This site is about buying an older Land Rover Defender \u00c2\u00a0in Accra Ghana and restoring and outfitting it to explore West Africa. \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0It will be of interest to the Land Rover community in general, especially to anyone completing or contemplating preparation of Land Rover as an expedition vehicle,\u00c2\u00a0 to those who\u00c2\u00a0 have an interest in planning and executing 4×4 overland journeys, or just to those interested in discovery and travel. \u00c2\u00a0 To some extent the project will offer an angle of vision into West African society and\u00c2\u00a0 culture.\u00c2\u00a0 It will start in Ghana, which provides the setting for the procurement, restoration and outfitting of the vehicle and the planning for the journey and in time will, if all goes according to plan,\u00c2\u00a0 take us through many other West African countries,\u00c2\u00a0 following a circuitous route perhaps as far as Morocco.<\/p>\n
Along the way I hope there will be opportunity to provide insights into West African life,\u00c2\u00a0 its history, geography, culture, society and economy.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Much of the\u00c2\u00a0 insights will be through the lens of procuring and restoring a Land Rover in Ghana.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Eventually the focus will shift from vehicle restoration and outfitting to the story of a journey, which is of course the core of the whole project.<\/p>\n
The author is a Canadian development worker on a first posting in Africa, who has been in Ghana since 2009.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 I have lived, worked and\u00c2\u00a0 traveled extensively around the world, but until now without visiting Africa.\u00c2\u00a0 To a great extent the blog will tell the story of\u00c2\u00a0 my own discovery of Africa, viewed through the lens of preparing for and experiencing an overland journey.\u00c2\u00a0 Among overland journey stories what may be unique about this one is the fact that the preparation is taking place in Ghana, not in Europe, or in South Africa, which each have a strong industrial and service base which provides relatively easy access to products and services related to expeditions.\u00c2\u00a0 In Ghana the market for related goods and services is much smaller, which will add a level of challenge to everything. At the same time, the very informality of much of the Ghana economy offers some strong points for the restoration project.<\/p>\n
Navigation of the site will be made easier with knowledge of how it is organized.\u00c2\u00a0 The site is divided into categories\u00c2\u00a0 reflecting the stages of the project:\u00c2\u00a0 planning, procurement, restoration, outfitting, travel, and demobilization.\u00c2\u00a0 These categories appear on the right-hand side of the page.\u00c2\u00a0 While these are roughly chronological, there will be overlap.\u00c2\u00a0 If you go to any of these categories you will see the most recent posts at the top.\u00c2\u00a0 To get to the earlier posts just scroll down tot the bottom and when you get there\u00c2\u00a0 go to “earlier posts”.<\/p>\n
Alternatively you can peruse historically by selecting a month to go to, also displayed on the right hand side of the page\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Like the categories,\u00c2\u00a0 the the last post appears first and you just need to scroll to the bottom for the earliest posts.\u00c2\u00a0 Again, watch to see if there are “earlier posts” at the bottom of the page.<\/p>\n
As a final note, in addition to being new to Africa, to Land Rovers and to overlanding, which together to greatly increase the risks associated with everything, I am also new to blogging.\u00c2\u00a0 That will no doubt be evident from this site.\u00c2\u00a0 Hopefully I will be able to gain a greater mastery of the art of blogging and improve the site over time.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Enjoy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This site is about buying an older Land Rover Defender \u00c2\u00a0in Accra Ghana and restoring and outfitting it to explore West Africa. \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0It will be of interest to the Land Rover community in general, especially to anyone completing or contemplating preparation of Land Rover as an expedition vehicle,\u00c2\u00a0 to those who\u00c2\u00a0 have an interest in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","no-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}