March 20, 2007 – For the first time since its inception the Tour d’Afrique organizers are producing television news inserts and a documentary of the 10-country, 12 000km annual bike adventure from Cairo to Cape Town and Toyota has volunteered the services of ‘Baobab’, the lead Toyota Fortuner from the recent pioneering ‘Timbuktu to Table Mountain Expedition’ to make this possible.

Timbuktu expedition leader Geoff Dalglish and PR consultant John Elford raced ‘Baobab’ more than 5,000km from Johannesburg to northern Kenya last week to meet the elated but travel-weary convoy of cyclists as they pushed south along some of Africa’s most punishing dirt roads.

‘Baobab’ will be used by an international TV crew filming the world’s longest pedal-powered epic as well as serving various logistical roles for the Tour d’Afrique management team.

“We are delighted to have the support of Toyota” said Henry Gold, President of Tour d’Afrique Ltd currently on a scouting mission in Asia for the company’s next epic bike adventure, the Silk Route. “Baobab will make all the difference in terms of the coverage we’ll be able to achieve across the second half of the Tour, and we look forward to sharing the adventure with television audiences worldwide.”

The latest adventure in the action-packed life of the turbo-diesel Toyota Fortuner makes it one of the most travelled examples of the rugged 4×4 breed in existence, and possibly the only one to have driven through no fewer than 17 African countries on both the west and east sides of the continent.

In the space of a year since the South African-built Fortuner rolled off the production line in Durban and was launched to the local media, Baobab has become something of a celebrity, starring in the SABC TV travel series Go South, as well as appearing in numerous magazine, newspaper and website features.

“It has been a remarkable vehicle and worthy of its Baobab nickname,” Geoff Dalglish says. “After being used as one of the original media launch vehicles, Baobab led the 12-country, 62-day Toyota Timbuktu-Table Mountain Expedition, celebrating its homecoming in grand style on Cape Town’s Table Mountain at the end of a remarkable trans-African odyssey that threw up every imaginable challenge.”

The latest trip from South Africa through Botswana, Zambia, Tanzania and Kenya again saw the Toyota play an ambassadorial role, this time in its new Tour d’Afrique livery, attracting admiring attention wherever it goes.

“While we were in a hurry to meet up with the cyclists in Kenya, our East African safari threw up a number of highlights, among them getting up close and personal with lions and elephant in an unfenced campsite in Tanzania’s Mikumi National Park, and seeing snow-capped Kilimanjaro rise out of the early-morning mists in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park. “It is a sight I’ll never forget,” Dalglish enthused.

Tour d’Afrique 2007 is the fifth annual running of an extreme adventure event that will be televised worldwide, attracting serious competitors and leisure riders from all walks of life, among them a blind Kenyan motivational speaker, Douglas Sidialo, who rides a tandem cycle.

The Tour arrived in Arusha recently, where they spent three days resting and sight seeing.

The Tour is due to reach Cape Town on May 12.

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