Overview | Travelin-Tortuga.com

July 2018 to December 2019

a f r i c a

If you are wise and know the art of travel, let yourself go on the stream of the unknown and
accept whatever comes in the spirit in which the gods may offer it. ~ Freya Stark

When we finished our year traveling in Australia, we delivered our vehicle to our shipping agent in Melbourne and sent it onward to Durban, South Africa. It travelled via Singapore, where it changed ships and then continued on to a new continent. Whether this would turn out to be either wise or artful would have to be determined during the ensuing months but we, as always, had high hopes for our next adventure. While our Tiger was at sea for six weeks we went off in completely the opposite direction. First to return to the US for our annual visits with friends, family and doctors, and then to continue eastward on to Durban (a combined sixteen time zones of travel) to be rejoined with the Tiger.

In the end, we spent nearly a year and a half wandering around in Southern Africa, visiting a total of eight countries. We had hoped get a little further, perhaps going as far north as Kenya, but that proved to be a bit optimistic for us due to worsening road conditions as we moved further north. As we went along we continued to learn more about visas for the various countries, when is the wet season and the dry season in differing regions, how to keep connected to the internet and, thus, to the rest of the world, and how to find appropriate places to overnight at the end of every day. We regularly met other overland travelers and learned more about places to see or to avoid so our plans continually evolved as we traveled.

We found Africa to be every bit as fascinating as we’d expected and we had a terrific time, meeting great new people, and experiencing more fantastic wild animal sightings than we would have believed possible. We continued to find the Africans we met to be welcoming and friendly and happy to see us here in their countries. Africa can be difficult, no question about that, but the rewards are great. Roads, both paved and unpaved, in many areas don’t get much maintenance and can be very bad indeed. We'd been told that the further north we go the worse they would be and indeed that was the case. In some countries border crossings and police stops on the highway can be more difficult than they need to be, but in general we have not experienced any real difficulties.

For all of it’s challenges and difficulties, South Africa is clearly the most developed country and is generally the easiest to travel in. Another large plus for SA is that the national parks and game reserves are made relatively affordable to the traveler; especially in comparison to the countries of East Africa. Namibia and Malawi were the friendliest countries we encountered, with a level of hospitality to the overland traveler that is quite extraordinary. We’ve been told the people of Zimbabwe are the friendliest of all but we were unable to visit this country due to unrest at the time we were there.

You can use the links below to connect to our stories and our photo pages from this ancient continent.

This is our second visit to Africa. In 2011 we enjoyed five weeks in Morocco while we were touring Europe. In the interest of continuity, we will leave our Morocco stories in the Europe 2011 section, but we've moved our camping log information for Morocco onto our Africa page.