Last 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 something like this:

We didn’t have a clue about what to expect when we left Cape Town a year-and-a-half ago and headed north. We weren’t sure if we’d spend months on end bogged down in rain forests, or if our ancient Landcruiser would make it at all.

But during the first week of the trip our nerves about the road ahead began to dissipate as our old truck managed the first two thousand kilometres without a hiccup.  “Maybe it won’t be so difficult”, we thought. Then we crossed into Angola.

The road from Namibia into Angola is one of the worst we travelled, and is littered with bombed-out wrecks from the SA-Angola Bush war

There wasn’t much talking in the car as we inched our way over the ribbons of tar that linked the potholes making up the road into southern Angola. What little talk there was dropped to nothing as the sun began to set on our first day in “Africa-proper” and we faced the prospect of finding a camp in the landmine-littered bush.

Our spirits were buoyed slightly when we came across the wrought-iron gates and palm-lined driveway of a commercial farm.

Some welcome civilisation. Apparently.

But when we headed up to the farmhouse and a scarred and muscle-bound Angolan war veteran stepped out of the entrance hall (in which he and his men had built a campfire) and growled “we live here now” in broken English, we were sure the game was up.

This guy had gunshot scars from his years fighting South Africans in the Angolan bush.

Then, as pretty much everyone else we met on our trip did, he grinned, and offered us a place to stay.

Our first campsite across the Namibian border

Team Photo (Clockwise from top left: Lurks, Tim, Leader of the Angolan war veterans, War Vet 1, War Vet 2, Stone, Bronwen)

The Portuguese farmers left this fridge behind. Pity there’s no electricity for the war vets to use it!

African travel: worth the odd night with war vets.