We go back to 1981. Dr Peter Peeters has a sabbatical year. During this year and his wife Claire Van Veelen will travel through the continent of Africa.
It is their intention to explore the country and to try to learn why it is that some countries in African have been able to develop whilst some seemed stuck in the past and were unable to grow and develop.
Eventually, after all their planning it is a snowy evening the the Belgium capital of Brussels and they are ready to start off on the first leg of their amazing journey in a somewhat elderly Land Rover.
The book, which is copiously illustrated with their evocative photographs, follows their journeys through Africa.
They met with a wide variety of vastly different people and peoples, learn to go with the flow and work at a less frantic pace than they were used to.
They had preconceived ideas about Africa and the people who made up its disparate populations. They swiftly learn to re-think all they thought they knew.
It was an interesting and life-changing experience for them, filled with drama, comedy and some pathos as they allow their Land Rover to take them through Africa.
They coped, very well, as it happens with a variety of emergencies: The rainy season, coping with a three inch thorn stuck in a foot as they drove along, unable to stop. The treatment -whilst mobile- was a bucket of Detol with the foot jammed in it as blood flowed all over the floor of the Land Rover, the quaint way of making phone calls back home to Belgium from Zaire, meeting with witchdoctors and much more including seeing and interacting with the bewildering array of wildlife.
This highly interesting travelogue is ideal for armchair travellers or those who know Africa and who want to be reminded of it or who want to learn more.
It is a coffee table sized book and is worth every penny of the £18.50 price.
It will make an ideal present or a wonderful minor indulgence for yourself.
It is published by the Book Guild and is available via the That's Books and Entertainment online book shop. just check it out on the right-hand side of this review, plus thousands of other travel books, DVDs, etc.
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