Dear Editor:
I was so interested to read the article from Lawrence Weiss about driving around
Europe (and beyond) in the late ’60s and early ’70s.
I was living in England at the time and spent some time in Morocco with Minitrek (another similar organization to Encounter Overland). Basically, we drove around the country camping out in the desert, sometimes just on the ground as we didn't feel like putting the tents up, and at other times we all bunked in small cheap hotels to have a bit of comfort — and a shower! Several friends did similar trips including one to Iran.
My trip inspired me to sign up for an Encounter Overland trip from London to Johannesburg which would take three months. To travel over the Sahara was a dream and well as traveling through several central African countries including Central African Republic and Timbuktu (as a child I had thought this was an imaginary place).
EO had made this trip the previous year so they felt they had ironed out the bugs (bit of a mixed metaphor there). My contribution was that I spoke fluent French and had some experience of traveling in this way. In the event, I never went as I met my future husband and decided to get married instead. But I did make it to Johannesburg years later — albeit on a plane. Also traveled to Turkey in 1962 on a student train across Europe which was quite an adventure. Not sure students do these sorts of trips now, for a number of reasons.
And maps? They have always fascinated me. Before coming to live here in Anchorage a few years ago, had to part with many from all parts of the world. Fortunately, a teacher took them and was planning to use them in her elementary school classroom so hopefully they had a second life.
I got lost in Kenya once with an old map and had a plane to catch in Nairobi in the evening. A local village’s inhabitants came out to meet us and we had to shake hands with everyone.
No one could understand us or direct us to the road so we drove on. Eventually we reached a road and the hotel mentioned in the book “The Flame Trees of Thika,” which was a great relief and we caught our plane. I resolved never to travel with an old map again. Fun times indeed.
Sincerely,
Kristien Evans
Anchorage, Alaska
