2011 February » 2Taylors

Kindles have arrived

Posted by Elizabeth at 8:07 am

Feb 042011

Our Kindles have arrived and they are just as cool as we thought they would be. They are very slim, light, easy to use and read. So far we have downloaded free books from Amazon to try them out and they are excellent. These are definitely the solution for travelling. No need to carry heaps of books with you or trying to duck into the local bookstore – not such a great option through the remote parts of Africa!. We plan to download a number of books to them before we leave. We can then download more as needed along the way whenever we have internet, either via the laptop or, if we are lucky enough to have Wi-Fi, directly to the Kindle. The books take less than a minute to download to the Kindle!

We realised after we ordered them though that we would need some sort of light to use them at night whilst we are camping. We could use our headlamps but the batteries seem to die on these pretty quickly as it is, so that wasn’t really a good option. We found some Kindle lamps on Amazon and bought the Verso clip on light. They are very small, very light and use CR2032 batteries which are much easier to carry with us. So far the light seems great and manages to light up the whole screen. The light fits in the case with Kindle so is easy to carry.

Weekend Practice Trip

Posted by Elizabeth at 8:38 pm

Feb 062011

This weekend we joined a trip with our 4wd club to practice our new skills. To say we got to practice a bit is an understatement! Some of the tracks we tackled were pretty full on for our stock standard Prado! We spent Saturday wandering the tracks on the club property at Willowglen. There are numerous tracks on the property with varying degrees of difficulty and plenty to put our skills to the test. For those that know the property, most of us decided to go UP the opposing wheels and the road building tracks for a challenge. The Prado made it up both, which is pretty impressive. There were a few tracks we didn’t try considering the guys with lift kits and lockers were having difficulty! (See the photos).

Sunday we took the long way back to Nowra through Monkey Gum Road. What a great experience! It was pretty challenging for both the driver and our Prado (a lift kit would have been useful!). If we can get through that road we should be able to tackle anything Africa can throw at us, well at least where we are intending to go. Not so sure we’d make it through the Congo! A few minor casualties to a couple of vehicles but all in all a great day and excellent practice for us. Not so sure though we’ll be tackling anything so full on again with our stock standard Prado, but we’ve done it, we survived and it was excellent practice. The photos just never do it justice, it was about 100 times harder than it looks!

Vaccinations

Posted by Elizabeth at 8:20 am

Feb 122011

We have started our vaccinations for our trip. Luckily we have most of them already from previous trips to Africa, China and Asia, such as Hep A, Hep B, yellow fever, tetanus, and polio. We needed a booster for typhoid as it was more than 5 years since we were vaccinated and this time it was recommended we get the rabies vaccination as we are travelling for so long and to remote locations. This is a series of 3 shots over 4 weeks. Our doctor is using an intradermal injection as you only need 0.1ml and this reduces the cost and seems to be just as effective. We will also need a meningitis vaccination and of course malaria tablets. We will take Lariam again as we have not had any side effects from it in the past.