African Honeymoon

Résumé du livre

In the spring of 1966, two wildly different souls met atop the Eiffel Tower on a stormy April day. Against all odds, they've now survived sixty years together. Take one fiery Yank raised on the streets of L.A. and mix in one quietly capable Geordie girl from northern England-then add a spark of romance, a dash of sex, and the reckless energy of youth. The result? A honeymoon adventure that would shape their future. On the eve of marriage, they found a derelict VW van rusting in a Scottish field, its split front windscreen like two sad eyes peering over the tall grass. Young and impulsive, they bought the thing-dreaming it would carry them down through Africa. Straight away, they hit their first snag. It wouldn't start. Nor was it registered. But start they did. Right after their wedding, they set off across the burning sands of the Sahara, getting bogged to the chassis in no-man's-land, the border closed for a week-long holiday. So, they dug themselves out-only to find ten newly independent countries ahead-two in civil war and all run by unprepared officials. Ol' Sad Eyes gave her all, but the Congo's mud tracks-with holes big enough to swallow trucks-proved too much. Her back broken, windscreen shattered, doors no longer closing, she limped into Kampala, where a Bantu family made it their first home. Hitching a ride with three Jersey lads in their second-hand van, they wandered through East Africa's great wildlife nurseries, long before mass tourism. Lost in the Serengeti, they wandered for days, never seeing another soul-only animals, the wind, and the Earth as it once was. African Honeymoon is more than a wild journey across a changing continent. It's where they first learned how to survive in the wild-and where Nature began teaching them her subtle wisdom. The first in a trilogy, African Honeymoon is followed by Around the World in a Homemade Boat, with their sons, and Two's a Crew-around Australia, showing their ten grandchildren that adventure doesn't end with age-it only changes course.