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- (+ earlier Reports)
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- (+ new Pictures)
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- News – May/June 2014 (Bangkok/Thailand, 6/30/2014)
- Website statistics: 'Webalizer' has been shut down definitively in February 2013. 'Logaholic' is the current counter.
- 'Logaholic' shows now the following figures in April 2014: 21'331 visits / 80'969 pages
- 'Google-Analytics' showed 26'046 pageviews during April. The visitors come from ~221 countries!
- ('Logaholic' March: 25'787 visits / 79'709 pages; February: 22'759 visits / 81'160 pages)
- ('Google-Analytics': March = 32'143 pageviews / February = 30'929 pageviews)
- Record day since 12/17/1998 = the birthday of our website: on 11/5/2007 = 13'407 visitors and 787'456 hits ('Webalizer')
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- It's a long time since we wrote on April 30th, 2014, still in Mindelo on Cape Verde our last 'News". On the same day the
- Maersk freighter carrying our LandCruiser in its 28th container left the port with the goal to arrive on June 25th, in Walvis Bay
- in Namibia. Before we were able to drive during 159 days 1'184 miles in 109.4 hours (= Ø 10.8 miles/h) on six different
- islands of the archipelago. On May 15th, we left with Air Maroc also Cape Verde, 220 days after our arrival. Our stay became
- longer due to the extreme slow car entrance procedure. But our patience got tried more, not anymore due to "Cape Verde's
- bureaucracy", but regarding the Maersk shipping line. Still fairly on time – however not scheduled – our container was unloaded on
- May 25th, at Tanger/Morocco, because the vessel 'Troense Maersk' skipped the following transshipment harbor of Algeciras,
- exactly opposite of Tanger, and sailed directly to Portugal. And that's where the box got stuck – at least for the next 3½ weeks.
- Somehow this odd "laytime" at Tanger seemed pretty soon strange to us. Although we raised the alarm at the Maersk agency in
- Praia/Cape Verde on June 3rd, nothing happened. As the second ship left Tanger without our car, it became clear for us that
- nobody was caring there anymore. But the container had to be moved over to the other side of the 'Strait of Gibraltar', because
- (nearly) all of Maersk's vessels destined for Southern Africa following the West African coast leave from Spain's Algeciras.
- We started to send emails to the many addresses listed on Maersk's website – to no avail, not even a reply. Maersk Malaysia
- gave us once a personal address of a directress in Dakar/Senegal, who should have been responsible also for "our" area –
- furthermore nil! In the meantime we felt more and more lost, even dumped. We were dealing in fact with the "world's biggest
- shipping line", but it seemed to us that nobody within this conglomerate felt responsible or in charge – (is it already too vast?).
- Eventually, after another 10 days – thanks to a "caring" 'Maersk-Live-Chat'-staff – the "parked-up" issue started to move again.
- And at last, 3 days later, the container arrived in Algeciras to be loaded on June 22nd, onto the vessel 'Irenes Logos', bound
- for Southern Africa; hopefully! If nothing croppes up, our Toyota should reach its destination on July 16th, 2014, after just
- under 80 days – our by far longest ever shipment!
- Regarding our "transfer": Luckily up to now without problems, and what we planned was successful too. But there were still
- some 'downers' along the road: It wasn't enough that Liliana's 'Lenovo-Thinkpad E530' – just about one year old – stopped
- working on May 11th (motherboard broken!); Emil's 5-year-old 'Lenovo-Thinkpad T500' was 18 days later only manageable
- in 'Safe-Mode'. At least it can be still used! According to our modest view, nowadays the pure Chinese Thinkpads cannot be
- compared anymore to the previous 'IBM'-Thinkpads? Probably only a coincidence.....
- After having tried unsuccessfully until mid-April to get an e-visa for São Tomé & Príncipe (despite of 31 emails), and after
- Liliana's laptop crashed definitely, we abandoned the "shortened" version to fly from Praia/Cape Verde to Windhoek in
- Namibia (9 hours flight by the Angolan TAAG). Thus we booked without further ado Air Maroc to Casablanca/Morocco and
- Qatar Airways via Doha to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. Like this – we thought – we could acquire there a new laptop and at
- the same time re-check after two years our medical condition by our 'family doctor' in Kuala Lumpur. The first didn't work out,
- but the medical results looked thankfully great. Hence we should be able to enter the next round, i.e. flying with Qatar Airways
- again to Doha and onwards to Johannesburg and Windhoek in Namibia. Amazingly this "extended" version to Southern Africa
- – to be precise to Walvis Bay, the port of arrival of our LandCruiser – costs the same amount like the above mentioned TAAG-
- alternative, though it's lasting at the end 36 hours of flight. Long live the jungle of air tariffs!
-
- Conclusion: If Maersk's 'Irenes Logos' is delivering after nearly three months our Toyota in a good state to Namibia, we would
- first of all like – besides "a bit" of Namibia – to visit Angola as the 181st country. Afterwards our future looked something like
- this: Zambia - Zimbabwe - Mozambique - Tanzania - Kenya and the 'Horn of Africa', unknown to us.
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Tongatapu Island |  |
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Rarotonga Island |  |
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Temples, Pagodas, Shrines | |
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| The visit of 6 countries with and 1 island without our LandCruiser | Middle East | |
| The visit of 10 countries with and 1 without our LandCruiser | Southeast Asia | |
| The visit of 4 countries with and 1 islandl without our LandCruiser | Indian Ocean | |
| The visit of 4 countries with and 1 without our LandCruiser | Far East | |
| The visit of 14 Pacific Islands with and 1 without our LandCruiser | Pacific (Febr. 2008-Jan. 2010 + Aug.-Sept. 2010) |
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| The visit of 13 Caribbean Islands with our LandCruiser | Caribbean (June 2003-Dec. 2004) |
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| + added from the United Arab Emirates: | Fairytale Wedding in Dubai (March 1999) |
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| + added from a earlier visit to the USA: | Las Vegas (Millennium change) |
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| + added from our Arabian Peninsula round trip: | Pictures from Yemen (May-June 1996) |
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| + Flashbacks of our Worldrecordtour: | Pictures from "all the continents" (Oct. 1984 - April 1997) |
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