African Hills - The ups and downs of 4x4 overland travel

Hi Folks,

One of the main questions that came back from our London to Cape Town in 10 minutes film was "Its a bit flat", "that's easy" and "where's all the hard roads we thought existed in Africa".  

Our Route - click to enlarge

Well, to help develop that thread and answer those questions, we pulled nearly half a million track points off our Garmin database and analyzed the altitude information "You Geek!" I hear you say..... well, yes, to a point but the resulting information highlighted that we went up and down a LOT on our 48,361km drive South and perhaps a little more that we had realized.  The chart below shows the data in more detail.

Altitude data - Click to enlarge

As you can see, its pretty spiky!!!  We have added some indicators to key regions and key countries with Lesotho being the highest we reached at circa 10,600 feet.  Not quite Everest but certainly a challenge.

To answer the other question, "Where's all the footage of the really hard roads", well the simple answer is we tended not to get the camera out when we were really stuck, lost or struggling.....  when its 40'C, your covered in ants, getting bitten and generally sweating like a madman, photography and filming tends to be low down the list of priorities ;-))

Regards

Nick & Vicks

Stonehenge to Cape Town 2010/11

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