Volvo 940

With our Volvo 940 and a few hundred euros, we will start on December 16, 2011 from Utrecht. Eventually, many thousands of kilometers later, we hope to arrive at the sandy finish in the Gambia.

We’re financing the purchase of the car, the fuel, two vehicle ferry crossings (from Spain to Morocco, and then across the river in Senegal), any ‘sweeteners’ for border guards (after all, West Africa is the land of waving palms), visas, car registration, import/export papers, etc.

We’re keen for any donations of stuff and money – see our help / donations page.
We’d also really like you to support the youth training centre – donate here.

 We wish all the other teams the best and a lot of pre-fun. Henk, Phiona and Miko.

Introducing Team Enkele Reis.
Phiona Stanley
Phiona knows very little about cars, and all that she does know she learned from watching The Anthill Mob cartoons and piloting old rustbuckets held together with spiderwebs and wishes. And she has rarely actually opened up a car bonnet except to confirm that, yep, there does indeed seem to be an engine in there. So she is not the mechanic of this team. But since when has a lack of knowledge ever gotten in the way of a definite possibility of a trip? Not often. Like Miko, Phiona has spent more of her life than is strictly good for her vagabonding around the lanes and byways of some weird places. So she is more than up for a crazy adventure across the wilds of West Africa.

To the team she brings fluent but rusty Spanish, French that is more about funny gestures and a pisstake Parisian accent and attitude than any actual language, and a certain 'I don't know what' that seems to make border guards marginally less jumpy most of the time. All of this plus a willingness to sing 'climb, climb up sunshine mountain' on long road trips makes her the ideal candidate to drive to Gambia with two Dutchies. Besides, she really doesn't get the whole Christmas thing at all and is delighted to be leaving it behind this year. That said, she might bring a bit of tinsel for the car. Just in case it, like, makes it go better. Or faster. Or at all.

Henk Peeters
I've always loved car-camping holidays and I’ve done a number of such trips to the U.S., Canada, Namibia, Botswana and (late 2009) Libya. It was on the Libya trip that I got to know Miko. I like to travel at ground level because it’s the best way to come into contact with other people, both locals and other tourists.

My strength lies in the fact that I know something of everything (if I do say so myself). Originally I'm an engineer, so I can fix things. For me, the biggest challenge and anticipation lies in the preliminary stages: finding and preparing a suitable vehicle, insurance, maps, routes, money, local customs, etc.

Northwest Africa is still pretty uncharted territory for me. This makes the journey all the more interesting. Then, of course, there are the local political circumstances, which are more volatile this year than ever. So I hope we’ll get there by the end of this year.

Miko Wijnands

Years ago I heard about the Gambia Challenge and it became my dream, to drive an old car to the Gambia and to auction the car to donate the proceeds to charity.

I work as 'branche manager' at Koninklijke Metaalunie (Netherlands) and as a tour guide at Sawadee Travel. My tourguiding but also my own travels have taken me all over the world, and I enjoy seeing and sharing the beauty that the world has to offer. After many wanderings, I’ve finally found peace in Utrecht (again), but I'm always willing to undertake a travel challenge. And 8000 km of sand and an old car that can die at any time, and doing car repairs in the scorching heat of the Sahara – well, that’s a great challenge!

I’ve known Henk since our trip into the Libyan desert in 2009 (the sand enchanted me there). Phiona I have known since 2000, where we met in Utila in Honduras, a diving paradise – with her, I have traveled to many lands and had many adventures. And this challenge is a new adventure.