CRUISY LAUNCH: Day 0 of 273, 7NOV15, Sydney AUSTRALIA.

What a night! What a launch!

“Ungowa Africa 2016” is officially LAUNCHED. How? By 86 die-hard fans doing the “dag dance” aboard the Vagabond Princess on the evening of 7 November 2015. This gala event involving dinner, drinks, show and dancing on Sydney Harbour from 7:30pm to 11:30pm on Saturday 7 November 2015 celebrated the 50th birthday (3 November 2015) of John Golfin hidden behind the colossal launch of John’s once-in-lifetime epic safari through all of Africa for 9 months starting in Chefchaouen Morocco on 13 November 2015 and ending in Cairo Egypt on 12 August 2015. The evening got off to a late start due to audio-visual technical difficulties but boy, did it catch up and end well. John “Attenboroughopoulos” Golfin welcomed aboard each person sporting a Hollywood style photo at the entry - all these photos and photos from the rest of the night can be found at dropbox for download (see bottom of this post).

After several rounds of open bar bubbly, cocktails, spirits, beer and wine, our guests enjoyed a sumptuous seafood, meat and pasta buffet with most people picking the upright baked salmon and the mushroom penne as their favourites. At the tale-end of dinner, Attenboroughopoulos burst onto the stage in his main character of John “Cheetah” Golfin dressed as a native in leopard skins and sporting adornments of a witch doctor. After a cultural feast of dancing, a comprehensive program unfolded starting with the premiere of “THE TEASER” of “Ungowa Africa 2016 - The Movie” which will be made after the epic trip. A “teaser” as opposed to a “trailer” is made up of improvised or borrowed video and audio clips that SUGGEST what the real film might look like whereas a “trailer” summarises a movie that has already been shot using video and audio from the actual movie footage.

The “trailer” is due in September 2016 ahead of the release of the blockbuster “Ungowa Africa 2016 - The Movie” in late 2016 or early 2017. The next feature was a look at a huge map of the entire African continent that showed the route that the Ungowa safari would be taking through 28 countries and over 48,000km - the equivalent of the length of the earth’s equator!!! In all these kilometres, Ungowa will visit some 84 cities and towns and 140 places of interest (or sites) such as waterfalls, ruins, mountains, lakes. In total, some 20 major National Parks will be visited and camped in. Approximately 80% of the trip will be spent in tents (twin share in a three-person tent), 15% in log cabins and 5% in 2-3 Star Hotels in the capitals or large cities. The key differentiator of this trip is that it will be an “outback” trip spending most of its time in isolated landscapes and very close-up with the wild animals and indigenous tribes. Golfco Pictures will introduce some new features such as GoPro shots from John “Cheetah” Golfin’s head of animals chasing him and give the indigenous a chance to interview us.

There are twenty safari members travelling together for the first 5 months from Cheos in Morocco to Cape Town in South Africa where 10 will leave and 10 new people will join for the next 4 months to Cairo in Egypt. Safari members will erect their own tents and take turns cooking using local produce. Given our tents will be in the wild we cannot take with us any aromatics such as perfume, underarm, hairspray (oh no!!!) etc. All our clothes must dry inside our tents at night otherwise the animals will take them! For this reason most of our clothes are nylon and spandex based for quick washing and drying and low weight. Another logistical challenge is the absence of power, internet and telcos. In the first 3 months we will only see these things every 10 days on average. Later they should increase to every 5 days and then to 3 and then go back to 10. For this reason, many of us are equipped with solar batteries and we will also take turns plugging into the truck’s 3 cigarette lighters only while it is moving (and regenerating). We also expect to get bogged on many occasions given the areas around the equator are very tropical with heaps of monsoon-like downpours that will cause our huge truck to become bogged. Back to the cruise. Following the run-down against the map, John “Cheetah” Golfin presented the Ungowa blog and the Mercy Australia website and thanked many for their donations in lieu of gifts.

A special presentation followed in which John “The Greek” Golfin presented his mother Vivien, her sister Georgina and to their children: Nicholas Golfin, Joanne Mayson and Stephen Mayson a framed photo of “Three Greek Sisters”. This photo shows the reunion of Georgina, Vivien and Eleni on the island of Poros in Greece on 14 October 2015, the day of Eleni’s 81st birthday. Joanne Mayson and John Golfin travelled to Greece from 3 October 2015 to 2 November 2015 with the prime objective of this reunion and this photo captures it and therefore the purpose of the trip. Joanne, John, Vivien and Georgina also travelled to Akrata, Patra and Athens to visit relatives with John and Vivien also spending time in Istanbul and Gallipoli. The highlight was a 20 minute audience with His Holiness Bartholomeus I, Patriarch of Constantinople. The formal program then ended with an acknowledgement of our interstate travellers and the presentation of the birthday cake bearing the image of the invite. John “Cheetah” Golfin then led all gusts in a toast and dag dance to mark the official launch of “Ungowa Africa 2016” and the dancing that was to take place on the boat. Tracks featured heavily from the 1980’s with plenty of Abba, Eurotrash and Boogieland. The night ended with cake, cheese plates and fruit and plenty more open bar drinkies. By the time we all disembarked at 11:30pm at Cockle Bay it truly felt like we all had been to Africa and back!!! UNGOWA CHEETAH UNGOWA!!!

PS: “Ungowa” was used by Hollywood in the long-running series “Tarzan” starring Johnny Weissmuller (ex Olympic swimmer). It is believed that the word is from the Swahili language and means “Hello, Goodbye and Lets Go” however Tarzan used it as a “one word language” and would often say “Ungowa, cheetah, ungowa” to get cheetah to do everything from rescuing Jane to making a dry martini!!!!

TEASER: https://vimeo.com/145309721

 

 

DROP BOX: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w9n6srsndiko9rz/AACZ2mzKv_MwEoBTrVsB4PxKa?oref=e