Mexican Customs
Posted by Lynn on 4 September, 2010
 Atlantic Rising has been stalled by customs again. We are currently stuck in Veracruz, Mexico while officials fiddle with bits of paper. We arrived last week by ship from Cartagena, Colombia but our car has not made it out of the port yet. We are desperately trying to avoid flash backs to Guarujá in Brazil where we waited six weeks for the customs people to compile a 300 page dossier on our belongings.
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One year on the road
Posted by Lynn on 1 September, 2010
 So it’s our birthday, Atlantic Rising is celebrating one year on the road. And we would like to say thank you to everyone who has supported us, encouraged us or laughed at us over the last year. Without our sponsors, friends and the multitudes of generous strangers we meet along the way we would not have got as far as Mexico. More accurately we would never have escaped the M25.Read more
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Dengue fever
Posted by Lynn on 10 August, 2010
 Dengue fever might be topical but it is not really that fun.
We have escaped serious illness so far and it was about time someone got ill, if only to entertain our expedition doctor. So I contracted Dengue somewhere between the Amazon and the Orinoco and consequently spent most of Venezuela in bed - definitely not the best way to see the country.
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Happy Birthday Your Majesty
Posted by Lynn on 30 June, 2010
 The oddest social function of the trip so far has got to be the Queen’s birthday party we attended in Georgetown, Guyana.
We received hand delivered invitations on pristine white card. The High Commissioner and his wife requested the pleasure of our company at a party to celebrate the queen’s official birthday. Dress code: elegant. This was tricky because dirty, scruffy and pretty-much-see-through I can manage but elegant is definitely not a word that could be reliably applied to anything that comes out of our car. Luckily, we were staying with the lovely Darshana and Marcello and so Will and I borrowed elegant clothes from Darshana and Tim wore his missionary/teaching outfit. Read more
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Cowboys and Indians
Posted by Lynn on 28 June, 2010
 Atlantic Rising has been playing at being cowboys on a spectacular ranch in southern Guyana called Dadanawa. It was once the largest cattle ranch in the world and to get there you have to drive for about 50miles on pretty bad roads.
We were guided from Lethem by Trevor who works at the ranch. He insisted on stopping at every roadside shop along the route for a beer or three. By the time we got to the last and most tricky part of the road I was the only person sober enough to be anywhere near a wheel - much to Trevor’s disappointment as he was clearly very nervous of my driving.
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Goodbye Guyana
Posted by Lynn on 17 June, 2010
Residents of Georgetown, the capital of Guyana, live their lives below sea level. The rising sea is an immediate threat and the city only survives thanks to a sea wall.
Luckily, the President sees climate change as a business opportunity and is busy persuading Norway to hand over millions of dollars in return for promises to halt deforestation. This is not a popular strategy among gold and diamond miners and logging companies worried about the future of their industries. But it might mean the forest, which covers much of the country, managed in a sustainable way.
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Sand dunes and swimming
Posted by Lynn on 22 May, 2010
 After picking up our buoy in Fortaleza we headed for backpackers’ mecca Jericoaracoa, full of dune buggies, kite boarders and swanky looking pousadas. We availed ourselves of none of these and instead broke our camping duck for Brazil by setting up our tents in a hostel’s courtyard.
Our sleep was persistently interrupted by a whining dog and some musical, drunk Frenchmen. Will solved both problems by letting the dog off her rope, she immediately went to the bbq and stole the Frenchmen’s steak who went to bed angrily without any supper. Read more
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Of birthdays and brothels
Posted by Lynn on 9 May, 2010
 Waking up in a brothel at a truck stop was not how I hoped to be spending my 30th birthday. To be fair, there is some debate about whether the establishment was a brothel. All I know is that the proprietress was very unwilling to let us stay, in a way that made me suspect she had other plans for the room.
Will was quick to opt for the single bed with very suspicious stains on the mattress. Leaving Tim and me sleeping under the weirdest mosquito net contraption the world has ever seen. Incidentally, there was also raw meat hanging from a washing line just outside the door to our room. There is a Brazilian dish called ‘carne de sol’ but this looked just as likely to be the ears of previous guests. Read more
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Goooooooooal!
Posted by Lynn on 11 March, 2010
Yesterday we had our first real introduction to Brazil with a football match. 
We went to see Santos (Pele’s former club – we saw his son but not him sadly) playing an inconsequential team wearing orange. I say inconsequential because Santos won 10-0 and the other team didn’t get much of a look in.
We watched the first half from the stands then spent half time visiting various VIP areas picking up free food and drink. Ice lollies seem to be big at Brazilian football matches. The second half we watched from right by the side of the pitch. I am no footballing expert but the quality was very impressive. There were a couple of players likely to go to the world cup Robinho (currently on loan from Manchester City, I believe) and an 18-year-old wunderkid with a mohawk called Neymar Da Silva. Both of which scored many goals. Read more
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Crossing the line
Posted by Lynn on 8 March, 2010
In Churchill’s view naval tradition was “nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash”.
We found none of those on board Safmarine container ships while crossing the Atlantic but we did encounter handcuffs, kitchen slops and the fire hose. These we experienced in quick and nasty succession during the crossing the line ceremony.
Being seafaring novices, not even equipped with seaman discharge books causing the captain no end of complicated paperwork, we had never heard of the crossing the line ceremony. Therefore we had not had the forethought to procure a certificate saying we had already undergone said ceremony before boarding.
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How our bottle was made
Posted by Lynn on 26 February, 2010
How do you design a vessel to ride the ocean's waves for years carrying a precious cargo of letters and a tracking device? We had no idea, but luckily we knew some experts and asked them nicely.
This explains how our 'Message in a Bottle' buoy was cleverly designed by round the world yachtsman James Clarke and expertly made by engineer John McIntyre.
The design was for a spar buoy – long and deep so it would not get rocked about too much by waves. It has extra buoyancy at the top to allow for the weight of any sea creatures that might try and live on it. There is space for the tracker and then below that a space for the letters. John made several 100 mile round trips from his home to Inverness to buy parts from a building supplier selling water pipes.
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Message in a Bottle
Posted by Lynn on 26 February, 2010
 Last week we threw hundreds of letters from school children into the ocean in a giant bottle. Perhaps you will find it washed up on a beach, if so please get in touch. In the meanwhile here are some of the highlights. The spelling is mostly original.
“To a person who hopefully does not know me,
Hopefully I may not be dead when you get this, if the world hasn’t already been destroyed my name is Bryn. I am from Scotland, a great country where people get the wrong impression. Not everyone wears a kilt and has a sword.
I will like to informed you that I am a school boy and my first priority is education. My eyes are big and dark, my nose is neither big nor small, and I have a big ears, my head is neither big nor small, with a small hair on it.
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Hello Sailor!
Posted by Lynn on 20 January, 2010
Atlantic Rising is in a state of high excitement having just been shown around Safmarine Nuba, currently alongside the port in Abidjan.
Readers, I can assure you that containerships really are very big. Although, according to her captain Nuba is actually relatively small, at a mere 210metres long.
We got our passports stamped out of Cote d’Ivoire at the immigration office in the port earlier today. My appearance at their grubby door occasioned many ‘we don’t get a lot of women around here’ comments.
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Liberia's divided society
Posted by Lynn on 28 December, 2009
Liberia is a country in quite a lot of trouble thanks to 14 years of brutal civil war. According to the government’s poverty reduction strategy more than half of Liberian children are out of school, there are only 51 Liberian doctors – that’s one for every 70,000 people and 64 percent of the population live below the poverty line.
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Living it up in Freetown
Posted by Lynn on 8 December, 2009
In the first of a very occasional series of lifestyle blogs we will tell you what’s fun to do in Sierra Leone. First, hire the services of a reliable guide – after some discussion we opted for girl-about-Freetown Faye Melly. Make sure you negotiate a full retinue – we had the benefit of dedicated assistant guide Justin and the invaluable help of Doris, Spencer, Abdul and some excellent drivers.
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A visit to Educaid
Posted by Lynn on 3 December, 2009
This week we visited the most inspirational school, Educaid in Freetown, Sierra Leone. It is run by a British woman, Miriam, who I am rather pleased to say I am some how distantly related to. Her school is the only free school in Freetown and it serves about 700 students, ranging in age from about 12 to about 30. Students tend to be older here because the war disrupted many people’s schooling. Read more
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Corruption in Sierra Leone
Posted by Lynn on 3 December, 2009
Everyone we meet in Sierra Leone is talking about corruption. It seems to be the scourge of the country and everyone is affected. Two ministers are currently under house arrest for corruption and young people in slums complain the elders are more interested in lining their pockets than helping the community.
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Hunting for hippos
Posted by Lynn on 13 November, 2009
Hunting for salt water hippos didn’t turn out quite as we planned. We took a floating farm to a remote island in the Bijaogs Archipelago in Guinea Bissau. Sitting in the small wooden pirogue populated with goats, pigs, cows and lots of chickens (one of which we purchased and later ate) I felt slightly sea sick mostly from the smell of palm wine all other people on the boat were enthusiastically drinking.
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Gambia - the smiling coast of Africa!
Posted by Lynn on 29 October, 2009
We are now in Gambia, which is great for various reasons. Firstly, people speak English which means I no longer have to rely on Will and Tim’s sometimes dubious translations from French. Secondly the people are very friendly.
Possibly even too friendly – before I even had my passport stamped to arrive in the country the nice man at immigration proposed to me. I said I needed to think about it for a bit so he kindly gave me his phone number so I could give him a call when I made up my mind. I am not sure if he has a house with an indoor shower, but if so I am hours away from agreeing.
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Holding back the tide in Dakar
Posted by Lynn on 11 October, 2009
Dakar’s sprawling suburbs stretch along the coastline of the Cape Vert peninsula. Hundreds of thousands of people have moved to Senegal’s capital in search of work and they have made their homes wherever possible, often along the seashore.
Co-ordinator for UNESCO's adaptation to climate and coastal change project in West Africa, Professor Isabelle Niang, took us to her home town, Rufisque a fishing community and dormitory town for Dakar to show us how the sea is invading the suburb. You can see her sitting on the sea wall in the picture on the left.
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Mauritanian adventures
Posted by Lynn on 1 October, 2009
Atlantic Rising has been having adventures in the Banc d’Arguin in Mauritania.
This national park, along the northern third of the Mauritanian coastline, is home in winter to masses of migratory birds coming from Europe. Some stay for the whole winter and others use the mud flats as a stop off point on their journey further south.
Driving into the park involved a night time race against the tide. The Atlantic was on our left, the Sahara on our right, stars above and sand below us as we sped along the beach.
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Infringing Moroccan traffic regulations
Posted by Lynn on 21 September, 2009
Driving along Moroccan roads that seem to disappear over the edge of the earth has taught us a few things.
Sand can be a lot harder than it looks.
Secondly 60kph speed limits on suspiciously straight stretches of road usually mean a police road block.
And thirdly when a police sign says stop it means stop. Stop right there. Not stop a couple of metres beyond the sign and furthermore don’t argue.
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Morocco's unique vulnerability to climate change
Posted by Lynn on 17 September, 2009
Morocco's 3,500km of coastline makes it particularly vulnerable to sea level rise.
With most of its economic activity near the coast, no legislation preventing building in the coastal zone and the government reportedly selling coastal land to developers at notional prices, climate change is a real threat. Small scale farmers increasingly find themselves competing for water with thirsty golf courses and hotel swimming pools. While in other parts of the country flooding causes devastation.
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Ramadan in Rabat
Posted by Lynn on 15 September, 2009
A quick update from the ice cold Golden Tulip hotel in Rabat – possibly the most expensive internet connection thus far.
Work has finally begun for Atlantic Rising and we spent the last few days meeting several interesting people doing climate change research in Morocco.
Yesterday, we were so busy with a meeting in the Ministry of Environment we accidentally observed Ramadan.
However, this just made breaking the fast with a couple of friends all the better. We followed this with a walk around the souk in Rabat where you can buy everything from black soap to use in the hammam to unidentifiable animals whose blood is said to cure asthma but all we bought was some delicious dried fruit.
We are heading south now and will post more when we have better internet facilities. When we will also post some photos from the trip through Europe.
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Atlantic Rising leaves the UK!
Posted by Lynn on 2 September, 2009
Atlantic Rising has (finally) left the UK in not so much of a storm of publicity but an actual storm.
Yesterday we were up at 5am to pose for photos on the slip road for the Sandbanks ferry in Poole. Very tricky to take a picture where we all look normal, particularly at that time in the morning.
After a few last minute trips to the bank (Tim) and the fishing shop (Will) we were on the ferry.
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Plots and Pans
Posted by Lynn on 13 July, 2009
We are now full time expedition planning since visiting the last school in our UK network on Thursday.
I spend my days touring camping shops, plaguing their hapless employees with questions about the precise battery life in various head torches, the exact weight of a frying pan and the dangers of chaffing when wearing trousers which zip off to make shorts.
Using my extensive albeit 20-year-old experience of setting up dolls’ houses I have become fixated on how small things are and how neatly they can pack into tiny spaces.
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Back to school
Posted by Lynn on 7 July, 2009
Apologies for radio silence blog fans. Atlantic Rising has been very busy over the last couple of weeks visiting schools all over the country.
It’s exciting now the first stage of our expedition has begun and we have already been to 10 of the 11 UK schools in our network.
Visiting schools is a disconcerting experience. Having never willingly set foot in a school in my life and certainly not frequented such establishments since 1998 it was very strange to be back in the classroom. And even odder to be allowed into the haven of the staffroom.
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Tooling Up
Posted by Lynn on 21 April, 2009
I’m in Crouch End surrounded by architectural models and CDs and watching Grace the goldfish who seems to have a problem with her swim bladder.
It couldn’t be further removed from waking up in a tent on top of a Land Rover in Mauritania.
Last night over supper in a pub we created a list of ‘potential problems’ and ‘actual problems’ with our project. The actual-have-already-definitely-happened problems list was reassuringly short but potentially a hell of a lot could go wrong.
So I am staving off an anxiety attack with another visit to the Land Rover garage in Herne Hill.
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