Lodzi Personal Preparations

Hola! After travelling around Europe with only phrasebooks to help us along we decided to make a concious effort to learn Latin American Spanish.

Spanish Arriba is an organisation based in West London who offer one-to-one spanish lessons in the venue of your choice. They do an initial 3 lesson trial, and from there you pay in advance for blocks of 4 lessons. We did 11 lessons in total, once a week in the evening. Our tutor, Lina was from Columbia and the lessons were tailored to our trip. Although we are far from proficient we hope this is a good starting point.
(Check F & F for costs)

Our thanks to Lina for putting up with our bumbling efforts.

First Aid was next on the agenda. Many of the courses based in London were very expensive and after surfing the internet we found Adventure First Aid based in South Devon. We contacted Guy and he came back to us with a date for a three day remote area first aid course, joining another group of overlanders preparing for their Africa trip as well as some people from NGS and Outward Bound (Great Networking)

Accommodation was arranged on site and the course covered all aspects including outdoor scenarios, and left us feeling a lot more confident in our abilities. We were also able to get many of our first aid supplies at cost through them.
(Check F & F for costs)

Many thanks to Guy for an excellent weekend.

    Off road & Vehicle Recovery was the final course that we went on. We were recommended The Grand Canyon 4x4 Driving based in Arundel. We contacted John and arranged a day of 4x4 driver training and vehicle recovery including using the winch.

    As neither of us have done any off road driving John took us around in his nippy 90 to show us just what can be done. We then both had a go in his vehicle to get the feel of driving on various surfaces and terrains. We then took Lodzi around to test what we could and could not get away with.

    The final part of the course was learning to use our winch and recovery kit safely and effectively
(Check F & F for costs)

Thanks to John for a great day at the Canyon.