Africa Awaits! A Preview of Upcoming Travel Plans

Livingstone, Zambia, March 18

This will be a slightly atypical blog post from me:  much briefer than usual, and looking forward instead of backward.  I want to fill you in, gentle readers, on the upcoming travel plans.

Terri and I are in Zambia now, doing some work for a humanitarian project that Terri started almost a decade ago.  She and the Social Service Club of her former school raise money and donate it to help support a community-based pre-school and primary school in the impoverished Livingstone suburb of Ngwenya, and they have visited during their school’s March vacation almost every year since 2007.  I have heard lots of stories and seen lots of pictures and videos from previous visits, but this is my first time to see the project first-hand.  It’s been very interesting so far, seeing the pre-school and its new project:  the construction of a new classroom building, doubling the available classroom area of the school.  The students arrive from Switzerland tomorrow morning, and for the next 9 days it will be a blur of activity:  helping build the new structure, painting and repairing broken windows in the older building, teaching lessons and doing cultural exchanges with the pre-school students and with older students here at a youth training centre where we are staying.  I am looking forward to it.

However, it would be a long way to come to Africa just for a 9-day visit.  After Terri’s former students leave, we are flying south to Cape Town to start a much longer trip.  The plan is to buy a second-hand 4WD camper and use it to explore large chunks of the African continent over the coming months.  We haven’t made firm plans in terms of dates and routes, but the basic plan is threefold.  We will first pick the low-hanging fruit in terms of ease of travel by exploring the landscapes of Southern Africa (as far north as Namibia, Zambia and Mozambique), taking advantage of the lack of irritating visa rules and the network of largely decent roads.  I am particularly excited to visit Namibia, Botswana and Mozambique, but we plan to visit all of the countries in the south over the next few months.  We also want to try to dive and snorkel in the awe-inspiring Sardine Run that passes the South African coast, having seen amazing footage on BBC’s Blue Planet documentary series.  Having a vehicle should greatly simplify matters in terms of having access to the remote wild places that we most want to see, and in terms of camping rather than staying in the overpriced accommodation on offer in much of Africa, as well as being able to cook for ourselves.

Once the south has been thoroughly explored, then it will be time to head further afield into slightly more difficult territory.  East Africa is the likely next stage, with the familiar trio of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda being joined by Rwanda and Burundi (the latter depending on the current state of civil unrest).  Then it will be time to go further north:  South Sudan seems unlikely, given its current civil war (although things might change), but Ethiopia and Sudan are definites, with perhaps Djibouti and Somaliland.  Sadly Somalia itself is probably completely out of the question, as is paranoid Eritrea with its closed land borders and hard-to-get visas.

Then, having gotten as far as Sudan, it would be nice if we could turn west and drive into Chad to get into West Africa.  This seems sadly unlikely, given that the route would lead straight through troubled Darfur, which the Sudanese government would like to keep nosy foreigners out of.  If (and it’s a big if) we could get through, we could make a huge loop to get back to South Africa.  If not, we might have to backtrack south as far as Zambia to get to the next stage:  West Africa.

West and Central Africa are almost terra incognito for me.  I spent two days in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), back when it was still called Zaire, visiting mountain gorillas back in 1995.  I also spent three weeks cycling in Togo and Benin a few years ago.  For the rest, it’s all new territory for me.  I would like to visit every country possible, since once we’re there, it doesn’t cost much more to keep going to another country, while having to come back on another trip to get to a country that I missed would be much more expensive.  The countries that seem least likely to get visited are Equatorial Guinea (expensive and hard to get a visa), Central African Republic (civil war) and Nigeria (unpleasant, expensive and with serious unrest in the northeast).  Angola, DRC and Mauretania seem to have tricky visas as well, while much of Mali, Niger and Chad (the most interesting bits, up in the Sahara) seem to be no-go areas as well.  Sao Tome and Principe, along with the Cape Verde islands, both will require a flight out from the mainland, but are both said to be well worth it.  Much of West Africa has the reputation of being overpriced and underwhelming, but with our own vehicle, we should at least be able to travel in some comfort and seek out areas of greater interest.  Cameroon, Congo-Brazzaville, Guinea and Mauretania sound as though they’re more interesting than some of their neighbours, and I’m looking forward to visiting them. 

Then, if we’ve managed somehow to do a complete loop and ended up back in South Africa, we would sell the vehicle and fly off for a glorious finale in Madagascar, a country that’s high on my bucket list for its (sadly fast-vanishing) natural beauty and wildlife.  If, instead, we end up in Mauretania at the end, we might drive up through Western Sahara and Morocco into Europe and try to ship the vehicle back to South Africa to sell it. 

It’s not clear how long it will take to do all of this, or even if we will accomplish it all in one long monster trip, but it’s exciting planning a big trip, reading up on things to see and contemplating seeing a new part of the world for both of us.  Stay tuned here or on Facebook to follow our ongoing progress!