When we heard the news that there will be a Prototype of the new Africa Twin on the EICMA we decided we had to see it for ourselves.
The weather was great for November and since we still had our old Africa Twins we decided to ride to the EICMA on our trusted companions.
We were thrilled to see the True Adventure!
In the euphoria of the EICMA and the True Adventure prototype we began planning our shared dream - a World Tour.
The timing was perfect: Basti was discontent with his job, Fabi would be done with his Masters degree in a year and Denis had the time to save up some money for the journey. As a cherry on top, Honda was getting ready to manufacture the new Africa Twin and we had enough time to prepare for the journey that lay ahead.
New passports
For all the necessary visa you need a lot of space in your passport.
It is advisable to get a new one, especially one with more pages, for a adventure like this.
A task you can easily achieve in advance.
Laser eye surgery
For our planned travels into countries way off the grid, Basti and Fabi had to think about a solution for their debility of sight.
So they decided to get their eyes lasered in order to correct their sight impairment.
The operation went without any problems and so they will have a true vision for the adventures that lay ahead.
Spanish lessons
To prepare our self a little bit better for South America we participated at Spanish lessions at the Münchner Volkshochschule.
Thanks to his unique way our teacher Fernando actually managed to teach us some basic Spanish. And even more surprising, we had fun learning it!
¡Muchas gracias por el curso especial Fernando!
ThreesomeWithTwins.com goes online
To document our adventures we kept a so called "Roadbook" over our last tours. It is incredible how much we would forget about our past tours otherwise. We decided to share our stories on our own website and to make the website a platform for new adventures to come. Since then we have eagerly developed and integrated lots of ideas we missed on other adventure sites.
In the future this website is going to give us the freedom and possibility to share our adventures with anyone that is interested. We hope you like it so far!
Can we find Sponsors?
We have considered carefully if it was possible to get sponsors on board for our tour. At first we did not have to much hope...
In the end, we decided to print and send out about 100 Flyers in an effort to get interesting like minded companies to back our tour. We were not sure if it would be worth the investment at first.
Test of our video equipement
We did not just want to capture our adventures on pictures and text but also on video.
Since our previous videos were rather boring we decided to invest some money in more necessary equipment.
We got ourselves 3 GoPros, one Parrot Bebop drone and a high quality photo camera.
We set out on a six day long off road adventure to try out the equipment.
You can watch the results on our YouTube Channel!
Photography workshop
Because pictures and videos are the only things you really want to bring back home from such a trip, Basti went to a photography workshop at Foto Video Sauter in the city center of Munich.
The professional photographer Michael Spakowski showed with a lot of fun the basics of modern digital photography.
Now Basti should be capable of making good photos on the way in all sort of situations.
Quit jobs
A big and important step! Since we all were employed in the IT department of the Maurer AG, we all handed in our resignation papers together exactly 5 months before our departure date.
With this we allowed the firm to have time to find acceptable successors and manage a proper handover.
Thus the support and understanding of our former colleagues is great and helped us along.
Inoculation
One has to be thoroughly vaccinated in order to go on a long lasting trip.
It was unbelievable how many shots and medicine we had to get in order to be safe!
We consulted with the BCRT (Berlin center for Travel- and tropical medicine)
in Munichs Globetrotter for all the necessary preparations.
You do not need any appointments and you can get all vaccines on the spot.
Here is a short list of all the diseases we got vaccinated for:
poliomyelitis / diphtheria / tetanus
hepatitis A und B
tick-borne encephalitis
rabies
Japanese encephalitis
yellow fever
cholera
We were glad that our Techniker health insurance covered the cost of all the vaccines.
Visa
We gathered as much information about the countries we are visiting for you at country information.
Insurance
It is very important to be properly insured on a trip like this.
You never know what can happen and in the end it is always better to be safe than sorry.
Here is a short list of our insurances we selected due to extensive consulting
by the Langenmayer Versicherungs GmbH & Co. KG.
private legal protection
criminal law protection
foreign health insurance
(if you choose the right one you can even quit the
statutory health insurance)
compensation insurance
incapacity to work
vehicle insurance for as many countries as possible
We can only recommend the consulting because it is way too complicated for laymen.
