Our Round-the-World adventure

[tacototheworld]

I’m suprised you’re skipping Iceland. You can take a ferry there, have you guys got a carnet de passage for your taco?

initially we were thinking of skipping it do to the cost of shipping our vehicle there but we might go there next spring and just rent a local car there instead, although that feels like cheating.

No, we don’t have a carnet for the truck. My understanding is that it isn’t needed for Europe. And it now seems like it’s not needed for Africa either, with the possible exception of Egypt. We’ll see about Asia when we get closer.

 

[Lucidless]

initially we were thinking of skipping it do to the cost of shipping our vehicle there but we might go there next spring and just rent a local car there instead, although that feels like cheating.

No, we don’t have a carnet for the truck. My understanding is that it isn’t needed for Europe. And it now seems like it’s not needed for Africa either, with the possible exception of Egypt. We’ll see about Asia when we get closer.

You’ll need it for Africa, my friend just did 3 months in a mozom prison for not having one, along with not having the funds ($10k) to pay a requested police bribe for that.

this is why I bought a vehicle in South Africa, easy to get the carnet. But it’s your vehicle passport, so with some countries (borders are always different than what the dot gov sites say) your personal entry visa will be 30-90 days, but you’ll only get a 1 day to 7 day passage permit. And you do not want that to expire.

Get the Carnet De Passage

 

[tacototheworld]

You’ll need it for Africa, my friend just did 3 months in a mozom prison for not having one, along with not having the funds ($10k) to pay a requested police bribe for that.

this is why I bought a vehicle in South Africa, easy to get the carnet. But it’s your vehicle passport, so with some countries (borders are always different than what the dot gov sites say) your personal entry visa will be 30-90 days, but you’ll only get a 1 day to 7 day passage permit. And you do not want that to expire.

Get the Carnet De Passage

Wow! Thats a real bummer. Hope you’re ok. Yes definitely before entering we’ll check it out! Thanks for the heads up. Did you not have a temporary import permit for your vehicle?

 

[Andrew McKee]

You’ll need it for Africa, my friend just did 3 months in a mozom prison for not having one, along with not having the funds ($10k) to pay a requested police bribe for that.

this is why I bought a vehicle in South Africa, easy to get the carnet. But it’s your vehicle passport, so with some countries (borders are always different than what the dot gov sites say) your personal entry visa will be 30-90 days, but you’ll only get a 1 day to 7 day passage permit. And you do not want that to expire.

Get the Carnet De Passage

I'd be very interested to hear the details of your friends trouble in Mozambique. Please share, it could be very educational for us!

With a SA registered vehicle I drove Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya and Mozambique without a CPD and no issues. I have heard that Kenya is increasingly difficult to go to without a CPD. I can't imagine why you'd end up in trouble (aka prison) if you stay within the limits of a TIP. We were given a TIP in each country without any hesitation. Mostly "do you have a carnet", me: "No, can I get a TIP?", border official: "Yes, get it over there from that man." or whatever. No big thing.

You say it's "easy to get the carnet" for your SA vehicle. I found it was not hard, but it was also not cheap. A 100% deposit of the value of the vehicle, so though you get it back, minus currency risk, not small change depending on your vehicle value.

 

[tacototheworld]

After Belgium we moved next-door into the Netherlands.


Couldn’t resist taking a photo of the truck in the windmill-rich area of Kinderdijk.


With wild camping being once again mostly illegal, we booked campgrounds online in Netherlands as well. They were still running around $20 a night, more outside of big cities like Rotterdam and Amsterdam. Similar to Belgium, most of the campgrounds had great toilet and shower facilities, but often had other features we did not need or care about (playgrounds, shops, cafes, swimming pools even!) We tried to seek out the more basic ones. One of our favorite sites was on the Rhine river outside of Rotterdam where we sat in the evenings and watched the tug boats and freighters go by.

Recreatiepark de Oude Maas, entertaining campsite outside of Rotterdam

We were pleasantly surprised when we rolled into Gouda, the town that is not the cheese. The weather wasn’t cooperating but the town itself was pretty.


We of course had to buy some namesake cheese as well, it was excellent


Moving on, we next checked out Rotterdam. It was raized by bombs in WW2 due to a mixup of time zones so it has been rebuilt with an eye to design and an eclectic mix of architecture.


Quite different!



Because you can never visit enough gorgeous medieval towns set on canals, we set off to Leiden next. Enjoyed a fabulous day wandering the small streets

Our final stop on the Netherlands tour was the crazy, quirky city of Amsterdam. We had a great time here, possibly as there was a distinct lack of tourists and we found a great camping spot that allowed us easy access to the city. The combination of our quiet camping spot with easy access to the cultural sites and sounds of the city worked well.

Campin Gaasper outside of Amsterdam - 15 minutes on the metro to downtown. Almost to ourselves at first. Not exactly wild camping.

Central plaza - tourism is down 75% - lucky us!

The people Amsterdam are absolutely bike crazy

Next, on to Denmark! More write up and photos at www.roguewanderers.com

 

[tacototheworld]

Our first stop in Denmark was Ribe, the oldest town in Scandavia. Hard to wrap our heads around the date it was founded - 854.

While in the US we relied heavily on the iOverlander app but in Denmark we started relying heavily on Park4Night instead. It is a free app similar to iOverlander populated with data by users but much more used by European travellers so more useful here. Park4Night has a great translation button that allows you to translate any review into English.

Free camping at Thy National Park!

Enjoying learning more about the history of the region, we picked some key ancient sites to visit - so many it was hard to choose. We stopped by the museum at Lindholm Hoje - site of an Iron Age Viking village and burial ground. An interesting museum with good exhibits, but we both left feeling vaguely disturbed about the display of unearthed human beings in glass cases. We understand the archeogical benefits and learning and know it is common practice the world over - Egyptian mummies seem to travel frequently from museum to museum, but it just made us a little uneasy.

Along with viking sites, of course we had to tour some castles. We got a deep dive into the history of Danish kings and the Christian/Frederick/Christian/Frederick craziness, the endless wars between Denmark and Sweden and the evolution from the Iron Age to the Middle Ages when trading took over as the economic driver.



The next day we headed to the big city. Three weeks and time for our first hotel! So spacious. Endless hot water showers. Ability to lie on the bed during the day. It was a welcome respite. But of course the first thing we did was set off on an evening walk around the city.

The iconic Nyhavn - Copenhagen


On to Sweden!

 

[GrandiOdyssey]

Congrats on making it to Europe!

 

[tacototheworld]

Congrats on making it to Europe!

Thanks! We’ve been here about 70 days, it’s been great.
Have any luck on selling the Tacoma and the four wheel camper?

 

[GrandiOdyssey]

Listed for sale a few weeks ago but no serious buyers yet. We will be heading to the Russia and the Middle East soon and renting vehicles to tour around as our Prospector/ Hawk FWC is getting built out.

 

[tacototheworld]

I'm sure someone will pop up and buy it, it's a good setup! Earlier this month at a TASS visa assistance center they told us that Russia wasn't issuing tourist visas. Do you have another avenue for getting in, correct?

 

[GrandiOdyssey]

Russia isn't issuing Visas but I got mine last year and they last for 3 years.

 

[tacototheworld]

Ha! Now I understand! Have a good time there

 

[tacototheworld]

We were impressed with Sweden and its endless rolling forested hills. The national parks that we made it to were beautiful.

Our first night - camped and went for a coastal walk outside of Falsterbo

Harald Bluetooth - who knew (we didn’t), modern Bluetooth named after a Danish king with a discolored tooth who figured out communication systems to unite tribes across Denmark, Norway and Sweden. No idea how accurate a depiction this wood carving is of the actual guy.

Our route thru Sweden

We realize we barely touched Sweden, but with Schengen rules requiring us to leave the EU after three months, we have been moving faster than was ideal. We also wanted to get north as fast as possible before we were facing freezing weather. It was a challenge to try to keep to our guideline of not driving more than three hours a day.

We were impressed with Sweden and its endless rolling forested hills. The national parks that we made it to were beautiful.


Our first real tourist spot was Ystad, an old wooden town dated from the 11th century. Our visit inspired us to download the first Detective Wallander book (series based in Ystad) on Audibles to listen to as we drove. It kept us entertained and helped us understand how to pronounce Swedish place names.

Ystad, Sweden

In Stockholm we opted for a hotel outside the city center (less expensive) but on the metro line so that we had easy access to city life. We parked the truck and started our explorations on foot. Stockholm is an amazing collection of connected islands with a dizzying variety of sites and architecture. Once again we opted for a free walking tour to get us oriented.

A Stockholm metro station - a work of art - an easy option to get around when we got tired of walking (we logged 10 miles of walking the first day).

Heard and saw this unfortunate taxi drive take a wrong turn. Guess they can get lost too.

Beautiful lakeside camping spot
We left the craziness and activity of Stockholm and resumed our journey - finding water to camp by (plenty of that!) and hikes along the way


Skuleskogens national park. Great hikes and an impressive rock ravine to walk through.

Hiking at Skuleskogens National Park

Slattersdalsskrevan

And then on to another beautiful lakeside camping spot

Our final scenic stop in Sweden was Fulufjället National Park. Home to the country’s tallest waterfall and endless forested vistas.

Someone worked hard to created this

Ready for the next adventure we prepared to leave Sweden for Norway. Oops, this border was closed. Probably should have done more research, after a two hour detour we made it to Norway - more on that soon!

If interested check us out on Instagram at 2roguewanderers

 

[RoamIt]

Wow! Thanks for sharing your travels & pic’s!

 

[tacototheworld]

Wow! Thanks for sharing your travels & pic’s!

Sure thing! Just trying to encourage people to get out and stretch out their boundaries