First Post!

What an eventful few days we have had since our arrival to London. After a short flight across the Atlantic Ocean, we arrived at the Heathrow Airport Tuesday morning with high expectations and a big to do list. We ended up finding a great little hotel right in the center of London; a ten minute walk and we could be having drinks with Queen at Buckingham Palace or checking out dinosaur fossils from around the world at the Museum of Natural History. Tate has already taken some 234 excellent photo's with his new camera and it turns out that I look really good in a Blazer jersey.

On Wednesday, we made our way to the Guinea Embassy to apply for our last minute visas, and as it turns out the embassy was located right next to Abbey road. Ya, the same Abbey Road the Beatles made famous way back when. We did some exploring while our visas were being processed and called it an early night. We were still experiencing some major jet lag and every night at around 6 o'clock we hit a major wall, unfortunately this meant waking up at 4 a.m!

Thursday was when the real big news came and I mean REAL big! We were riding the tube (that's what they call the subway here) when we received an email from the Adventurists (the charitable company who organizes the Africa rally) letting us know that the rally was cancelled due to extreme terrorism in Mali, Algeria, and Mauritania. CRAZY HUH? Imagine our predicament, here we are riding the "tube" thousands of miles away from home, rushing to finish some last minute details before the Rally which was scheduled to start in less then three days when we received an email calling off the rally!!! The email basically let us know that the head of Counter Terrorism here in the UK called off the rally because of the significant threat of terrorism in northern Africa. Due to the profile of the event, we could be targeted of militant action by the al-queda linked terrorist group. In the past week, three Spanish aid workers had been kidnapped and a British tourist was killed by the terrorist group. Scary huh? We all knew there was a risk entering the rally but purposely putting ourselves in immediate danger is reckless and downright stupid. Attempting to cross Mauritania would be like swimming with hungry sharks. For more information, checkout this statement made by the FCO: http://www.fco.gov.uk/content/en/travel-advice/middle-east-north-africa/mauritania/fco_trv_ca_mauritania

Yet despite all of our plans coming to a screeching halt, we have still managed to find a way to push forward without recklessly endangering our lives. So it is with great excitement and after a few days of panic that we have come up with a solution. We have tracked down a cargo ship that will take our vehicle from Tillsbury, England to Dakar, Senegal for a very reasonable price. Our car is set to arrive in Senegal around the first of January, in the meantime Tate and myself will trek our original route from London to Morocco where we will then catch a flight into Dakar. Easier said than done, of course, but right now we just have to take it one step at a time. Many of the other teams competing in the rally are following in suit and finding ways of shipping their vehicles to Senegal to start from there. I am sure there will be many more problems to solve once we arrive in Senegal but as for now we are still moving forward, promoting COW, and pushing to raise heaps of money for charity. This is just one more speed bump in our trek around the globe, and no matter what else comes up I can promise that we will find a way to keep pushing forward.


Keep your head held high and thanks you for all your support, we will not let you down.


Keegan & Tate