowdy table in Ngor village on New Years eve, and subsequently had them over at the Maison du Mouton. Their philosophy: ‘surf to travel’… I guess is the only option when you live in a waveless country! What’s quite [...]
0 CommentsAs well as selling all kinds of healthy stuff cheaper than anyone else on his website www.fitfuel.co.za , Giles Knights is our de facto PR man in South Africa. Last month his hooked us up with his mate Will Bendix who’s the editor of SA’s top surfing magazine Zigzag. Will published a short feature on [...]
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