The following is a LIVE interview that I did with Graeme Bell on THE Overland Podcast.  Graeme and his family of 4 are from South Africa and have traveled the world in their Land Rover (Mafuta) for many many years.  He is currently working on his next book and is an editor of The Overland Journal.  He and is wife Luisa are currently in Mexico at the time of this interview.  You can find all about their adventures and expeditions at www.a2aexpedition.com

LISTEN to the LIVE Podcast HERE – LIVE with GRAEME BELL

Joey – Hey everyone, we are live on the Overland Podcast. We’re gonna click a few buttons here and see if I can get us live on Instagram so we can be live on more places than just two. But I am live with Graeme Bell. Graham, how are you this evening?

Graeme – Alright, how you doing?

Joey – Doing very well, doing very well. This is a huge treat for me. I’ve been wanting to get you on here for some time now, but… it’s really hard to find you sitting still you’re, you’re moving around a lot. And, it seems like you just settled down for a little while. And, they’re in central Mexico. You’ve met, you’ve hit it. You’ve hit all the expos and, and went to the shows and got your, got your fair share of that. I guess you’re tired of those and wanting to take a break for a little bit.

Graeme – Yep. Pretty much, but it’s only temporary.

Joey – Yeah, I’m sure. I’m sure. How are you finding Mexico? Why did you decide to settle there for a little while?

Graeme – None of my answers are simple. It’s not like, oh, I like the weather. It’s always complicated. But I’ll try and keep it as interesting as possible. The kids are getting older. And the – what do they call it? The roosters have come home to roost. And all those years on the road, part of the big deal was like, okay, we’ve taken them out of normal schooling. They have not had conventional lives. Now they have to – eventually they have to get off into the world and be their own people. And this is the process we’re going through now is like getting them to a point where they can – go be self-sufficient and go live their lives the way they want to do it. At the same time, we’re living together. And Jessica’s doing a bit of studying here and there. She just qualified as an English teacher. Keelan, as we organized it, we managed to get him a job through our contacts doing remote IT. So, he’s doing well. He’s saving a lot of cash. Cause we know the whole family’s living together. We’re splitting all the bills and all that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so that’s kind of our thing is like, okay, now we’ve taken a year or so to be kind of stationary, get the kids sorted out so we can get them off on their own and then we can carry on doing what we want to do.

Joey – Well, y’all been traveling, um, since, I think the first book, on the back of it, you say it says, so have you been traveling full time since two thousand ten? together as a family?

Graeme – Pretty much. Our first real international journey was twenty ten. We drove from Cape Town up to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and got back home and then decided that was pretty cool. Let’s do more of that. But first we moved into another house and blah, blah, blah. And it took us a year or so to get back on the road full time. And before we realized that that’s really what we wanted out of life. In that time, we still drove up to Mozambique and stuff like that. So that wasn’t, we weren’t full-time travelers until I think mid to late, that’s when we really gave it all up and hit the road full-time.

Joey – Wow. And you did quite a few things. And if, if you read the books, you’ll find out kind of how you, how you were able to make a living while you were on the road, but you did a lot of house-sitting and things like that, which made the stories interesting depending on which house you were at and the people who owned the house and how they acted toward you. That really made for some interesting stories.

Graeme – I’m glad you enjoyed it because I didn’t enjoy that part. Living in other people’s houses. One thing I found is the reason I’m both very hard workers and we love clean and order you know uh and we said it for instance we said this British couple’s house in in the Cotswold’s a very beautiful part of the UK and they just finished doing extensions and that on the house so there was cement on the driveway and there’s a lot of moss and it was and I found a power sprayer and I think for a month I just power sprayed everything that wasn’t moving I think even the cat got it clean but um and I just and then the farmers would come past and give me a nod and a thumbs up and I’m like yeah I’m doing the right thing yeah And they came back and they were not happy that I had power sprayed all the charm off of their house, according to them. To me, it was just mold and mold you. And to them, it was something beautiful. Yeah. So we learned, like, don’t clean people’s houses. They don’t really appreciate it as much as you think they’re going to. Inside and out. You never know how people are going to react to the nice things you do.

Joey – Yeah, people are strange. They, they sure are. How are you enjoying working with the overland journal?

Graeme – I’ve been writing with them for them since. 2015, mm-hmm I was, I, I remember posting, I had a pair of shoes. They were, they were, I had a pair of Merrell’s that had lasted me three and a half years. And we were to house sitting a farm in Mexico and I was posting about, um, I was bitching about how my shoes were falling apart and I couldn’t get a new pair of shoes. Cause I had to buy Land Rover space. And the then editor, the guy that was doing my job, Christoph, Noel, he sent me an email. He says, come on, man, let’s get you some new shoes. Why don’t you just start doing some writing for us? Um, and that’s pretty much where it started. I think it was two years, 2016, late 2015. And I, I love it. I love it. I mean, that, just working with them has, um, been able to keep the, the wheels turning. A lot of times uh the income coming from them even when we were in turkey or whatever I’m just doing freelance stuff I was just doing uh articles for OJ or expedition portal and you know a check would come through and it’d be that’s enough to get us you know another week or two down the road so yeah I love it and I’ve learned so much doing it yeah I remember reading in um in the Europe overland book about um you know how wishy-washy selling your own books was especially going through amazon and different things like that and how that really affected your income several times so I can’t imagine not knowing you know when that next neck check is going to come through so uh getting a little more steady income I’m sure is quite a blessing yeah it was with the books it was difficult because Amazon screwed us. They continue to screw us. I mean, my books are very well reviewed and I know they’re moving and the sales are not where they should be for the volumes because they taking eighty, eighty five percent. Yeah. And I just get the peanuts at the end. But that’s why we really prefer to kind of selling through that website right and the last few books we’ve kick-started or done a crowdfunding just basically like as a pre-order right thing and that’s a great way to do it because then people buy directly from us, they get the books directly from us usually um we get to make the profit we get a lump sum um and then after that we put them on amazon and then let them do their thing because we’re not stationary. If we were stationary, we would just print the books and sell them myself. Um, but every little thing, everything helps, you know, the books, the articles, uh, working with some of the companies I work with, like general tie, um, you know, just having a bit coming from everywhere really keeps it going. And like during COVID, um, man we were I’m busy actually writing um is this my sixth book I think it’s my sixth book now and I’m right at the beginning I actually just started writing it today so good timing um and writing about being stuck in South Africa during covert…

(My WIFI crapped out at this point and I disappeared for a minute) you there joey Joey, are you there?

Joey – Okay. All right, I’m back. All right. Well, there you go. The glitches will kill you.

Graeme – The glitches will kill you. I swear. It’s not even good. Not even good here in the United States. You were saying about COVID, and then I disappeared. So here we go. … Yeah, I started writing my sixth book today. And it kind of starts in COVID because that’s where the last book left off. There was Mud Malaria, Guns and Miracles. And I’ve been putting it off forever, but I don’t really know why. But COVID just screwed everything up for everyone. And yeah, that was tough, especially when everyone was just trying to survive. Yeah. And we still managed to, to, to come out of that, the other side of that strong and hit the road for Vladivostok. So, it must’ve been doing something right.

Joey – Where were you when COVID hit?

Graeme – We were on the road to Vladivostok. So, we were in South Africa and we had just left. We had left the southernmost point of South Africa, of Africa, um, called Cape Algolus. And, we were in a campsite, and then I’d been watching the news for a while. It took a time for this COVID thing to brew. And I was sitting in a campsite, and I said to the kids and Louisa, I’m like, this isn’t good. Something’s going to happen here. And they were like, oh, Dad, you’re just being paranoid. You know, come on, put yourself together kind of thing. And then, boom, we went into lockdown. But it was a hard lockdown. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was a tough time for everybody. You know, I was… I was off work for a couple weeks, but they saw me as essential, so I had to go back to work. And when everybody else was getting quarantined, I was still working. So, it was a tough time.

Joey – You know, everybody fled to the… national forest into the woods because they were like, okay, if everything’s shut down, we’ll just go to the woods. And then when we, when we would go to the woods, there was no, no campsites because everybody was there. And so it was, there was nowhere to go to get away from it. So, it was tough.

Graeme – So in South Africa was, you were locked in your house. You could only walk your dog. If your dog had three legs and a brown nose, you could only like, go to the shops at certain times of the day. They just got totalitarian very, very quickly. You couldn’t cross state borders. You couldn’t cross international borders. It was hardcore. So, people were just stuck at home. And there was a booze ban.

Joey – Really?

Graeme – Yeah. Alcohol and cigarettes. They banned alcohol and cigarettes. Which just created a black market. Yeah. Yeah. And then somebody put out a recipe on Facebook and it was how to make pineapple cider using pineapples, yeast, sugar and whatever else. And pineapples became the most valuable commodity in South Africa because everyone was suddenly making pineapple cider.

Joey – Oh, that’s great. It’s kind of like if you, if you take the guns away, only criminals will have guns. And if you take the booze away, only criminals will have booze. They’re going to find a way to get it one way or another.

Graeme – Yeah. And if you take booze away, everyone becomes a criminal because they want booze. Exactly. Everyone that drinks. And in South Africa, that’s pretty much most people. ever, everyone becomes a ten-year-old because the ten-year-old’s only want the things you tell them they can’t have. Right. Yeah. It was before it was like, yeah, I could do without a beer today. It was like, okay, I really want that beer. Right. They told me I can’t have one. So that’s what I want.

Joey – Right. Now on March the first, you and Louisa celebrated thirty, almost thirty years together. Twenty-one of those being married. That’s what you posted. I read that. I read that on your post today.  

Graeme – Yeah. Was it, you say, oh shit, you might be right? It’s almost that he is.

Joey – Yeah. Almost thirty years. Uh, twenty of one of those being married. So, I’m imagining y’all were together for quite a while before you got married. She’s been, uh, with you every step of the way. Where do you think you’d be without her?

Graeme – That’s an interesting question. I’m not trying to get you in trouble here either because I’m a married man and my wife goes everywhere with me. And I know how big of a part of my life that my wife is and yours the same because she does so much of helping you and being there with you. There’s no telling where I would be in life without my wife. I know that. Yeah. Well, all I can do is think like, who was I before I met her? And I had just come back from traveling. I was hitchhiking, and I’d been in Israel for a number of years working on, not a number of years, for exactly one year, working in restaurants and doing all kinds of stuff. And my goal had gone back to South Africa basically because I had a return ticket. And the whole idea was I was going to go back, say goodbye to everyone, make a bit of money, and carry-on traveling. So, if I hadn’t met Louisa, I think the chances are that I would have carried on traveling. I would have hit the road, done something else. The thing is, what’s different with Louisa is that she’s very, very, very, very good with bureaucracy. And that’s one thing that international overlanding has a lot of, is bureaucracy. At every turn, it’s just… It’s from the paperwork to the shipping of the vehicles, the visas and the passports and all that kind of stuff. And before I met her, I was like, I got nervous just getting a passport. You know, like the paperwork didn’t make sense. It just is not something that I felt that I was very confident or competent at doing. Whereas Louisa was like, she had international clients and she had no palms about doing the most extraordinary things over the telephone and emails and organizing shit that most people wouldn’t even dare to organize because there’s just so much risk involved and so much paperwork and bureaucracy and you have to do it properly yeah and That’s one of the first things, I realized about Louise is that she had no boundaries when it came to those kinds of things because she can do anything. She can organize anything. So, without her, yeah, I’d probably be sitting in India or something. A yoga teacher or I really don’t know. I think I would have been a writer eventually. But yeah, it’s a possible time.

Joey – Well, a few months ago, you posted that Luisa’s mom suddenly passed away. Condolences to your family because of that. And y’all were able to go back home to the funeral. How long had it been since you had been back home?

Graeme – Um. 2020. So, it’s been about four years. Yeah. About four years. Yeah. Three and a half years.

Joey – What’s changed over that amount of time that you noticed?

Graeme – Us or the country?

Joey – The country. Has anything changed or is it stuck back in the nineteen sixties like a lot of the South African countries?

Graeme – No. You know, do you do you watch rugby?

Joey – A little bit. Yeah.

Graeme – South Africa’s got a rugby team. They call the Springboks. And this one rugby team, this one sports team has done more for national unity than any politician, than any other personality, than Nelson Mandela himself. Okay, Mandela probably comes pretty close. But that rugby team is pretty much South Africa’s pride and glory. Is that the right way to say it?

Joey – Yeah, pride and joy.

Graeme – Proud and joy. I mean, and we, that they’ve won so many, they’ve won four world cups now, which is a big thing.

Joey – Wow. That’s big.

Graeme – They’ve won a bunch of the other competitions. They’re the, the international on the international stage is just fantastic. And they don’t, they’ve got challenges. South Africa’s got challenges, you know? Um, there’s a lot of problems, but when the spring box are playing, it really brings the whole country together. And to me, it’s the most interesting thing because it was predominantly an Afrikaner sport with a few English players. And then over the years, they started bringing in players, black players. And there are people that you’d never in a million years would think would be cheering on a black man. And these guys are crying over these guys because they’re so proud of them. It’s like our current captain, Sia Khaleesi, He’s loved universally in South Africa. And that has been so good, I think, for national unity and race relations. They can’t be overstated, you know. And I think we noticed that when we went back in twenty nineteen after West Africa, we kind of went back and, you know, there’s still so many problems. But man, what a beautiful country. You forget how beautiful the country is. And then you see that the kids are going to school. A lot of kids go to school together. They’re all mixed. It’s not like it used to be when I went to school. And that certainly helps because now you have children growing up together and they become very, very good friends. And that spills over into adult life and the workplace and stuff like that. So, I see a lot of unity. There’s a lot of beautiful things happening in South Africa and we saw that when we went back now, we flew back in and you know it’s really about I think the way you approach people and if you treat them with respect that’s the respect that you’re going to receive and we found that especially it was wonderful to be back it really made us miss home.

Joey – I’ve got a good friend that lives in Angola he had a Land Rover shop up in Springfield, Missouri for a while and got married, had a baby and they, and they wanted their baby to be raised in Angola. So, they moved back and he told me, he said, you’re welcome. Anytime. Just come. We’ve got, uh, they own a big farm down there, a ranch. They got, Land rovers everywhere. And, you know, after I started researching it, it’s not really on very many people’s top twenty, you know, most wanted places to go in the world. But once you discover the beaches and how beautiful it is and the mountains and the different things that are there, you start. Wow. I never knew this was here. And it’s a very interesting place, beautiful place. And I would love to go there and visit.

Graeme – You should take dollars, take a lot of dollars. Yeah. Expensive. They have a petrol economy and they have a black market for the dollar. Um, so if you’ve got a thousand dollars and you go change it on the black market, then you get almost twice your money. But Angola is special because you like you’re driving from the Congo and the Congo is just absolute chaos. But like, um, blood diamond kind of chaos it’s just insanity and then you drive into Angola and then there’s all these old colonial Portuguese towns that are nice and clean and well taken care of and there’s supermarkets and there’s people speaking Portuguese and you know there’s good roads and good food and yeah nice beaches it’s really quite amazing.

Joey – That’s cool! do you miss it do you miss being there do you miss living there?

Graeme – In Africa? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We went back now. It was difficult because I just lost so much weight recently. And South Africa has got some of the best food in the world. Yeah. And it’s cheap. Yeah. So, I just stayed away from sugar, but I ate whatever I wanted. But every night I’d have a braai, a barbecue. We called it a braai. Yeah. And lamb chops and Budovos, which is this long, twirled-up sausage. Steaks and salads and breads. You name it. I ate like a king. The best wine. Just everything. And you’re drinking and eating this food in this amazing campsite that’s just world-class. And you’re like… We need to do this more often. We really need to do this more often. I’d encourage anyone who’s kind of on the fence about traveling to Africa. Everyone that asked me, I said, you know what? Go down to South Africa. Go down to Cape Town, especially. Rent a Land Cruiser or a Toyota Hilux. Go see Namibia. Spend time on the West Coast, especially the Western Cape. Especially if you’re a newbie to overnight travel, international overnight travel, you want to kind of stick in the Western Cape. It’s kind of the safest place to be. Go in winter or fall and you’ll be blown away. You just won’t believe it. I mean, a campsite will cost ten bucks a night, US. For twenty, twenty-five US a night, you can get into a nice four-star hotel. Wow. can have a steak meal with lobster tails for ten buck’s um dude it’s you have the time of your life and you can see the big five you can go hiking and do whatever you want it’s just freaking amazing go see the great white sharks or whatever it’s like yeah, it’s an amazing place.

Joey – That’s crazy well you mentioned um your health and losing a bunch of weight. We share something in common. Both of us have, have lost a bunch of weight close to about the same amount from what you, from what you’ve talked about. Now, what made you realize that a change was necessary? Did something happen or you just come to yourself and say, I need to do this, have some goals.

Graeme – That was a combination of things. Like I never identified as an overweight person. You know what I mean?

Joey – Yeah, well, you’re a big guy. You’re a tall, wide guy. So, you didn’t look overweight. I mean, you look really good now but you didn’t look overweight then.

Graeme – Yeah, thanks. I was like, I flew into, it was during COVID, and we flew into Florida and borrowed a friend’s Range Rover. And I stepped on the scale at Publix, and it was exactly three hundred pounds. And I was like, okay, that’s not good. But I always enjoyed being a large guy. I didn’t mind being overweight because I like being big. I think it’s actually an advantage when you’re traveling internationally. I was thinking the same thing, you know, having a very intimidating posture when you walk up to some of those border crossings. It’s probably a good thing to have. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, especially when Keelan, when he was eighteen, nineteen, he was almost my height and he was also about three hundred pounds. The two of us would get out of the landing and no one messed with us, you know, and I liked that and I didn’t have a problem with that. I didn’t feel unhealthy. It sucked that I couldn’t wear the clothing I wanted to wear and you know, it’s like, but I eventually got to the age where the, the weight stopped sitting up on the shoulders and it just sat around my waist. You know what I mean? So, I went from being a big guy to a skinny fat guy. Yeah. You know what I mean? And I was like, yeah. And that kind of, that didn’t sit well with me. And I was like, okay, well now I need to change because it’s no longer healthy. That’s just out of shape. No. And then, um, we were in Phoenix on the way down to Mexico, and a friend of mine had a stroke. Jared. Jen and Jared. They traveled a bunch in Africa with a Jeep and a trailer, a South African trailer. A pioneering spirit, I call themselves. Okay. And he had a stroke, and he was also a big boy. And I kind of, I don’t know if that, I didn’t consciously kind of connect the two of those together, but I think maybe I did, and it kind of made me sort of think, you know, like now’s the time. And like, I think I was saying to you off air as well as like, when I get to the age of I want to be in shape and I want to be in a good place mentally and financially and all of that. So, I think it’s just kind of that goal. I’m like, okay, I’m going to be at the end of this year. And I want to walk into being, feeling good, looking good, being, being healthier.

Joey – How has it helped you in everyday life? I know you do a lot of the work on your vehicle yourself. Has it made it easier to crawl under the car or crawl under the hood? Is it easier to do that now since you’re a skinny man?

Graeme – Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like, I did the suspension bushes on the Defender. And, you know, that’s basically, you’re just doing sit-ups all day long. You got the pry bar, and you’re wrestling with those big old nuts and bolts, and you’re just doing sit-ups the whole freaking day. And then you’re flipping around and doing push-ups, getting off the floor, getting the shit, getting back under, doing that all the time. And I wasn’t getting as hot as I would before, and it was freaking hot. I was doing this during a heat wave in Salt Lake City, so that was fun. um and I and I and I felt I had more stamina and I think upper body strength I think that’s pretty much the same um but yeah that’s one thing that uh I wanted to make sure that I did not lose I wanted to lose the weight without losing the strength and I think that’s something hard to do is uh yeah so You say on one of your posts that you exercise an hour and a half a day, so I know you go on walks.

Joey – You walk your dogs. Anything else special that you do while you’re traveling to stay healthy?

Graeme – Yeah, so the walks help a lot. And not drinking a six-pack a day, that helps a lot.

Joey – Yeah. That was one of my questions I was going to ask you, how hard it was to give the beer up, because I read a lot. You love the beer.

Graeme – Man. It’s the German blood. Yeah. But I can drink beer like a proper German. Love this stuff. But then something just clicked. I don’t know what it was. And it just, I got, I call it being beer’d out. Where possibly it’s not drinking the best quality beer. I think that helps, you know, when you’re drinking shitty beer, it leaves an aftertaste and it’s not great. Like your European beers, you can drink all day long. You know, they’re very, very pure um but I just I’d have like three beers and I’d just be like I’m just not in the mood for beer anymore you know so you know then I have a glass of red wine or you know or I just stop having whatever and carry on with my day um so I think that yeah maybe I don’t know but I just I still love this stuff yeah but You have to make adult decisions sometimes for your better good. Well, it also helps, like, look, you know what it’s like when you’re on the road and you’ve been driving all day, you’ve been doing whatever, you’re doing trails, you’re putting up with vehicle problems, whatever it is, and you get to a campsite and you light the fire. There’s nowhere on earth you’re not going to put a beer in your hand, a cold beer, a cold drink, whatever. For me, it’s a cold beer. And so… When we’re on the road, it’s very easy for me to drink two or three beers a day. Whereas, and Louisa doesn’t give me a hard time about it for some reason. But when we’re in a house, she hears that beer go, she’s all over me, man. She gives me such a hard time. Come on, back off, dude.

Joey – She’s definitely one that’s kept you in check over the years on more than one front on many different things.

Graeme – Yeah, for sure.

Joey – My wife does too. Let’s talk about your books for a minute. This is one of the things that’s really attracted me to you is your books. And I guess it was… A couple of years ago, I can’t remember. It was sometime around black Friday, Christmas. You put a sale where you could buy all your books for one price and I jumped on it. And, uh, so I got all of them. And, uh, so, um, I started out and I’ve read this one that we will be free. Uh, that was your inaugural book. Uh, you call it your declaration of independence from ordinary life.

Graeme – Uh, and that’s pretty much what it is.

Joey – It’s the beginning of your world travel. Um, and there were so many good stories in here. I actually read it a couple of times because I couldn’t keep up, you know, and I would forget something. I’d say, I got to go back and read that again. It was just so good. But what got me in there was all the border crossings. It seemed like three or four times a chapter you were crossing the border, going here, going there. and the way that you and Luisa worked together she would go here and you would go there you’d do this and she’d do that in order to get things in order to get things done and the way that y’all worked together uh throughout that whole book was just fascinating uh showing that it took both of you to get it done it was it was really a cool story.

Graeme – yeah well firstly thank you very much I mean that’s the greatest compliment you can give an author is to say you’ve read the book twice um I really appreciate that that was our Pearl Jam ten I think there was the yeah the first album and it was you know I think because of its originality and it’s and it was war and you know as of the books have become better written and more polished as we’ve gone along and we’ll be free it was it had this real rough kind of On the road, grittiness to it, you know, you could smell the oil. Yeah. Yeah, and the campfire. Yeah. So, yeah, I really appreciate that. But, yeah, we’re working together. I mean, Luisa’s, our business, it was mainly her business. I was her right-hand man. She ran an immigration firm. And that’s what she did is she helped people get work permits in South Africa and dealing with all the bureaucracies. um which can be very challenging in South Africa especially back in those days so that was her thing bureaucracy is she penetrates she’s like uh I think I even say it in the book you remember the Incredibles when the little boss says Bob they’re penetrating the bureaucracy um that’s what she does she penetrates the bureaucracy so uh that’s great you know we’ve through dealing with the bureaucrats at home affairs in South Africa and getting the work permits we already had before we even got on the road we had an understanding of how these people work how they tick and my thing is I would go in and I would submit the work permit applications and I could kiss the butts and I’d do whatever I had to do and build the relationships and do it but never pay bribes right because we just didn’t believe in that um And then when we found ourselves at some developing world, global South border, those same principles apply because they’re exactly the same people, you know? And then, so Louisa’s strength is she’d be, she’d have all the paperwork in order. She understood exactly what was required, what we were entitled to and et cetera. And my strength would be, I knew how to just ease these people into the process and get through it. So yeah. That’s what we did. We worked together as a team, and we’d get through it.

Joey – And you had small children with you.

Graeme – Yeah. Which really makes it complicated sometimes. Especially when Jessica says things like when we’re going into Venezuela, and she never says anything at any of the borders. But we’re crossing into Venezuela, and they say, what work do you do? And she goes, oh, he’s a journalist. And I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I’m a writer. I’m not a journalist. You know, because it’s Venezuela, you know. Yeah. They’re coming in to spy on them. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I’m like, geez, Jess, there was no need for that. But anyway, so she’d do stuff like that, silly stuff in silly times. But they learned. They would sit patiently and we’d just do what we had to do. And we’d always give them a reward. You know, afterwards we’d go find an ice cream joint or a chicken joint or whatever and go get them a cool drink or an ice cream or something. And, you know, always the first night in a new country, we’d have a big braai, a barbecue and make them their favorite food and stuff like that. So, you know, we really learned how to make it easier for them and not more difficult.

Joey – Do you think they enjoyed it, the time doing that? Now looking back on it, do you think they really enjoyed the travel instead of just a home life, regular kid life? Do you think they enjoyed that?

Graeme – I absolutely think they did, especially when they were young. Because they were, you know, and especially in South America, get a lot of kids around. in those days I mean yeah wi-fi was intermittent you go to a camp there’d be twenty kids running around yeah and boom they’d make friends and um you know we try and stay longer at the camps that had kids but it kind of all started changing a little bit when we got into the northern hemisphere and um we met the marketing manager for AT&T, and he gave us a box. We were at a car show in Redmond selling books to keep the wheels turning. And this guy comes over and he says to Keenan, what do you do for navigation? And Keenan showed him this bust-up Samsung tablet we’d bought in Chile. And the guy went off, came back, and gave him a box. And inside were five new Galaxy whatever phones, brand new. wow, we were like, that’s amazing, that’s fantastic. But what we didn’t realize is after that, everyone was on their phones, everyone had the internet, and then it changed. And then it stopped being one-on-one interactions, meeting people, doing whatever. Yeah, there was still a lot of that, but the priority became online gaming. It became eventually Minecraft or Sims or whatever it was. And that kind of changed it, and Um, they enjoyed Europe as well, you know, especially going to the overland shows and that. And by then we’ve gotten a little bit of a reputation. So, people recognized us and, and it was always great when people would come over to the kids and say, do you realize how amazing your life is? Yeah. Do you realize how awesome this is? And they’d go, yeah, yeah. Um, but yeah. And then they grew up and they grew up doing it. And it’s like kind of asking, um, A rich kid, if they like being rich, if all they ever known is being rich, they’re like, well, what else is there? You know, I know what it’s like. And I think that’s kind of the thing for them is that they grew up doing it. So, for everybody else, what they’ve done is exceptional. But to them, it’s quite ordinary.

Joey – Right. I have not read your overlanding in America, the La Lucha, but you state on here that it is that liberation never comes without a fight. What do you, what do you mean with that? What can I expect when I read this?

Graeme – So when we first set off, um, we were supposed to be gone for eight months and then We’d circumnavigated South America. Actually, we’d driven up to northern Brazil. And this is all in We’ll Be Free. And we drove all the way down to Ushuaia and then up to Colombia. And then we were sitting there having a bra, having a barbecue. And we were busy organizing for the ship to go to Panama and all that. And Louisa was like, I’m not ready to leave South America. And I feel exactly the same. I’m not ready to go. And she’s like, what do we do? And I’m like, well, we can’t, we’re not going home. And, um, anyway, we, we agreed that we were going to go back to Brazil. So, we landed up, uh, going into Venezuela through the Amazon and basically circumnavigating South America. We got down to Brazil and then Louisa’s like, okay, I think I’m done. I’m like, I’m not done, but I tell you what, go back to South Africa, stay there for a month and if you tell me that that’s what you want to do you want to go back to living that life we’ll rebuild we’ll do it all over again you just tell me and that’s what we’ll do and then she was back for a week then she phoned me and she said no she wants to be on the road so then we had to figure out how we were going to pay for it yeah because we had savings uh not much in relative terms compared to what we were doing and we had um some income but there was only for a limited amount of period and so we’re like well I guess we’re just going to have to figure it out and that’s when it got tough because now we’re trying to achieve what has been almost impossible for very many people is how to travel the world without savings on a on a shoestring budget while earning.

Joey – Right. And not be born rich like a lot of.

Graeme – Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Um, and that, that, that made it difficult because not only were we doing is one of the most difficult things you can do, um, with, especially not having the experience that we have now, now it’s very easy for us to do these kinds of things. But back then we had stored so, so much to learn. Um, so what made it tough is, you know, Okay, now we’ve got this dream, and we’re just going to keep going, and we’re going to make it happen no matter what it takes. And that’s what we did. And that, to me, is a massive challenge. That was a fight. For sure. For sure. For sure.

Joey – Well… I have read The Europe Overland. I really enjoyed this book. I love how you started out with a goal. I think your goal was to get to Asia, to China, but that never happened. But so many cool things happen in this book. One of the greatest stories that stands out to me was the hot air balloons when you just heard them and go outside and there they were. I mean, that was just, I could just picture that in my mind. I thought that was so cool.

Graeme – That was awesome we’d um that was Cappadocia in turkey and what’s beautiful about that area and it probably won’t last much longer but you there’s a lot of places you could go because it’s basically there’s an underground city within this sandstone, this eroded sandstone bluff with spires. And it’s just the most amazing landscape. And you can camp a lot of places. You can go all over within there. You can explore it to your heart’s content.

Joey – That was one of the things that really shocked me was how you really were adamant about that. And you really told that over and over about how a lot of people don’t think that you can overland in that part of the world, but how easy it was to come by places and how beautiful they were when you found them. I was shocked. I thought that was a great story.

Graeme – Yeah, and we were free. And people treated us so well because we treated them well as well. I could tell you, and it’s all in the book. There are so many stories about that part of the world, Turkey and Greece and all of that. We had a fantastic time there. So, we woke up in the morning. We’d had a braai. And that’s the one thing you’ll see in every, like, it’s like at the end of every like sixth or seventh page of the book, it’s like, and then we had a bra. Yeah. And, and, and that’s our thing. It’s South Africa and that’s our culture. We make a fire, we grill some meat, we sit and enjoy the stars and we talk and we, we talk about the day and we figure out what we’re going to do the next day. And, uh, so we’d gone to bed quite early and then I woke up and I heard this whooshing sound and I looked out and there, there were these people, in this hot air balloon because we were up on these cliffs. But right next to the edges, it was actually quite spooky. You didn’t want to stumble off and go pee in the middle of the night. And here’s this hot air balloon and there’s all these Asian tourists looking straight at me in my camper. And I’m like, oh, shit. Hey, Louisa, get up. And we climbed out and the one hot air balloon came straight at us. And then lift it, lift it a bit, lift it a bit, and then just glide it on top of the Land Rover. You missed the roof by about two inches, three inches. Wow. That’s one hell of a way to wake up.

Joey – Yeah. What a memory. What a memory. That’s great. The Travel the Planet Overland has been hailed as one of the greatest overland books ever written. It’s a big one. I like the size of this one. Hold that one in your hand. And you have a picture in here of some good friends of mine. Jorge and Jessica from Live, Work, Wonder. They’ve actually stayed in my home. And I miss them. They’ve given up on social media and given up on their YouTube channel. And I respect that. And I respect their privacy. But I miss them. I wish them all the best. But meeting people like that. And you have in this book, you’ve got recipes, you’ve got different people that, uh, that you’ve met along the way. And it is an incredible read. I just love this book.

Graeme – Thank you. That was Louise’s idea. Um, so you were going back to La Lucha, the, the book wise called the fight. Um, we’d gone up to Alaska, basically run out of money. In October in a place called homer and luckily I had a payment come through from Amazon and it was back then fuel was very cheap this was twenty fifteen twenty sixteen and we were able to get back down through the states but now we’d out uh stayed our visa almost we never got illegal but we had to get out of the us and get into Mexico and then we got this house sitting gig up in the mountains in Baja uh two thousand three hundred meters I think it is uh what’s that in feet it’s like five and a half thousand feet something almost six thousand feet yeah up by the observatory in San Pedro de martin and um Luisa had found this uh house sitting gig basically taking care of this ranch in the middle of nowhere and we were sitting there scratching our heads going what do we do now you know because we’re planning on traveling around the whole world but now we don’t have a source of income other than one book and, um, in the U S it was very easy to sell books, uh, out of hand and it would make a great profit, but you can’t do that if you can’t be there. And so, Luisa is like, we need to write this book, how to do what we do, because we’ve learned so much doing, we’ve, we’ve, we made all the mistakes. You know what I mean? That’s, um, these guys are anyway, I think that that’s, I think that’s great wisdom to share is the wisdom that you’ve earned. that you’ve learned the hard way so Luisa goes okay let’s write this book and we’ll do a kickstart and usually I’m the one with all the great ideas and she’s the one that shoots them down immediately and it was like the other way around this time I was like oh no it’s never going to work not going to happen and she’s like yeah well anyway let’s do it and we’re like okay so I did the writing most of it and we just broke it up into sections what made the most sense and any everything from the finances and that to how to motivate your significant other that’s one of my favorite chapters in the book but it’s the least pc of them I think um and um we kind of we just we had all these great photos we had all these great stories we had all this wisdom we put it all together did a Kickstarter and the Americans came behind us especially a lot of Europeans as well Um, and especially Americans and knocked it out the park. Yeah. I think it was. Fifty-thousand dollars, something like that. And then what I did is I thought, okay, what we’ll do is when we print the books, we print double what we need, because then you pay a lot less for each book. And then we landed up all these books that had been paid for by the Kickstarter that we then sold out of hand. So, we made even more profit out of that. And that paid for the conversion of the defender into a camper, which we did ourselves. It got us into Europe and it got us, I wouldn’t, it got us back into Africa. And then the writing of the other books and kept selling and then doing the articles for OJ and Expedition Portal. that kind of paid for the, all the visas and the traveling and that they got us through West Africa, back down to South Africa. So yeah, it was, um, it was, it was, I’m eternally grateful to Louisa for having that great idea. Cause it really paid off for us. And then we did an updated version as well. Now with Jorge and Jessica helped out with, uh, the graphic design, um, covering that. And I know they love that book. And, um, so we really appreciated that. And so, we did a reboot of that, basically what we’d learned because that came out in twenty sixteen. And then we refreshed it, I think, in twenty-two. And yeah. So, we’re very proud of that book. That’s everything we know on paper.

Joey – Well, that one is as well as the The Mud, Malaria, Guns, and Miracles. Your Journey Along the West Coast of Africa. All these are available on your website, www.a2aexpedition.com. And like you said, don’t go to Amazon. Go to the website. That’s where everything is. You can also get some of them on Kindle, on Amazon’s Kindle. I read one of them on Kindle. I think the second time I read… um, the, we will be free. It was actually on my Kindle, uh, which I was shocked when I, I, I searched for you on Kindle because I ever, you know, it’s kind of a habit I have. I lay in bed at night with my, with my phone and that’s how I put myself to sleep as I read myself to sleep. And thank you for putting me to sleep several times.

Graeme – Yeah. I would,

Joey – I would like to get everybody www.a2aexpedition.com. Um, you do have one book that is on audible and that one of the things with, uh, backpacking and as much time as I spend in a vehicle, that is one thing I really wish you would do is record yourself reading your books. I would love that. Uh, that would be incredible. And, uh, yeah, give you another way for people to read your books.

Graeme – Yeah. You know what? I’m going to do it. Um, I’ve got a friend of mine, Scott Brown. He wrote a bunch by, for, I think full bar of land and a bunch of other, he’s actually an engineer lives in Sweden now. And he came to visit us in Greece. We were taking care of an Island, just one of those serendipitous things where we were sitting in a campsite in Italy and, um, in the middle of winter and it was snowing and we were running out of cash. We didn’t know what to do with ourselves. And then Louisa went on this house-sitting trusted house. It is, I think it was called, and she came to me and she goes, dude, look at this. I’m like, what? She goes, there’s an island in Greece that’s looking for people to take care of it for two months and they’ll give you a thousand euros a month for food and whatever. I’m like, there’s no chance. I’m like, but apply for it anyway. And then she came back two minutes later, she applied and she came back two minutes later and she goes, it’s gone. I’m like, oh, well, you know, no shit Sherlock, that wasn’t going to happen. You tried. And as I’m giving it, like, as I’m saying that to her, I get a ping. And it’s a message that came through. And it was a guy that I’d met in Malawi in twenty ten. And we had had like nine hundred beers together. And he had married this South African Greek lady. And guess what? They were running a yoga retreat on an island in Greece. Wow. And he’s like, dude, the islands yours. When can you be here? And I told you none of my stories are simple. Anyway, fast forward a couple of months. Here we are sitting on this island in Greece. And Louisa got a hold of Scott and was just chatting to Scott. And he was like, what are you doing? We’re like, oh, we’re taking care of this island in Greece. And she said, oh, you should visit us. And I think a week later, he and his whole family just showed up. And they were living in Texas at the time. And that’s it. And they came and visited us. And they stayed with us on the island for two weeks. Which is awesome. But one of the, he brought me a gift and it was a microphone and he’s like, you need to record your books. I’m like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I know. I know. He’s like, no, no, no. You seriously need to record your books. It’ll be very good for you. And I’ve been carrying that micro microphone with me ever since. But you know what you need to record an audio book silence. Yeah. There’s not a hell of a lot of silence. You know? Yeah. Whether it’s been driving up to the Arctic Ocean in winter or bringing the Land Rover down here or just living in Mexico with dogs barking all the time. That has been my biggest problem is finding a place that’s been quiet enough for me to sit and actually do this. Yeah. what I think I should do is actually find a studio here in the town where I live and actually just go and sit there and get it done. Thank you for inspiring me.

Joey – Yeah. Yeah. Well, I’ll listen to them all again because it, you know, just, it’s just something about the author reading the book that makes it that much more special. And yeah, and there is one of your books that is on Audible, but it’s an AI voice that actually reads it. And I’m like, this is not the same. Because, you know, listening to you talk, that’s not you talking. And it’s just not the same. So, yeah, it would be so much better if you did it. So much better.

Graeme – It’s actually really weird to me. When Louisa did that, she did the Audible thing. And then she didn’t even ask me. She just did it. And she’s like, oh, look at this. I’ve done this. So, I said, okay, let me listen to it. And I was like, so if you read the first chapter of, We’ll Be Free, the introduction, it’s not what you expect it’s going to be. Yeah. It’s like even me reading it now, I’m like, I wrote that? What was I thinking? Oh, my God. And here I hear it in this thin American voice, and I’m like, wait, hang on a second. This is too weird even for me. But, yeah, well, it’s available for whoever wants to. Wants to get the story but doesn’t have the time to read. But eventually, I think I’ll get around to doing that.

Joey – That’ll be awesome. Now, let’s talk a little bit about your Land Rover. You drive a… Is it a one-thirty series, I believe? It’s a Land Rover Defender one-thirty. We talked about this when we were off the air. It’s pretty much synonymous with you. You know, if people go back in your books, they can see how it started and how it’s developed, how you’ve changed everything. But the way it is now, you pretty much… built everything that’s on the back of it. Y’all just took some time off and built that. What made you want to do that and change it from what it was?

Graeme – We’d been living on the road in that one big roof tent for four years. We’d circumnavigated South America. We did a bunch of Africa. We drove up to Alaska and all the way down. And I got to the realization is that if we were going to carry on doing this, then something had to change. Because I was spending a lot of time keeping the family motivated, which is difficult when they’re living outside all the time. When it’s cold, when it’s raining, when it’s dusty. And you’re either in a roof tent, which is only comfortable for so long if you’re lying down, especially. And if you’re sitting up, it gets horrible after a while. And I absolutely loved the Defender, the way it was set up. It was fantastic. But we realized that we were going to be doing this for the next how many years? We needed to look at a better way of doing it. And like I was saying to you off air, I was like, looking now, they’ve got some really awesome toppers, you know, that you could just slide in. And a lot of those are great, but not really set up for a family of four, especially for long-term travel. Yeah. And so those weren’t really an option for me then, even if I could afford them. And then we were sitting on the playa, the Alvor Desert, with a friend of mine. I call him Good Guy Steve. He is a heads-up kids leukemia research unit at Berkeley. He’s a rock climber. He’s six foot two. He’s good looking. He sucks, but he’s the most awesome dude ever. He’s just like, they need to clone this guy, like make a million of him. And so, we’re sitting on the playa with him, the Elbow Desert, with a bunch of defender owners. And a storm comes up, a huge dust storm. And this is at night. And he had a one-ten Land Rover, which he had taken an ambulance from a one-oh-nine series Land Rover. And he had taken the ambulance body at the back and he had grafted it onto his one-ten Defender. And we were all sitting in there, about ten of us, having a party. And you didn’t even know there was a dust storm until every now and then a huge cloud of dust would come billowing in through the back doors. But other than that, it was just fantastic. And I was sitting there looking at this guy. With a few adaptions to this idea, I could actually make this work for the family. So that’s what I did. I was totally inspired by that ambulance buddy. But I had two children and a wife. Steve was on his own with a girlfriend and a puppy. So, I had to design it in a way that would fit all of us, bearing in mind that the children would grow and Kenan would eventually become my size. So that’s what I did. So, I designed it to sleep four adults comfortably and transport four adults comfortably. Yeah, and there was a whole thinking behind it.

Joey – That’s cool. I have a vehicle that I’ve worked on for my FJ Cruiser I’ve had for about eight years now. And it feels like it’s a part of me. Do you feel like that vehicle is a part of you?

Graeme – Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I bought it for nine thousand US dollars. Back in two thousand. Actually, today’s exchange rate is actually eight thousand dollars. And we got into the US and I was seeing that these vehicles were getting sold for stupid money. It’s unreal. It’s unreal. And this is back in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen. It’s actually starting to come down a bit now. But that vehicle in America in that year, in twenty-sixteen, was not obtainable. Yeah. You know, nobody had it. Yeah. You know, and so there’s one guy came over, a couple of guys came over to me and they were like, I want to buy your Land Rover. And there were a couple of things that stopped me. One is I’m an idiot. I should have just taken the money and gone for it. I could have gotten seventy grand for that thing, probably. Yeah. Um, you know, I’ve flown back to South Africa, bought another one and traveled for three years without worrying about it. Yeah. That’s not the way my brain works. I just looked at her and I’m like, this thing is part of my family. You know, I’m raising my kids. Um, I got back to the US now after rebuilding her and taking her to Africa and bringing her back through Canada, a couple of guys come over and be like, you know, I’m going to buy your land over. And I’m like, Man, it’s so tough for me because I’ve raised my children in it now. Yeah. It’s like selling your mother. Yeah. It’s like a family home. It’s your family home. It really is. Yeah. Yeah. But this is the family home that’s taken us through some of the most dangerous and difficult places in the world. And, you know, I have the best memories of my life. So, someone would have to make a serious and silly offer for me to actually consider. That said, if they talk to Louisa, she’ll probably just go, oh, yeah, sure, I’ll take that. okay no problem she doesn’t have the same emotional attachment to it that I have yeah um but I think she’s a bit more realistic than I am yeah

Joey – I don’t I don’t understand how people can put their life into something like that and just turn around and sell it and start from scratch and just do that every couple years it’s um I’m kind of like you  know somebody asked me yesterday actually um We just got a family car that’s, you know, it’s all wheel drive. We put a rooftop tent on it just so we can travel in it. And they said, are you going to sell the FJ? And I was like, no, I think I’ll probably be buried in that thing. You know, it’s just so much emotional attachment. All the memories everywhere that it’s taken me and the things that I’ve done in it. And when people see it, they see me. You know, it’s kind of.

Graeme – What year is it?

Joey – It’s 2007. It was the first year. You know, and you haven’t been able to get them for so long. So, it’s a collector’s item. And of course, right now it’s in the shop trying to get fixed because I broke it. And hopefully in the next couple of weeks, it’ll be fixed. But still, you know, I’ve had people tell me when the engine blows, what are you going to do? Well, I’ll put a new engine in it. You know, it’s two hundred thirty-eight thousand miles on it right now. But hey. You just keep putting new stuff. And you’ve put a lot of new things on the Land Rover here recently. You’ve got a new suspension, some solar, the Shielman seats. How are you liking those seats?

Graeme – I’m loving them. Yeah? I am absolutely loving them. The Defender is such a utilitarian vehicle. When it rains, your foot gets wet. It’s pointless having a radio. There are no cup holders anywhere. Yeah, I took out the ac a long time ago yeah you know when I see all these guys building these defenders and turning them into luxury vehicles I kind of look at I admire it and especially a lot of time I look at the handiwork I’m like that’s pretty amazing what you’ve done but this at the same time that’s not what the defender is the new defender is that the old defender is it’s a tank yeah you know it’s um It’s bare bones. It’s utilitarian. It’s tough as nails. You’re supposed to be able to drill holes in it and just stick things on it and cut it up and do whatever the hell you want with it. Actually, I’d left the Landy in South Africa at a storage place and I had a mechanic do some work on it and he just screwed it up completely. That really, really pissed me off, but then When I got the vehicle back here in Canada, or back in Canada, I took the seat off because it was really uncomfortable. And I took the seat cover off, and it was a different base. Somebody along the line had taken the base that I’d taken such good care of for so many years, and it was molded to the shape of my butt. And they’d swapped it for some piece of shit, cracked up, broken, and deflated seat pad from another defender. which really irritated me, which, but it meant though that I was driving long hours in pain. Yeah. Cause the frame was just sticking into my house. And then Toby got hold of me and he was like, dude, come on, let’s do this. I’m like, yeah, okay, sure. Let’s do this. And what a difference. Yeah. Yeah. It feels like I changed the whole suspension. That was before I changed the suspension. It felt like it was driving better. You know what I mean? Yeah. And after driving five, six hours, because we tend to do a lot of long driving, you get out and you don’t feel like shit. Absolutely fantastic. Those Shieldsmans are like, they’re not cheap, but they’re worth it. I really believe they’re worth it. They’re fantastic. Well, with that and the new suspension, it probably made a huge, huge difference on your long travel. Well, the suspension, that was the thing. So back in the day, I had Terra Firma heavy duty springs and shocks on the Defender. And they did great. But then when I rebuilt the vehicle, put the camper body on, I changed the dimensions. And that kind of really affected body roll and stuff like that. And then I changed from the Terra Firmas I actually put in. There was another company that I was working with, and they sent me their suspension. But I was never happy. You know, I used to, with a Defender as a double cab with a roof tent with the suspension and the wide tires that I had before, I’d go around mountain passes like people couldn’t believe how fast I was going around those corners because she was just squat, you know, and she had great suspension. And I just never got that level of ride again until now. There’s a new company in France called Nimbus. Hmm. And they make an early pneumatic shock, which is basically airplane technology. And it’s quite complicated how it’s made. But you can actually run a vehicle with just the shocks. You don’t need the coils. That’s how amazing these shocks are. And the shocks themselves, they’ve got nitrogen in them. They give you up to a two-inch lift. Have you ever heard of shocks that can lift the vehicle? Never. I think there are a couple of newer brands now that are doing it, but they’re also the same, similar, very high-end technology. So they sent me that, and I put it in the Landy, and I was like, unbelievable. She went from leaning over on the one side, kind of looking like a lame dog, you know, all of a sudden, boom, she’s up and she’s proud. We drove some corrugation out there outside Bend. There’s a lake up there. We drove there with the old Landy, with the Defender before, like she was before, and with a Range Rover. Classic, not a classic, P-Thirty-Eight. And we had to crawl along on these roads because they were so bad and everything was just shaking to pieces. And I put the new limber suspension and I was gliding over that stuff like I was in a Rolls Royce. Wow. I couldn’t believe it. Louisa’s like, she just turned to me and she’s like, are you serious?

Joey – This is amazing. And if she’s happy, everybody’s happy, right?

Graeme – Exactly. Happy wife, happy life. And then we were doing mountain and we were driving from Boise to bend. And, uh, this is part of the, um, I think it’s the twenties. So, the road is the twenties and it goes over these little mountains and Louisa was busy sleeping. And I’m like, see how the suspension handles in the twisties. And I was like kind of nailing it. And the thing is with a heavy one, it’s, you know, it’s an old engine. It’s turbo diesel. You got to keep that end that the turbo spooled up. Right. So, when you’re doing mountain passes going uphill, you’re wasting a lot of time going through the gears. Cause you know, because you’ve got to break before you get into the corner. So, you don’t have that body roll. Then you’re getting around the corner and then you get a gear down, get the turbo spooling up, go through the gears. Right. And then, and then you finally get to the top, whatever you’re gearing down. And so, if you can go into the, the corner faster and take it faster and stay in a higher gear, when you’re coming out the other side, your turbo spooled up, You all right? And it was amazing how that suspension made the vehicle drive so much better in the mountain passes. Sorry about that. That was pretty amazing. So, I’m pretty happy about that.

Joey – That’s good. That’s good. Well, you stated on one of your Instagram posts that you’re glad you’re settled down in Mexico because there’s still so much more that you want to do to it. And, you know, you just really affirmed what everybody says, that a rig is truly never, ever done. There’s always something. Never done.

Graeme – Well, what we did do is we got Starlink because it’s half the price here in Mexico as it is in the U.S., at least it was a couple of years ago. um but Starlink just drains your battery so we went to Battleborn and Battleborn sorted us out with a 270 amp hour lithium battery wow and we went to Zamp solar because we’ve got friends at Dometic and Dometic’s like okay let’s do some stuff because they know we’re going to do the silk route soon um so they’re going to be on board with that So Dometic owns ZAMP Solar. So, we went to ZAMP, and they were like, well, you’ve got shit solar panels. Let’s change them out. And they got these really low-profile solar panels, and they helped us put them on there. So, we combined, and then we got RedArc to organize as a manager city, and then we got – Wagan Tech to organize us a, you know, okay. I work for Expedition Portal. You must excuse me. I’m going to take advantage of these things. But it’s good for us. It’s good for the company. It’s good for the publication because I get to review this stuff. So, what I’ve taken is I looked at putting together the best elements of what’s available and creating an electrical system that’s DIY, but is also absolutely fantastic and reliable. And we went after the Overland Expo in Bend. we went up into the mountains to escape the heat wave that’s when the road where the road is so corrugated and terrible and we were sitting out there with our solar and our Battleborn with our red arc and all that stuff and the wagon um what do you call the inverter and we were running starting full-time wow which we had the nimble before and we were down in Mexico and we could only run, and they had four, four hundred hours, four hundred amp hours in that, the nimble camper. And we could only run the Starlink on a separate power bank with its own separate solar panel. Because it was depleting the, the batteries so quick. But our Land Rover is a much simpler system. We don’t have, in vector, in vector. I always get convection and convection. I have no idea. Electrical systems are not my thing, so I have no idea. Yeah, so the electric cooker, basically, the convection stove. Am I saying that right? Come on now. Convection. It’s a convection. Convection. No, it’s not convection. I’m actually going to go and go. I write for a living. It is induction. Induction. Oh, the induction. Okay. Induction. So, you can just delete the last two minutes. That’d be fantastic. I know we’re live.

Joey – Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Graeme – But yeah, anyway, so it kills your batteries, the induction stuff. And then you’ve got combined with Starlink and then all your lights and all the other stuff that you’ve got going on, running computers and doing all that kind of stuff. So, we have a very basic system in the Defender. And we built it ourselves. Louisa did the vast majority of the work putting it all together, which I think a lot of people struggle with that. In South Africa, it’s a very macho society. And we’d go buy electrical stuff. And she’d be asking for it. And they kept looking at me like, why is she talking to me? And then I’d have to tell them the story. Let me tell you something. We were up in the Congo, and we had a crank position sensor that was failing. It was the middle of nowhere, and there were these drunk villagers attacking us and stuff like that. But we managed to get through. We had a Japanese hitchhiker in the back, and my daughter had malaria. And we managed to find this place next to the road. And it was dark when we got there, and we were hidden away. And then we got all the stuff out, and then Louisa fixed the crank position sensor. In the Congolese bush, right? And so, when I tell them that story, they kind of look at her with different eyes. Yeah. Then they’re like, okay, what do you need? How can I help you? So, she’s basically built to the electrical system. And I’m not going to lie, it took a while for her to learn how to get it done right. But it’s her responsibility and she had to do it. And now she’s finally nailed it. She’s got it down and it’s just perfect. It’s just running fantastic.

Joey – That’s incredible. It’s amazing to have a partner like that, that does stuff like that. And what amazes me in your books is how much you talk about how mechanic’ing is really not your favorite thing. But then you read about how often You’re doing it and you’re not doing it in shops. You’re doing it on the side of the road, under a shade tree, in a parking lot, in a campsite. It’s very, very seldom that you’re actually a mechanic in a shop. And that’s, you know, just adds to, you know, the entertainment of your books. I love living through your suffering, I guess is what I’m saying. It’s amazing.

Graeme – Yeah it’s I always said um you know when you’re when you’re broken down on the side of the road and you’re covered in grease and you’re getting bitten by fire ants that’s when people are going like that’s really interesting yeah now I’m interested you know when everything’s going hunky-dory it’s not that interesting but where are we um I actually really do enjoy working on a vehicle in a workshop. I love it. You know, because again, I was talking about being, having German blood. I love being meticulous. If I can take my time in a well-equipped workshop with clean floors, you can eat off of, you know, and I can sit and I can work and I can go through it and I can do it precisely that I have the right tools. I absolutely love doing that. That’s to me is, I think I’ve done that once in my life that I’ve actually had that opportunity to do it. But the rest of the time it’s been, like you said, in the bush or, you know, like just the other day, there was a heat wave up your bend and I had a wheel bearing going and I had to do it on the side of the road and it was a hundred and ten degrees. And, you know, I have no choice. I just have to do it. So that I don’t enjoy. I don’t enjoy bush repairs. Yeah. And there’s always so much at stake because I, you can’t get it wrong. Right? Yeah. You have to fix it and you have to do it right the first time. You might only have one spare part and it might have taken you two weeks to get that one spare part. And you’ve got a zero percent failure rate. You have to get it right. And your first test drive is probably going to be, um, five hundred miles. Yeah. over mountains through a desert or something like that. So that’s like, that’s a high-pressure environment. There’s a high-pressure situation, you know? Yeah. So yeah, it is what it is. I get it.

Joey – I get it. Well, I want everyone, um, to, uh, take the time, take a chance, uh, get the, uh, visit your website. There are all kinds of things on there. You’ve got a blog on there, a gallery. where you can see the build of your Land Rover. You’ve got books and shirts, gear reviews. You talk about your partners, different things like that. So www.a2aexpedition.com. I want to invite everybody to go there. Check it out. It’s definitely worth seeing. Even your blogs are amazing. I love reading those. And then follow you on Instagram because you’ve got so many things going on. I hope to run into you one of these days to get my book signed. That’s the only thing I regret about buying the books all at once is I didn’t get them autographed, but I will, I will find you one day. I will find you at an expo or something.

Graeme – Yeah. I’m going to, like I said, I just started working on my, my latest book today, this morning. So that’ll be done in a month or two. So, I’ll probably be promoting it next year. At the Overland shows. And then I don’t usually, I don’t, I don’t do a lot of podcasts. I don’t do a lot of talks. I don’t do a lot of that stuff. Yeah. But now that I’ve got a lot of my things in my life organized, I think I’m going to have the mental energy to do those things. So, I’d probably be doing a bunch of shows next year. And if everything goes to plan at the end of next year, we’ll be shipping the Land Rover out so we can start doing the Silk Route.

Joey – Oh, wow. Silk Road. Amazing.

Graeme – And I don’t think we’ve been to Arkansas yet.

Joey – You don’t want to July or August. Any month but then. No July or August. Yeah, it’s awful.

Graeme – Awful hot. Is it?

Joey – Awful hot. Yeah, we have humidity here like nobody’s business. But the spring, the fall are amazing.

Graeme – We flew in in twenty-twenty. It was during COVID. We borrowed a Range Rover. Classic. And then we drove up and we drove from Florida up to Maine. And I’ve been camping in the Ocala Forest and stuff like that with the defender. And that was okay. Cause it was water around, but man camping outside Fort Lauderdale. Yeah. It was hell. Yeah. absolute hell. And then we went up to, I think it was Tennessee, went into the swamps, camping in the swamps, running out of water because everyone’s pouring it over their head every two seconds. You can’t jump in the water because it’s full of crocs. I mean, alligators. But it was not as bad as driving through the Sonoran Desert and Death Valley now two months ago during the heat wave. Yeah, I read what you posted about that. It was hot. That was hell. Yeah. That was hot.

Graeme – But the Landy did very, very well. That’s good. I saw you soaked your shirt. You soaked your shirt and put the hood over your head to keep cool. Had a little fan blowing on you. You know how to do it. You know how to do it.

Graeme – Oh, yeah, yeah. We’ve been through enough deserts and heat waves. Actually, this is the first time what we did is we closed the windows because on the Landy, all the heat comes from the transmission. It comes up through the floorboard, even though we’ve got a pile of insulation on there. So, what happens is when your windows are open, all the heat from the engine and the transmission comes up under the seats. So, when it’s a hundred and ten, a hundred and fifteen degrees, it’s actually cooler to close the windows and just run a fan and spray yourself with water than it is to have the windows open. That’s how hard it was. We had to do something creative.

Joey – Unreal. That is getting creative for sure. Yeah. Well, hey, we I’ve used enough of your time. I appreciate it.

Graeme – Definitely.

Joey – I know you don’t do this very often. And, uh, if you’d take the time to be on here with me, it just, it just means the world to me. And, uh, uh, I truly appreciate you. And, you can’t tell you that enough. And I appreciate everybody who’s been on here tonight. Who’s been on Instagram and Facebook, YouTube, and it’s followed us and listened to us. This will be live on, uh, all of the podcast platforms tomorrow. But, um, uh, once again, get on www.a2aexpedition.com support Graeme and his family and doing this. And Graham, uh, just can’t tell you enough how much I love you, love your books, and support you and your family. And can’t wait to see what you’re going to do next. It’s truly a blessing.

Graeme – Thank you, Joey. We’ve been online friends for a while now. I really do appreciate you having me on. It’s been great to talk to you.

Joey – Everybody, thank you. Hope you have a wonderful week. And as I always say at the end of my podcast, look out for number one. Don’t step at number two. We’re out.

Graeme – It’s good advice.

I have added the notes for the show for your reading enjoyment. This gives you a better understanding about how the live show is meant to go and flow. Remember, no pros, just bros lol