Vespa 125 PX Australia-South Africa

Writer and journalist Giorgio Bettinelli (1955-2008) became famous with the publication of In Vespa, his book recounting his trip on a Vespa, the first of many, from Rome to Saigon between July 1992 and March 1993. An accidental Vesparado, after that first trip Bettinelli never stopped: his travels took him all over the world, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, from Australia to South Africa, from Chile to Tasmania, through North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania. From September 1995 to September 1996, Bettinelli rode the 52,000 km from Melbourne to Cape Town on this scooter. The journey, his third on a Vespa, linked Melbourne in Australia to Cape Town in South Africa via the natural bridge of the Indonesian archipelago and Singapore; continental Asia, from Malaysia to the Sinai Peninsula and Africa from the Suez Canal to the Cape of Good Hope.