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I remember that as a kid I always preferred to watch nature/animal programs that were filmed in africa. For some reason the animals there facinated me more than others, although all animals were intersting to me. I could also spend hours walking around the Natural History Museum in NYC. This time was equally devuded between the African section and the dinosaurs, although I covered the whole place over and over again. Never seemed to get boring even though the exibits rarely changed. When I was about 10, I befriended some of the workers at the local zoo. This zoo had a very young lioness that had been donated by some rich lady. Apperantly it had been her pet for awhile, until it got too big for her to handle in her home! Since this lioness was pretty tame, and I was there constantly, the lioness kind of "got to know" me. Eventunally the staff let me in behind the "outer perimeter" and I was allowed to pet her. To me as a kid, it was a fantastic experiance.

Years past, and TV programs from africa continued to be the sole link until I was 19 in 1988, and sailed across the Indian Ocean with 2 other guys in a 50 foot ketch. When I left the boat to go home after about 8 months, my flight back to Norway was from Jo'burg. I ended up staying in RSA
for 3 weeks including a visit to Kruger and the nabouring park Sabi Sabi. It was then that I knew I would have to return some day to hunt!

10 years passed without any oppertunity to go down there, but the thought was always at the back of my mind. But then a possibility came along. Our honeymoon! It took me a whole minute to convince my wife to be that a combination of hunting plainsgame in Zim and a photo safari in Botswana would be much more fun than lying around on some beach. The trip lasted 3 weeks and when we returned home my wife wanted to move to Botswana!

2 more years passed and a new hunting trip was taken, this time to Namibia with my wife and my mother. Who's also a hunter (mainly of Moose and Ptomigan, a type of grouse). The 3 weeks in Namibia was kind of a part of my devious plan for the future. To see how keen my wife was on africa. And since she yet again expressed how much she loved being in Africa, I sprung the question a few months after our return to Norway: "How about driving from Norway to RSA for a year?". After a half minute of thinking, she said yes, that would be a great idea!

Planning commenced shortly after, despite everyone telling us it was lunicy (keep in mind that stuff like this was quite uncommon here in Norway), and in July 2002 we drove up to the North Cape to start our trip. It would be from this northern most point, down to Cape Agulas, the southern most point in africa. All in all it took a year to do, travelling through 20 African countrys living in our tent, some quite "unrestfull", and it ended up being a 65.000 kilometer trip. Most of them on tracks or off road since that was the only way to get to places far off the beaten track.

The problem now is that I'm torn between going on a hunt in a year or 2, or shipping the Land Rover down to Durban to drive up to Norway via some of the countrys I missed; Angola, DRC, CAR and Cameroon... This would be a "shorter trip" of about 3-4 months, and most likely by myself, since my wife is, and will be, occupied with our new baby.
A couple of friends have mentioned that they'd like to join me for a shorter stretch or 2, which might be handy in some areas.

It's a hard decision to make (hunting for say 2 weeks, or "exploring" for 3-4 months), and I'll have to wait a bit and see! The funny thing is that it's cheaper to do the longer trip, since living costs are low when travelling like this... On the other hand, I dream of hunting elephant every night too... A mix of both would be the ultimate solution, although I fear that I'd have to start prostituting myself to finance both at the same time! And I'm unfortuantly not that good looking so I wouldn't make much money anyway by doing that!

Erik D.

www.dunia.no