You never really own a Defender. You merely look after it
for the next expedition. And so, within a week of taking delivery of ‘Ramrod’, I was
making plans to join this rabble of reprobates for the journey onwards to (or at
least towards) Cape Town.
By plans, of course, I mean plugging random destinations into Google
maps. Apparently it takes a mere 99 hours to drive from Abuja to Cape Town. The
only caveats that are added are that the road passes through multiple countries
and may involve a ferry crossing. All sounds pretty straightforward then.
Having assembled all the ingredients for such a trip (an
understanding employer, an assortment of colourful visas, a bottle of whiskey
and a pack of trademark white vests) it was time to bid farewell to the shining
lights of Abuja and head out into the ‘real Africa’.
The complications seemed to have started before we did. With
three days to go I found a large pool of red liquid under the front wheels. My
first guess was road kill, but unfortunately it turned out to be power steering
fluid. After 48 hours of patiently waiting for a new pump to be delivered from
Kano we were all set to go…
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