KEY POINTS:
Gareth Morgan thinks the closest he ever came to a marriage breakup was when he and his wife Joanne, with young children in tow, travelled around Europe in 1987.
"It was just so disgusting," Morgan said from his Wellington home as he recalled the trip.
More than 20
years later, the Morgans have a successful travel plan, which not only enables them to spend months at a time together on the road, but lets them enjoy it as well.
The Morgans travelled the Silk Road between Europe and the Far East in 2005, and took on America in 2006. Last year, they tackled Africa, with a group of seven other motorbike riders.
And because they were on separate bikes, "you don't have to talk to each other all day".
"People say, well why don't you have an intercom. We look at each other and say: 'You've got to be joking'."
Morgan said travelling independently meant his wife can "do her thing and she can be in a completely different village to me and then we'll get together and compare notes".
"It's the richness of the experience. You're both having your own experience and you're not a slave to someone else."
After months of planning, the group flew to South Africa in July, and started their journey in Cape Town, travelling up the East Coast, making their way through 15 countries.
The group, including their son Floyd, finished as planned in Tunisia, 2000km and three months later. Morgan, who had never been to Africa, says one of the things that appealed to him and Jo was the opportunity to learn all the time while on the trip.
"My whole training is as a social scientist, I'm very interested in that stuff, how societies work and why they don't work."
Morgan says he and Jo wrote their book Under African Skies about their journey in part to get to the bottom of those questions he had about Africa.
"You cannot travel for more than 500 metres in Africa without coming across some evidence of foreign aid. It's normally a church, but it's everywhere.
"Then I go to the books and look up the statistics and find this place has had more foreign aid per head than anywhere else on earth and still they're poor and you think 'what the heck is happening?'.
"So it gets even more intriguing."
Morgan says he had many preconceptions about Africa but after the trip "they've all been smashed and you think, 'was I so stupid'?"
His biggest misconception was that Africa was incredibly poverty struck and everyone was either dying of disease or malnutrition.
"Which of course is the television images that you get and that does happen but it's by no means universal. Ninety per cent of Africa - you wouldn't call it middle class and thriving from that point of view - but they're happy in their day-to-day lives and adequately fed and clothed.
"That's not the image I had of Africa."
Morgan said he was often asked: "How does Africa stack up to what you thought it would?"
"I said: 'All your kids aren't fly blown and not all swollen bellies and dying.' That's the biggest shock to me."
He says Africans are annoyed at the image the world has of them.
The book explores why so many of Africa's economies seem to be dysfunctional.
"Why do you have 75 per cent of the people on subsistence farming? By definition, that means you only have enough to get through the season.
"So if you had a bad growing season for whatever reason then you are in deep in doodahs.
"You're going to be starving if somebody doesn't help you. That is the biggest problem in Africa, their incomes are too low."
Morgan is known for his anything but low income and made headlines when he announced he was giving his $47 million windfall from the sale of his stake in internet trading site Trade Me to charity.
The African trip was also an opportunity to see how the communities would use donations and what was really needed, he says.
Morgan concedes spending several months on a motorbike may not be everyone's idea of a holiday, but says it suits his personality.
"The bikes give you that independence, you're not a slave to public transport. There's a lovely liberation with a bike.
"You get your own temperature changes, your own smells, you can go down whatever side road you want, stop wherever you want.
"I think that's very valuable and rich in a day's activities."
Having a travelling companion like his wife is also a bonus, he says.
"There have been a few divorces over motorbikes, and that's not even motorbike touring.
"It's because one's doing it and the other's not.
"Well, that's not much fun really so you can fully understand it."
Morgan says he is in a unique position because Jo is "as fully engaged in the whole thing as I am".
His wife, he says, has a very different personality to him.
"She's a real people person, her thing in these countries is to really get in there and mix it with the locals."
Morgan says he is not a person who would go on holiday on a beach somewhere, but Jo is not someone who has to travel every day.
"She could just sit there, in a hut, mixing with the locals, living like they do.
"She just loves that side of it.
"It's a rich interplay, she's extremely useful in terms of on the ground information, a lot of my intelligence is from her."
Morgan, who is also planning a trip to Central America next year, says the motorcycling journeys are addictive.
"It's a bit pathetic I suppose, but you just can't wait till the next one."
* Under African Skies goes on sale today.
- NZPA
