Listen to Africa is a 24,000-kilometre cycling expedition, recording African sounds and voices.
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Western Sahara, in numbers Belatedly, here’s the third in our “in numbers” series: what we ate, where we slept, how much (or little) we cycled and how many squashed lizards we saw in Western Sahara.
The good, the bad and the indestructible One way or another – with the odd casualty – we’ve reached Nouakchott, meaning we’ve now crossed the Sahara in high summer. What next? Ah yes, West Africa in rainy season…
Travels with a mobile phone: mobile broadband in Africa For the benefit of any other web-hungry itinerants travelling through Africa, I thought I’d share our learning experiences of managing a website and using mobile technology during our cycling tour in Africa.
Bike Mic: Into Nouadhibou (Mauritania) In this second “Bike Mic” recording, Huw describes what he sees as we pedal out of the desert and into Nouadhibou, a few hours – and a world – away from Western Sahara.
Recorded on: 17th July 2009, 20:10 local time.
Location: Nouadhibou, northern Mauritania (view on map)
Copyright: Listen to Africa
“What on earth are you doing out here?” The road from Laayoune to Dakhla in Western Sahara is a desolate one, with little in the way of shade or water – but the roads are good, the traffic quieter, the temperatures gentler, and the wind gods are finally smiling on us.
The podcast, and other website updates While we’ve been waiting for our parcel to arrive, we’ve spent a lot of our time working on the website. Among the developments, there’s a new podcast feed and a new microblog section.
Morocco, in numbers The second of our “in numbers” series – what we’ve eaten, where we’ve slept, how much (or little) we’ve cycled and how many squashed hedgehogs we’ve seen.
Quite a few people have been in touch saying they’re only getting two lines on some posts and asking if they’re missing something. A few others are asking how we’re integrating Twitter into the website so they can do the same. And a couple have asked how we’re updating our location every day. I thought I’d explain how it all works.
Because we’ll often be away from internet access and electricity for long stretches at a time, we sometimes update the website by text message, from our mobile phone. The easiest way to do this is by using a service called Twitter so, every time you see a blog post with the author ‘Twitter’, it will have been sent from our mobile phone (and will be short – 140 characters or less).
The ferry to Tangier 
Huw and Bex introduce the Listen to Africa expedition and talk about how it feels to be leaving Europe for Africa, near the beginning of a 24,000 kilometre cycling expedition across the continent:
Recorded: 28th to 30th April 2009
Location: The Mediterranean
Copyright: Listen to Africa
Gallery: the slow boat to Africa Photographs from the 36-hour ferry journey that took us from Sète in France to Tangier in Morocco (April 2009). Photographs by Huw and Bex.
