Kevin+A+(traveller)

My name is Kevin Aldrick. Aka **__the traveller__** I love to travel more than anything else. My travels outside Australia include 3 months through Europe and Africa in 1995, visiting a total of fourteen countries. They include England, France, Spain, Switzerland, Zimbabwe, Morocco, Mauritania(Western Sahara),Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Benin, Togo, Nigeria and Cameroon, visiting the cliff dwellers of the Dogons and the people living in stilt houses above the water on a lake. In places the main highway was a dirt road that engulfed the whole vehicle as it was driven through the mud. The Sahara Desert was an epic through thousands of kilometres of sand, including dust storms and land-mine laden tracks. It wasn’t all horrendous. We saw desert foxes and fished on the coast feasting on delicacies such as crayfish and some fish I’ve never seen before. Here it was necessary to employ sand-mats to keep the vehicle from bogging irretrievably. In other places it was necessary to negotiate the military, armed with AK47 machine-guns.

Christmas in Paga, Ghana was marinated grilled guinea fowl…..sumptuous. I actually got badly burnt as a result of an altercation with our driver, who was stealing money from our kitty and drinking and driving. Top shelf private insurance got me home urgently where I was given a refund on the land content of the trip of some 18,000 kilometres. My injuries healed after 3 weeks, and I went back to work to save for a planned trip to Honiara. I went to the Solomon Islands in 1996. In 2004 I spent 6 months in Thailand, Burma and Cambodia. I hope to go to Tasmania for a look and I am thinking of a trip to the US. I may even go and live with the tribes-people of Northern Thailand. Apart from the spectacular scenery to see, there are the incredible people and what they do to survive fascinates me. The added bonus is that there are no bills coming in as you live…..I live within my means and survive according to my budget. Who needs real estate when it robs one of a life. Apart from the above, I’d love to travel around Australia for another five or six years…..or until I drop, preferably. Phuket was particularly nice….I was on the beach five weeks before the tsunami struck. Magnetic Island in far north Queensland is idyllic. Coral Bay and Esperance in WA warrant a mention, however, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and the German people I travelled with through the Sahara loved the peace and quiet and isolation and nothingness…..as did the Swiss travelling across the top of Australia through Camoweal, Queensland.