Touring Africa

Shipping: just like another African border crossing.

2009-08-29T09:49:00.003+02:00

Current Location: Richards Bay.

Well I managed to get Edmund in a container, while I thought the process would be easy it seems previous training exercises at other African borders paid off.

Firstly I made a mistake by using a shipping agent from Cape Town to ship out of Durban, don't get me wrong the agent in Cape Town was more than competent, but they needed someone on the ground to deal with whatever they were supposed to be doing.

I got a phone call from the CT agent on Thursday saying that customs wanted to see the Carnet before they stamp it the following day, so off I go drive the 2 and a half hours to Durbs in the pouring rain, once I arrive the Durbs agent tells me to go home and show up on Friday morning. So I wasted half a day and had a completely pointless 5 hour drive, it would have been fine if the weather was nice, but it was pissing down, Edmund is a landrover and he obviously leaks.

I was told by Durbs agent to show up at the packing yard at 7:00 the following morning as customs would be there at 7:30. Now as it seems no one in the shipping industry does anything themselves, the packing company was a different entity alltogether. I get there I take a seat and wait, the boss arrives and tells me customs will be there shortly. After a hour or so the boss starts to wonder what's going on and rings up various people and finally we get onto the Durbs agent who says customs will not come until they have perused the carnet, now this was the exact reason for me to drive down on Thursday wasn't it.

10 minutes later Durbs agent is on the phone again telling me that I have to hand over the Carnet to some stranger that is going to pick it up and i'm really not sure what they actually wanted to do with it. So along comes a man on a moped, I was hoping to go with the carnet, figured that I have enough experience with African customs guys at this point and it shouldn't take me more than 15 minutes to get it stamped. But that was not possible. The Carnet dissapeared with a man on a moped. Against my wishes and the advice of the manager of the packing plant.

For the next few hours various phone calls were made but not much progress. CT agent was doing a good job keeping on top of things and trying to keep me calm, unknown to her and probably unbelievable to most people that know me I was actually very chilled. But I happily sat on the edmund's Bonnet, another good reason to own a landrover, it comes standard with outdoor seating, and read a book. I can recommend the book, "shitting pretty" to the unseasoned traveller who is a bit worried about getting god knows what kind of disease on the road, it's written by a doctor but in a light non medical manner.

At about 11 the guys at the packing plant we're getting a little bit jumpy, it was friday after all and they wanted to go home at 2. So they decided it was time to load edmund into the container, even without a customs inspection. I figured they knew what they were doing so agreed. Edmund was all strapped in, it took them about an hour. This is when I realised that if customs had shown up at 7:30 I could have been out of there by about 8:30, 9 latest.

Oh well it's Africa, so that's fine.

Now Durbs agent get's on the phone to me and tells me that customs is on the way, they will inspect the car, take the carnet away, stamp it and then give it back to me after that, i simply asked why they couldn't stamp it at the depot and hand it back to me. He said that wasn't possible, that's fine it's Africa.

Now what happened next is when I decided the Durbs agent should not be in business, also the fact that I did email this company about 2 months ago, when first enquiring about shipping, and never got a response. Agent guy rang again and said they have the carnet and it's been stamped and their driver is bringing it back to me. Ok so customs doens't actually care what's in the container it seems, since they hadn't been there yet unless they have invisible agents. The agent promises me customs are still on the way. I didn' really care, the carnet was stamped and on it's way back to me. But here is the proof that the Durban agent is useless, their driver rings me and asks me how to get to the depot, now even in Africa that is the most absurd thing to do, the local is asking the tourist for directions. I told him to ring his boss, he rings him and a few minutes rings me back saying the boss told him to ring me again. So I spent the next 10 minutes on the phone explaining to this guy how to find me and ended up walking out on the main road to find him.

After getting the carnet back we waited a while for customs to show up, The packing manager rang both the CT and Durbs agents and the decision was made to seal the container and send it on it's merry way. Now we'll have to wait and see what actually arrives in Basel in a months time.

See you all in Switzerland or somewhere else.

Ciao

Namibia, Botswana, South Africa

2009-08-27T10:30:00.002+02:00

Current Location: Mtunzini, South Africa.

15 May 2009 – Present

The last entry perhaps.

As I write this Louise is back in the land of chocolate, corrupt banks and cuckoo clocks, that’s right, she’s gone home and left me here in Africa. There is reason to her madness, cousin, I don’t know his name, and she only has one so I guess it’s fair to call him cousin, is getting married. I’m not far behind her, I hope, still waiting on the shipping lady to put the car on a boat so I head back too.

First let’s fill you in on what we’ve been doing since we dropped the Canadian at the airport in Windhoek. It’s been a bit of a game drive since we left. We stopped in Maun for a few days to catch up with Tony, Denise and all the rest of their tribe, which was a nice break from the road. From Maun we headed south in the direction of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. Stopping off in Ghanzi to allow Louise to have an argument with a useless campsite lady that never sold us any firewood. On the plus side the campsite does have wild dog in captivity, though seeing them through chicken wire just doesn’t do it for us.

Our last bush camp just before the gate to the park was uneventful until we woke up in the morning and discovered that one of our camping chairs had gone missing. Upon closer inspection of the ground the only discernible prints were those of hyena. So now we have been robbed by animals in Africa too, though being robbed by a hyena is not as annoying and frustrating as being robbed by locals.

Kgalagadi transfrontier park is a big sandy place that’s full of predators. We spent a total of 2 weeks in the park and while it is a stunning park, we left early because of the freezing nights (-5°C one morning!), terrible roads and general lack of good animal sightings. It was alot of fun though, we met up with Thomas and Isabella, the Swiss couple travelling in Obelix the big MAN truck. We enjoyed sharing a campsite with them, also using the inside of the truck for dinner was fantastic as the food wasn’t frozen by the time you took it out of the pot and got it into your mouth. The cheese fondue was a definite highlight with everyone standing around in -5 degrees eating melted swiss cheese and drinking lots of white wine and a bit of kirsch!

After leaving Kgalagadi we headed east looking for warmer weather. We finally found it in Pilanesburg NP just a few hours away from Joburg, we stopped at Uppington and Kuruman on the way there. Pilanesburg is a beautiful park set amongst rolling hills and lush greenery. The animal numbers according to the brochures are high, though they are hard to spot due to the dense bush, none the less we did see a brown hyena that didn’t run away for once (he was eating a dead giraffe though...). After leaving Pilanesburg we headed in the direction of the mighty Kruger, stopping on the way in Hazyview. We spent a total of 4 nights in Kruger and do have to admit it’s a love and hate kind of place. The number of people in the park in particular when one of the big cats is around is frustrating, on the other hand the amount and variety of animals you see is phenomenal, while it still doesn’t quite compare with east Africa it comes close.

After Kruger we headed back towards the coast, stopped in Sodwana to meet up with Rene and Andrea for a couple of nights (Rene spoilt us with fried ostrich egg one morning and ostrich egg and sour milk pancakes the next - yummy!), spent a night in St Lucia before finally arriving at our final destination chez Christine and Dudley.

Now I am waiting for a boat to put Edmund on and head home myself.

It’s been a fantastic experience and we don’t think it will be the last of our adventures so stay tuned to www.touringafrica.ch to see what we do next.

To everyone that’s followed the trip online I hope you have enjoyed it and thanks for reading it!

To all the travellers we met on the way, it was wonderful to meet you all and hope to see you again sometime. Keep in touch!

Ciao 4 now

Louise and Milan

Namibia part 2

2009-07-05T15:58:00.003+02:00

Current Location: Windhoek, Namibia

Freezing nights, dunes, dust and a Canadian!!

Well the drive from Ghanzi (Botswana) to Windhoek (Namibia) was fairly uneventful. Once in Windhoek we headed back to our favourite haunt, Puccini House for a couple of days of R&R before heading to the south of Namibia to see what we hadn’t seen yet. First off was the Quiver Tree Forest, for the overly photographed sunset and sunrise shots, very nice indeed. On the second sunset we missed the trees as we were being entertained by a friendly family of Meerkats. I am really starting to wonder how we can get permanent jobs as a wildlife photographers, it’s just way more fun than anything else we have done, though you do require the patience of a saint, more on that later.

After Quiver Tree we went for a superb drive for a couple of days around Fish River Canyon and were really starting to notice how cold it get’s at night. We started to use the 6 dollar blanket at night that we bought in Morocco intended as a seat cover. Fish river canyon is a beautiful sight but the 4x4 track south that runs along the South African border is even more spectacular, we finished that day in Klein Aus Vista, a beautiful campsite about 20Ks from the wild horses, and sure enough the books do not lie (well, not all the time), the horses were there the next day. After spending a few hours photographing the horses we headed to Lüderitz on the coast. Now if anyone has seen a WWII movie with a little industrial town in it, Lüderitz may well have been it. It was full of barbed wire and concrete walls, and no people. However we had to stay in town in order to visit the ghost town of Kolmanskop at sunrise, which is slowly getting eaten up by the sand dunes all around it. Very eerie.

We hightailed it out of Lüderitz not wanting to spend any more time in this potentially soon to be ghost town, and headed inland towards the famous dunes of Sossusvlei. Southern Namibia is as stunning as Kaokoland in the north but feels a little less remote, guess all the fences and power lines take the “middle of nowhere” feeling away. Arriving at the gate of Sossusvlei and being told the extortionate prices for camping inside the gate we decided to skip it for now as we knew we were coming back in a few weeks with Nick. (Nick is a Canadian guy that worked with Milan at Man in Switzerland and now lives in Hong Kong)

We headed back to Windhoek to stock up on some supplies, organise accommodation in Etosha for when Nick is around, and service the car. Oh yeah and get robbed yet again! They unbolted the spot lights of the front of the car in the middle of the day in a guarded car park, guess you can figure out who they are. This thieving thing seems to have become routine for us at the moment. Not very happy travellers at that time.

Leaving Windhoek a bit sour because of missing lights we headed back up to the Caprivi Strip to one of our favourite places, Ngepi Camp, when spent 7 days there doing as little as possible and it wasn’t as cold as the rest of the country.

Next we headed back south into Damaraland via Etosha (5 male lions and 5 cheetah in 1 day! Plus all the usual suspects). While enjoying a lovely peaceful drive Edmund decided to spit the dummy and behave badly losing power idling and revving like a cylinder was blown. We quickly got onto the phone to the mechanic back in Windhoek and he reckoned it was the fuel filter, had a check of that all seemed fine and next thing you know Edmund conks out completely and won’t start. Luckily at this point we were only about 1KM outside of Uis, a little hick town in the middle of nowhere, onto the mechanic again in Windhoek, we quickly deduced that it may well be the all too well known problem of the dodgy fuel pump. Which is all fine since we have driven around the whole continent with a spare in the back. Now we need to find a local mechanic who can take out the fuel tank and swap out the pump. After ringing one of the local lodges we get the number of the local bush mechanic, an Afrikaner type that has clearly lived in this little town all of his life. I explain him the problem and he then starts towing us back to his garage/house, but uses a chain for towing. Now as anyone knows that has ever been towed before, your brakes generally get weaker the longer you are towed, so eventually the chain goes slack. Tow man up front decides to head off in a bit of a hurry and leaves half the chain flying straight for our windscreen. Needless to say we now not only had a car that wouldn’t start but also a windscreen covered in cracks and a small hole. Afrikaner boy didn’t even apologise, at least he did have the sense to poke and prod around with the wires attached to the fuel pump to discover that our problem was a blown relay and not a faulty fuel pump. So the 34 Namibian dollar relay cost us an extra 1400 for the new windscreen.

Next we headed back to Windhoek with an overnight stop in Spitzkoppe, to get a new relay and a new windscreen, and wait for Nick to arrive.

The day after Nick arrived we headed towards Sossousvlei, but after a late start which involved the GPS cable being broken off by our visitor for the first time :o), we only managed to get to Solitare where we stayed at a recommended place called Ghecko Camp. Run by a Swiss lady and it was a truly magical place. We also met another Swiss overlander couple, Florian and Sara (www.tchovaxitaduma.blogspot.com) , who left Switzerland at the beginning of the year. We bought some beers and chatted with them at the top of the hill overlooking the stunning sunset.

Since we were all going in the same direction we decided to save costs of the camp site at Sossousvlei by sharing one site (as well as Louise hiding in the back of their car to save money on entry as well). We set up camp and made our way to Dead Vlei. Since it was quite a late start that day as well and so much chatting with everyone, we didn’t quite make it to Dead Vlei for sunset – we know its a sin to be there and not see it, but we enjoyed a lovely sunset close by instead. The rules for the park are that you have to be out by sunset. Of course we were 70 kms away from the gate after the sun had already disappeared, so we played dumb and told the man at the gate who we had dragged away from his beer that we had gotten stuck in sand. Pretty sure he didn’t believe us but what could he do, take us to court?! The next morning we made sure we were on the road on time and had a lovely sunrise at Dune 45, although it was freezing cold! We also checked out Sossousvlei itself which was nice as well. After that we hit the road again and headed north towards Swakopmund, but we didn’t quite make it so we stayed in a lovely camp called Rostock Ritz.

Up early and headed to Walvis Bay for lunch and arrived in Swakopmund in the afternoon. Being fairly tired we stayed in that evening and had an early night. Next day was a Sunday, and its worse than Europe as nothing is open on Sundays in Namibia. We were lucky to find a gelateria that was able to serve us breakfast. In the afternoon we went quad biking together with Andrea and Rene (Czeck/German couple that came down the east coast – www.ourwildjourney.com who we met in Caprivi). Tips for anyone going quad biking in the desert, hire the manual rather than the lemon automatic that Louise had. It struggled to get up the hills! We had a great time though and were lucky to see a peringuays adder at one of our breaks.

The next morning we went on the Living Desert Tour which is a 5 hour tour into the dunes where the guide tries to find all sorts of animals that survive in the desert. It was really fun and we were lucky to find chameleons, skinks, spiders etc. Highly recommend it! We carried on north to the Skeleton Coast where we first saw thousands of seals at Cape Cross, and they are noisy! We also saw some wrecks on the way but it was so cold and very barren so we carried on, plus we had to be out of the gate before 7pm. We managed to find a lovely bushcamp in a riverbed just outside the Springbokwater gate (S20°16.136, E013°45.041) in between the rolling hills.
While packing up the tent in the morning Milan had a bit of an accident and hit his head on the end of a branch. The blood was gushing out and I was tempted to use some of our steristrips to fix the cut, but Milan was having none of that. A 3cm long cut nonetheless. Louise took over the wheel and drove to a beautiful campsite called Granitkopie close to Twyfelfontein. The campsite has 5 sites all tucked away between the hills, very basic but all you really need is a shower (heated up via donkey system), toilet and a sink. On our way to the camp we spotted 8 desert elephants in the distance!

The following day we headed to Twyfelfontein and saw thousand(s) year old San rock engravings. Next destination was Puros but we only made it to Sesfontein where our only option was the community campsite in the middle of the village – not the best. The road to Puros was a lot worse than last October so it took us a good 4 hours to drive 100kms. Puros has expanded their accommodation and now offer self catering chalets as well as camping, but it was a bit pricey for us so we went back to the same camp site we had last year. We explored the area and searched for the desert elephants and we saw one hiding in the bushes and we also visited a Himba village which was very interesting.

Since we had already made bookings for Etosha in advance we had to make our way in that direction so we drove to Kamanjab to another one of our favourite camps, Porcupine Camp. Nick had the one day flu so was not really feeling too well. The owners invite you into their home and spoil you with food, entertainment and porcupines in your lap! We haven’t been to any other camp with so much atmosphere! Unfortunately the next morning Milan wasn’t feeling well either, another case of the one day flu, so Louise was behind the wheel again and drove to our camp site in Okaukuejo in Etosha where we would spend the next 2 nights. On the road to the gate an aardwolf ran across the road in front of the car – luckily I didn’t run him over!

This is when we met Marc, an Australian overlander that has been travelling for years when he is not at home working to get more money for the travels. We shared stories and chatted for hours. At the waterhole that evening we saw a large herd of elephants and 5 black rhino! Up at sunrise and we headed to a waterhole were we saw a large pride of lions, 2 male lions and 5 lionesses. So lucky! One lioness tried to hunt a springbok but wasn’t very successful. In the evening we saw a huge herd of elephants again and 2 rhino. The third day in the park was not highly successful but we still saw a rhino in the day and elephants. In the evening at the camps waterhole at Halali we saw another rhino chasing away a spotted hyena – so funny!

Aaahhh, the fourth and last full day in Ethosa turned out to be a fantastic day. At Salvadora waterhole we saw a mom cheetah with her young in the distance, and then came a lioness who hid in the grass waiting to hunt. We were there for 7 hours and she tried to hunt zebra three times but failed each time. It was the first time for us to see a proper hunt which was great. This is where we had never ending patience. Of course we also saw a rhino that day :o) Nicks holiday was coming to an end and we had to make our way back to Windhoek where we are staying at Puccini again. We think we have covered every corner in Namibia, except Kaudoum NP for which you need to be 2 vehicles, so its time to leave this wintery country and head into Botswana for warmer days and nights.

Botswana part 2

2009-05-17T17:38:00.003+02:00

Current Location: Windhoek, Namibia

20 April 2009 – 14 May 09

The land of no fences and cold showers! (Plus lots of cold beer...)

After spending nearly 5 months in South Africa, arriving in Botswana was a nice change. It is a bit closer to Monkey Africa and has a wilder more disorganised feel to it, where the locals clearly don’t know how to drive and nothing quite works the way it could. As we drove into Gaborone we decided to punch in the location of the national parks booking office in the GPS, as we already know Botswana’s booking system for camping in the parks is about the daftest thing we have faced. Now they made it worse by not even letting you pay at the park gates (due to staff theft we presume), so you can’t even get in without a booking from their offices. Surprisingly we managed to book everything we wanted to in less than an hour and without too much fuss. We booked 7 nights in the Pans and 7 nights in Central Kalahari. While in Gaborone we hunted round for a tripod head for the video camera, one day we may even produce a video from the Gigs of video footage we have, be warned though our video skills are shocking, well mine are, Louise is getting pretty good.

Well as expected we didn’t find the tripod head but we got a little surprise when we got back to the car in one of shopping areas, there was a light hiss from one of the rear wheels, a small hole in the side of a tyre. As we needed 2 new tyres anyway we headed straight for Tiger Wheel & Tyre and instead of being good overlanders we watched as a local changed 2 news tyres and rotated all the wheels from the roof etc..., so while we had our first flat it required very little effort on our part apart from flashing a credit card for the new tyres J. The tyre place happens to be owned by the same guy that owns the Land Rover and BMW dealership right next door, something which would come in useful a few hours later on...

Later on while we were still hunting out the tripod head, some local boys attempted to break into the car in the middle of the day in a crowded car park, it seems while we in the shops someone notified the boys in blue, and a couple of undercovers showed up. When we got back to the car I tried to put the key in the lock and noticed it was busted, the door was unlocked but they didn’t manage to get in as you need to shove a long pointy thing into a hole where the button to open the doors used to be. Hehe some Land Rover faults have practicalities... The same happened on the passenger side, so in my usual disgruntled manner I starting to swear and generally raise my voice and asked a local street vendor if they had seen anything, of course not. During all my noise making the two undercover cops came over and asked what was going on. I proceeded to tell them that someone had attempted to break into the car but was clearly too stupid to open the doors. They then asked what I wanted to do now, after having dealt with the capetownian police I thought better of it and simply said we were going to go straight to the Land Rover dealership and get 2 new locks then leave town cause we don’t like it anymore, which is exactly what we did. Luckily thieves seem to know how pathetic Land Rover locks are and had broken a local guys locks so Land Rover Gaborone had one set of locks on stock. We spent that night in City camp in Gaborone, bit of a dive, we left early the next morning for Francistown.

Once we stocked up on supplies in Francistown we headed to the Nata Bird Sanctuary, finally we were back in the wild, it was a tremendous feeling. I guess South Africa is too civilised for us these days. Nata is famous for flamingos when there is enough water in the Pan, luckily for us there was, there were plenty of flamingos , though they never let us get close even when I sprinted across the dry area of the pan to get closer, their graceful movement that makes them appear to walk on water was still too fast for me to get close enough for good photos, I have now made a mental note that we need the big long lenses. Flamingos are not the only creatures in Nata, there was a large number of Pelicans and many other birds big and small, a few springbok and a jackal or two.

After leaving Nata we headed to Gweta to find out whether or not we could get to Kubu Island. We first heard about Kubu from Floris and Marieke in Nigeria, as he was the guy that introduced me to panoramic photography I was really looking forward to getting there, though with the water at Nata being present I was worried that we wouldn’t make it. In Gweta we stayed at Planet Baobab which is another one of these great camps with a brilliant atmosphere. (Also looking for a managing couple, no experience required....) As we found no info on the road to Kubu we looked at the map and there is a road that runs along the edge of the pan and not straight across it. So we took it, and what a magnificent drive it was with great scenery all the way, a view that we were getting used to, the golden grass with white salt pans, acacias, baobabs, the lovely smell of wild sage and the occasional springbok or ostrich dotting the landscape with a clear blue sky to top it all off. Arriving at Kubu Island we found out that the road across the pans was dry too. We spent the evening watching the sun set behind the odd looking baobabs with the usual suspects being present; the German tourists, the drunk south Africans being a little bit too loud and disrespectful, and then the few others like us wanting to experience Africa for its stunning beauty.

After getting up early for sunrise, we headed out across the salt pans back towards Gweta, this drive was even more stunning than the one to Kubu; crossing salt flats, golden grasslands and finishing with a rally style drive through Mopane woodland. We headed back to Planet Baobab, where we met Johann and Nancy who were going to spend about 7 months touring southern and eastern Africa, Johann nicknamed me the Kingsley Holgate of New Zealand, guess the beard is getting a bit long, Louise occasionally threatens me with the scissors but that won’t happen for a while.

Next up was Magkadikadi Pans NP, on arrival we were greeted by the friendly staff who proceeded to tell us exactly where the zebra were, as you probably don’t know Botswana experiences a zebra migration similar to the Masai/Serengeti migration, though the 10000 strong number in Botswana doesn’t really compete with the 2 million in the Masai migration. It is still a stunning sight to see animals in every direction , in particular zebras as they make for great photographs. Spending 2 nights in the east of the park with the zebras was very nice. We then headed to the western side where we drove up and down the western border fence line looking for lion, or anything other than zebra, 2 days of that was enough. Off to Nxai pan it was.

(We did meet a Swiss guy exporting rarer South African wines to Switzerland so if anyone is interested, contact us).

The rain, thunder and lightning came on strong our first night in Nxai pan, which was spent close to Baines Baobab, made famous by the painter of the same name (just the first name, naturally). We really don’t know how anyone finds the campsites that don’t have a GPS without the Tracks4africa maps installed as there are absolutely no signs except for a big “no camping” at Baines baobabs themselves. It was remote as! Next up was the main game viewing area of Nxai Pan National Park, made famous by the IMAX documentary film ROAR about the Kalahari lion. As we arrived at the gate and started the standard Spanish inquisition on animal activity, we were given a short quick answer “the animals are all gone”. It seems that when the rains come, the animals leg it into the bush to drink from puddles. So it was a hard two days looking for animals that just weren’t there, a little bit of a disappointment, will probably have to go back to see it again when it hasn’t rained.

Maun, back in familiar surroundings, we decided not to contact Tony and Denise as we were only staying one night, and needed to sort through over 1000 photos and about an hour of video footage we thought we would make bad guests, as we also know we are going back in June or July, bookings in the Kgalagadi are scheduled for then. Maun was an essential detour for a resupply on food for a seven day stint in the Northern area of the Central Kalahari. We had coffee with Denise and Tony in the morning as Ian decided to not only worry himself but them as well asking if they knew of our whereabouts as they hadn’t heard from us since we left SA.

The Central Kalahari is the second largest conservation area in Africa, and is one of the remotest places on the continent. The roads are either sandy tracks or hard clayey surfaces, unless it rains where the clayey surfaces turn into wet slippery stuff, and you could have guessed it; it rained on our way into the park and most of the first night. The next morning we were driving around Deception Pan and got stuck. Spending over an hour digging and trying to use the sand ladders to get us moving, the stuff is so slippery that you just don’t go anywhere. Knowing that the cable on the winch was stuck and there weren’t any trees in front of us. We started to worry a bit as the guide book mentions outside of the main roads it can be months before someone comes along, plus we were in lion territory; the overly relaxed Oryx hanging around were a bit reassuring however. Out came the winch controller and we managed to get the cable unjammed, we attached it to a tree to the left of the car, Edmund was out in a few minutes. Winches are now back on my list of useful recovery gear.

Surprising to us the Central Kalahari is not a desert like landscape but is more typical of the savannah type scenery you see in the movies; with the all too familiar landscape of golden grasses, acacia trees, bushveld areas as well as the flat salt pans that we had gotten used to. It was a fantastic 7 days. The wildlife was just as spectacular; lions, cheetahs at a springbok kill, bat eared foxes and a leopard topped the list of the best sightings, the park was also full of springbok, oryx, wildebeest, jackals, various birds of prey. 7 days was up and we could spend a lot longer getting up before the sun, driving around in the wee hours of the morning and the late afternoon, baking bread on an open fire, keeping snakes at bay in the campsites which exist solely for one group of people, hearing the jackals chit chat and lions roar every night, staring at the magical stars in the dark night sky, watching the orange, red, and pinks of the sunrise, sunset and moonrise, not forgetting the animals for a second and that this is truly their domain.

The camps in the Central Kalahari have no water, only long drop toilets, and showers where you have to provide your own water, so showering was not a regular activity. I did promise Louise that there was a restaurant at our last camp in Pipers Pan, and to our surprise there was; a Swiss couple from Wetzikon, who are driving back to Switzerland from SA, had decided to take refuge in our campsite hoping the occupants would let them stay. The campsites are big enough for 10 people so we were more than happy to oblige. They cooked us a nice meal in thanks and we discussed African travels before turning in for our last night.

We left the Central Kalahari and headed to Ghanzi for an overnight stop before leaving Botswana for Namibia. We will be back to this wild and mesmerizing land!

Milan (& Louise: chief editor)

South Africa, last one for now.

2009-04-18T21:03:00.004+02:00

Current Location: Kimberley, South Africa

20 March 2009 – 18 April 09

Well as some of you may have received our celebratory “1 year on the road” email, it’s seems that we were lucky enough to see cheetah on day 366. They even took us for a little hunt, meaning we followed them down the road as they walked and jogged in the direction of a bontebok. Also there has been a slight change of plan as the Kgalagadi is full till the end of July we aren’t going that way YET.

For those of you who didn’t get the email, here are a few of the stats and the best and worst so far:

A few stats:
Countries: 22 African countries (23 since we support the partisans of western sahara) Kilometres: 56190 Litres of diesel used : approx 7000
Illness: Malaria x 3 (all Milan) with 1 hospital visit (In Cameroon), Louise has had 2 hangovers Number of bites on the body at one time: 58 (Louise’s back in Cameroon)
Number of photos taken: Approx 25000 (3 underwater thanks to Chris for lending me her camera)
Number of dives: 44 between us
Number of flat tyres: 0 none, nada, nichts, zilch (yet)
Number of tyres without tread: 4
Number of OK tyres: 2
Animals we have eaten: Zebra, Kudu, Oryx, Springbok, Warthog, Impala (Pate), rubber chicken, possibly any other number of creatures that the locals couldn’t describe to us.
Number of dutch overlanders met on the road: 12
Other overlanders: 4 brits, 3 Swiss, 1 swede, 3 aussies, 1 Pole (on a bicycle), 3 Germans, 2 south Africans and a Kenyan.
Number of break downs: Suspension 4 times and the steering rod snapped once.
Amount of stuff thrown out on the way: over 100 Kilos

Now for the best and worst.
Best Game park: Moremi (Milan), Chobe (Louise). Both in Botswana
Best drive: Crossing the desert in Morocco (not western sahara) and Marienfluss in Namibia Hardest drive: Border crossing between Nigeria and Cameroon (whoever draws maps should know roads need bridges to go through rivers)
Worst drive: Angola after the suspension broke, all 2500 Kms without rear shocks.
Best roads in a country: Malawi
Worst roads in a country: Gambia
Friendliest people: Zambia (even the police that fined us 25 USD)
Best dive site: Sodwana bay, South Africa
Best campsites: Purros, Porcupine camp, Ngepi camp (all in Nambia)
Worst campsites: Niokala Koba Lions camp (Senegal), Kora (Just before Burkina border)
Wildest Place: Ihaha campsite in Chobe, Botswana
Best atmosphere: Big Millys backpackers, Ghana
Best unexpected thing: People in Nigeria
Biggest letdown: Sahara crossing (a tar road all the way)
Louise’s favourite country: Namibia
Milan’s Favourite country: Botswana just because Louise already took Namibia
Most stunning countries: Namibia, Morocco and South Africa

Now where were we, oh yes Coffee Bay.
From Coffee Bay we went to check out the Hole in the Wall, where a kid decided that without his help we wouldn’t find it and he needed to guide us there. Once we got there and gave him his 5 Rand coin he turned around and said it was not enough and that all ‘guides’ in the area got 10 Rand for guiding the tourists. This is when Louise just ignored him and Milan decided to give him a life lesson on how to treat tourists which lasted 20 minutes and the kid looked very sad and went away forgetting all the useful things Milan had just told him. At least we try!

We hopped on the N2 highway and drove up to Sodwana Bay were we met Dudley trying out his new surf board in the ocean. We spent a week there and it was the first time in a long time we didn’t need to wear sweaters in the evening! We managed to increase our number of dives even more and one day on the way out to a dive we spotted a whale shark! Everyone hurried to get their fins and masks on and jumped in the water swimming after the whale shark. It was the first time we had ever seen one so it was a real treat! This week the diving was a lot better than last time, with fantastic visibility and lovely things to see. Since Christine is into macro underwater photography we were trying to find things for her to photograph. It’s amazing how much we’ve learnt and have gotten a very big interest at finding things that are smaller than 1cm! Can we live here please?! ;o)

We hadn’t really made a plan after Sodwana so we were invited to stay at Christine and Dudley’s place again until we had decided what was next. We ended up staying longer than planned as Louise got an appointment with an eye laser specialist mid week. The results were not as hopeful as she had hoped for, the doctor recommending the old type of laser rather than any of the new easy, more or less pain free ones. What a disappointment. Contact lenses and glasses it will have to be then!

We finally got our acts together and headed to Injesuthi in the Drakensberg. When we arrived it was surely the most beautiful part of the ‘berg’ that we had seen. And there were autumn leaves everywhere – so beautiful! We did two lovely walks over that weekend; the last one being the toughest one in the area but it was really worth it. The walk was hard and steep but lovely to get to the top to see that view of the Drakensberg. This is where it starts to get chilly as soon as the sun goes down around 18:00, and a few times in Injesuthi Louise had to wear her winter hat because it was so cold at night. Brrrrrrrr – not only in Europe!

We felt fit and healthy after all that mountain air and were planning to go over the Sani Pass into Lesotho, but the weather forecast was thunderstorms for the whole week so we decided against that and headed north to Golden Gate Highlands National Park. Another freezing destination after sunset, but very beautiful with lots of autumn colours! Thomas and Isabella showed up (Swiss couple in a huge MAN truck) and they invited us for dinner inside which was great because it was so cold outside (10°C in the night!) and it was really nice to catch up with them.

The next morning we carried on along the scenic route which is only kilometres from Lesotho’s border, driving through all the huge farms that are the only thing in the area, and we made it to Wepener where we stayed on someone’s farm and watched the lightning all around us after it got dark. Next morning we headed to the Mountain Zebra National Park and since it was Easter we made a booking in advance and managed to reserve the next two nights with them. They have recently introduced 12 cheetah and rhino in the park so obviously we were on the lookout for those critters. We went for early morning drives and late afternoon drives and enjoyed the spectacular scenery and all the animals. We were still searching for the cheetah on our last evening drive at 17:30 Milan got out of the car to take some photos when I scanned the area with my binoculars and just then two cheetah sat up under a tree only 20m from us! They had obviously been sleeping when we came along and woke them up when they realised they were hungry. They started walking along the road in the same direction we were going so we followed them hoping to see a hunt.

Unfortunately we had to be back at camp at 18:00 so we had to leave them that evening. We went out the next morning again trying to look for a kill but we couldn’t see anything. It was so nice to see them and two out of the 12 was pretty lucky! It was also the first time we had seen Black Wildebeest and they are much more photogenic than the common Blue Wildebeest – ggnnuuuuuuuu...

Next destination was a new park by Graaf-Reinet called Camdeboo NP. We went for a short game drive and saw the usual suspects in way of the bucks and an adult ostrich which was followed by 24 young which was quite a spectacular sight. We carried on to the Valley of Desolation which is also part of the park but it has amazing rock formations and we stayed there to watch the sunset. Lovely.

Since we are on a National Park roll we headed next to the Karoo NP where we went for a long afternoon/evening drive in the arid and stunning area. We even spotted a black rhino munching away! We watched the strikingly pink sunset and got back at 19:00 when we found the gate to camp to be closed and very tightly padlocked. Oh no! Luckily there was another car there too and they had called someone to unlock it. The next day we drove to Oudtshoorn where we stayed in the same place as last time, the lovely Cul De Sac. This was a good place to relax and sleep in a warm bed indoors, and we also tried to plan the next destination on the trip. We had decided to go to the Kgagalagadi NP in South Africa for two weeks, then cross into Namibia and then Botswana and then back into South Africa where we would end our travels before going home. Unfortunately we found out that the park was fully booked until July! Oh no – sudden change of plans panic! We decided to go to Botswana now and visit the Central Kalahari and the Salt Pans, then head into Namibia and do all the things we did not do last time, then probably into Botswana again to go back to Chobe and Moremi as its the best time then. We booked the Kgagalagadi for end of July so if anyone fancies a spot of wildlife you are welcome to join us then!

You can’t really come to Oudtshoorn and not see the Cango Caves, apparently being one of the 10 must sees in South Africa. You can do two tours, the standard 1 hour tour or the 90 minute adventure tour. Since the latter forbid cameras we decided for the more adult version. The caves were stunning! If you are ever in the area – go and see them! We then drove over the Swartberg Pass and watched the fires around us. The area hasn’t had rain since November so it’s no wonder there are fires everywhere. The drive was stunning and we headed back to the Karoo NP but it was unfortunately full so we found a lovely camp just next to the NP called Stenbokkie Private Reserve which was full of animals.

We are now in Kimberley, the diamond capital of South Africa and also where De Beers was founded by Cecil Rhodes. Since we are planning to cross into Botswana in the next few days we have stocked up on a few things here; a bird book, a book on stars, guide books on Namibia and Botswana, better mattresses for the ground tent and a very warm large blanket for those cold nights stargazing.

You’ll hear from us in Botswana!

Tomorrow the 19th of April we will have spent exactly one year on the African continent!

Louise

More South Africa

2009-03-20T15:12:00.003+01:00

Current location: Port St Johns, Wild Coast South Africa

17 February 2009 – 19 March 09

Well another month has gone by and we are still in South Africa. Guess we like it here. As mentioned in the last post we were off north to visit home affairs to extend our tourist visa. The town was Malmesbury as we had heard horror stories of home affairs in Cape Town and how it could take days there, whilst in Malmesbury it should only take an hour. As we arrived at home affairs, it certainly appeared to be a typical African governmental office, paint peeling off the walls, 1 or 2 tiny windows set crookedly in the wall that you could hardly see through due to the fact that they hadn’t been washed since the days apartheid left this place. There was only one English couple sitting at the visa extension handling desk, it took them about an hour to clear the way, seems they were having problems extending their residents permit, perhaps South Africa is heading down the slippery slope that Zimbabwe is on, more on that later.

Now it was our turn, we didn’t think it would take long as the person sitting opposite us taking care of our paper work happened to be white, is that politically correct? Anyway sitting opposite a white person at a government office in South Africa is definitely not BEE (Black Economic Empowerment). We fill in the forms and they discover that we only have to 10 days left on our current visa, not good, they bring out this additional form. It was an apology letter and went as follows:

I / We __________________________
Sincerely apologise for not having requested a visa extension within 30 days of the previous one expiring for the following reason: ___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________

As you can imagine we were gobsmacked, but duly filled in the blank lines, I was refraining from laughing my head off when I wrote this:

We offer our sincerest apologies as we were completely unaware that we had to apply for a visa within 30 days of the previous one expiring. We kindly request to have our visas extended as we have been mesmerized by the beauty of your country and its people.

Well that was fine, next they needed to know if we had had enough funds to stay in South Africa for another 3 months. Now wondering how I was going to prove this she stated a figure that we would need, about 30’000 Rand (3’000 USD). So off I went to an internet cafe and printed out a copy of my Credit Suisse bank statement. She didn’t even look at it. Next thing she tells us is that it normally takes 2 to 3 weeks to process. We asked what we could do to speed up the process so we wouldn’t be in the country illegally. As she was the supervisor (this may explain her skin colour), she said that we could come back on Monday. So what were we to do for a week we asked her? She then quite happily offered us her insight into the local area and a little further afield. Now is it just me or did we just walk straight back into a typical “Monkey Africa” country and not notice we crossed a border. So far South Africa has proved to be the most civilised country we have been into in a long time, yet you show up to a government agency office and it’s like you’re back in the big bad Congo.

With nothing left to do but be tourists for a week in the west coast area, that’s exactly what we did. We headed first to Langebaan for the evening. We found an ok campsite (caravan park) and watched one of the better sunsets we have seen setting over the hills, oceans and ships in the bay. As we weren’t too keen on the 80’s style caravan park, (the mens loos had been burnt out in one corner, seems that no attempt had been made to repair it either), we left to go a little further north where we found Columbine Nature Reserve just on the outskirts of a quaint little fishing town called Paternoster. Stunning, we camped right on the rocky water’s edge and had no sounds apart from the waves, birds and howling winds. Once the wind had gotten the best of us we headed yet further north. We ended up in a place called Lamberts Bay, pretty much at the end of a dead end road in the middle of nowhere. Now this is where we start to discover that camping on the west coast is not the best idea and is something that should be left in the 80’s. We found yet another unappealing caravan park and were faced with the hard choice of having to stay there as it was getting late. Lamberts Bay is quite a disappointing place they have stuck the town’s only economic feature bang smack in the middle of it and this happens to be a fish processing plant. So as you can imagine it stinks, it also seems that the place has long past its heyday, as the youngest looking resident is about 200 years old (clearly the young had moved out long ago), and the houses don’t look much better. The only reason to visit the place that we could see was its Cape Gannet colony, and perhaps the little coffee joint where you get served by women dressed like ‘working girls’.

Heading back inland, clearly as the coast has nothing to offer but wind. We went to the Cederberg hoping to camp at a place called Algeria, but this place was closed due to recent bushfires where apparently half of the Cederberg has suffered from bushfires. We ended up in Citrusdal, as you can imaging by its name this is South Africa’s citrus capital and I think it has a juice brand named after it.

Off for some wine tasting in Riebeek Kasteel, a little known wine area north of the main wine regions. Tried some excellent wines and had an excellent lunch. Headed out of town to find a nice camping spot, now this is definitely not an area that is in the guide books so we were relying on the GPS for a camping spot. First place we went to no one was home, though the sprinklers were on, we tried all the phone numbers listed on the door to no avail. Next we stopped next to a sign that said camping 2 kms down a gravel track, thought let’s call them first to make sure they have room, no answer here either. Found another on the GPS about 18 Km away went to that to discover that hubby was out playing golf and he was in charge of that sort of thing, wifey was adamant that only one camp was available in the whole place, and it was full, though to us it looked like there were about 20 spots free (shame because there were zebras wondering around). Now off to Tulbagh where the GPS tells us there is a caravan park, figured that would be a safe bet. Oh how wrong we were. We arrive at this place and the security guard lets us in and we are the only souls in the place, not only that gave us the heebie gebbies, the fact that the toilets were covered in graffiti and every braai spot had been demolished made it worse. As you can imagine we made a quick escape and headed back to the safety of Riebeek Kasteel, where we found a nice little cottage run by a lovely lady, the cottage was called Morway (R400 for the unit. Great!).

It was and Monday we could get our visa finally, now we thought this would be a quick in an out thing. But how wrong we were we handed in our little bit of paper that said “pick up Monday”. Then we waited for over an hour and finally the woman walked out with our passports after possibly, we think, either drinking tea for that long or trying to find the visa sticker in amongst the mess of paper that seemed to pile high everywhere. It’s quite surprising that anyone will be able to call the coming elections in South Africa free and fair, if home affairs is as disorganised as this, what are the other departments of this countries government like. We all know that the most likely next president has the education of a 6 year old, is as corrupt as they come and spends more time in court than most prisoners spend in prison, and I have yet to find a single South African that supports him, black or white.

After finally getting the visa we headed to Cape Town to meet up with our long lost fellow travellers Anne and Reindeer a.k.a The Dutch bikers. We spent the night at the Ashanti Lodge, what a disappointment; we got a room with a bed, a sink, a window that I couldn’t fit my head through and no form of cooling from the stifling heat. Needless to say we hightailed it out there the next day to visit the mechanic in Muizenburg. Jim is a Scotsman turned South African over the years, very helpful. Checked a few things out, and as he is probably the busiest mechanic in Cape Town made an appointment the following week to get more minor repairs done. Ended up crashing at Tammy’s in her lounge (Trevor’s sister) for the night. Thanks Tammy and flatmates!

As we had yet another week to kill around Cape Town till the mechanic had time to tend to Eddie’s needs. We headed out to Gordon’s Bay for no real reason at all. We headed back to Franschoek for some more wine tasting and beautiful surroundings, found that nearly every place was booked out but finally found a place called Calais Country Cottage. Louise had a little cold but we went wine tasting anyway, discovered that La Motte was rubbish, Grande Provence is not too bad and Boekenhoutskloof was the winner of the day. At the end of the day we headed to the wine shop in town to send a selection of wines to our friends in Mtunzini. We drove back to Cape Town and stayed in Kalk Bay. The following day I went down to see Jim again, we had the parts and now it was time to replace one of the front hubs, thanks to the mechanics in Windhoek for over tightening two of the three bolts and stripping the thread the whole hub had to be replaced while Jim replaced that. I swapped out the rear half shafts and driving members, and ‘bush mechaniced’ the rear shocks as I can’t find the right bushes for them. A quick oil and filter change and we were away.

We headed out to the peninsula again this time to the other side Nordhoek, where we had heard there was a good campsite. We discovered a couple of other overlanders, Isabella and Thomas from Switzerland, who have been on the road for a year and will spend at least another 2 years travelling around Africa in their giant Man truck, equipped with garage to store the BMW motorbike in the back. Also there where Sean and Lucy, an English couple from Henley who have spent the last couple of months coming down the east coast, their website www.bigafricanadventure.co.uk made me want to drive back up the east coast now, they also introduced us to the phrase “monkey Africa”.

Now on Wednesday the 4th of March it was time to see some more fellow travellers, we went to Hout Bay to have dinner at Annaliese and Stewart’s, the South African couple that we met at Big Millys in Ghana. They had another couple staying with them for the weekends cycle tour the Argus. At about 10 at night in the quiet neighbourhood in Hout Bay we heard the neighbours shouting that someone was trying to break into a van. Though Edmund would not approve of being called a van sure enough it was his window that was smashed, and a backpack was taken. We didn’t lose much, a few camera items, nothing that is irreplaceable and no one was hurt. Little shits.

The next morning we started early ringing places for a new window, no one had one but it’s amazing how helpful people in this country are. Telling you to try this person or that person, telling us how sorry they are to hear our car was broken into. Eventually PG Glass down by the waterfront could organise one for us for the following Monday though it was only fitted on Tuesday. We also headed out to the police station to get a copy of the police report, which was not possible as the constable was in court. Seems he was in court for the entire week as we finally only got a copy the following week as we were leaving Cape Town, more signs that South Africa is becoming more like Monkey Africa.

The broken window meant that we were campsite bound for the whole weekend in particular since the Argus we right outside the campsite and they shut the road for the whole day. (Unfortunately we didn’t manage to spot Matt Damon on his bicycle though, whilst sipping wine with Sean and Lucy at the nearby pub). We did manage to go to the Cape of Good Hope national park, after having our first McDonalds since we left Switzerland, though were duly chased away by baboons, I did get revenge as I chased them away with the help of Edmund as they were trying to destroy another vehicle.

Finally it’s Wednesday the 11th and we are leaving Cape Town, no offence meant but after first waiting for the visa, then the mechanic and finally the window replacement we were well overdue to be on the move again. We headed towards the southern most tip of Africa, after a quick lunch stop in Hermanus we headed just past Gansbaai, where we found yet another one of these caravan parks from the 80’s. The following day we headed to L’agulhas to take the necessary photos of the most southern point in Africa. For the night we ended up in De Hoop nature reserve where we would have liked to stay longer but at 275 Rand for camping, nearly 30 USD, we decided one night was enough. Next was Knysna, Trevor’s hometown. Spent a couple of nights there taking the necessary photos for Trevor, and enjoying the area before heading to Nature’s Valley for the next day. Then it was back to Storms River Mouth, where storm is the operative word, it blew gail force winds and rained all night. We had dinner in the car and went to bed in our ground tent at 19.30! Needless to say the next day looking much the same as before we headed out of there and tried to get back into Addo Elephant Park, it was full. We ended the day in Port Alfred a quaint little coastal resort.

We are now in Coffee Bay sitting in a campsite on top of some cliffs overlooking the turquoise blue ocean, listening to it crash into the rocks and generally enjoying the sunshine. We will spend a few more days on the coast before we head to Sodwana Bay for more diving with friends Chris and Dudley.

Milan

South Africa so far

2009-02-16T21:53:00.004+01:00

Current Location: Salty Crax, Table View, South Africa

South Africa
24 November 2008 – 16 February 2009
We crossed over into South Africa from one National Park to another; Mozambique’s Parque Nacional do Limpopo into SA’s Kruger. Needless to say the wildlife on the Mozambique side is a little on the small side, only seeing a squirrel cross the road in a fright.

We were at the end of the trip together with C and Ian and had to head back to Pretoria quite quickly, so we only had a few days to spend in Kruger. Our theory being we can always go back and check out the park thoroughly at a later stage. Being there in November was also not the right time of the year as it was quite green and lots of long grass, meaning that it’s more difficult to spot any wildlife.

Time was ticking and we headed to Pretoria where we stayed with friends and got pampered with great food and lovely showers. We dropped C and Ian off at the airport in Joburg and headed off on our own again towards Blyde River Canyon where we spent a week relaxing and enjoying the stunning mountain views and waterfalls. Feeling the need for a little more ‘time off’ we headed to Mtunzini just south of Richards Bay where Christine and Dudley kindly let us stay with them for the next few weeks to recharge our travel batteries. After a lovely Christmas and New Years with the Kelbe’s we thought it was time to get back on the road again and headed off to check out the Drakensberg, the tallest mountain range in southern Africa which borders Lesotho. Unfortunately the weather gods were not supporting us that week as it was mostly raining heavily and freezing cold. Luckily we had some days with clear skies where we could see the mountain tops surrounding us which were really stunning. At this time we got news from our friends Andy and Francoise from Zurich that they were coming to visit us in 2 weeks. Yippieeeeee!

We had arranged to meet Christine and Dudley in Sodwana Bay for a week of diving so that was our next destination, back up north east close to the Mozambique border. Our first dive was with the Ragged Tooth Sharks and I was a little nervous to start off with as we all had to lie on the sandy bottom while the sharks were swimming close by. It was the time of the year where the pregnant females all come to that spot for a few months, and apparently they do not eat anything for that time which was a little more reassuring. It ended up being an amazing dive and we carried on diving for the whole week. By chance we also bumped into Erik and Ellen on the beach and it was really nice to catch up with them for a few days!

It was now time to start the long drive down to Port Elizabeth. We left Sodwana early on January 24th and made it to Gonubie (just east of East London) later that evening. We picked up Andy and Fran the next day at the airport at PE and it was so nice to see them after such a long time! We drove to Addo Elephant Park where we stayed for the next 3 nights. We booked a few tours with the rangers and we saw some really amazing lion on hyena action one morning. The night drive (which is usually really good) was a little disappointing as we only saw spring hares and scrub hares, plus when we got back to the waterhole by the campsite there were 2 rhinos there and some mongoose running around our tents.

Next move was to Storms River Mouth at Tsitsikamma National Park where we stayed in a little cottage on stilts just by the ocean. The views were just amazing with the waves crashing against the rocks just in front of us. We even spotted a whale! On the way there however, we drove through small local villages which Andy began calling ‘Stattschiffs’ and there was a lot of ‘Oh my word’ from the back seat while driving through. We then found a lovely camp site in Wilderness just next to the lake where we treated our guests to Zebra Pâté – unfortunately it didn’t go down too well and there was a certain one that refused to try it... you can just imagine who... ;o), granted the smell was rather off putting, it apparently smelled like cat food, this is when we discovered a certain member of the group has tried and tested kitekat cat food. This was also the evening when as soon as the sun went down, Andy changed into long trousers and a sweater – although everything was tucked into each other to minimise possible bug entries and bites. Check out the photo and see for yourselves, then let him know on a scale of 1 to 10 how funny he looks. Andy the Bushman! ;o)

We carried on to Oudtshoorn which is in the Little Karoo – meaning that the landscape changes drastically once you pass over the mountain ridge. It was really hot and dry again like Namibia – lovely. We stayed in a lovely place called Cul de Sac and the owner was so interested in our trip that he called a local reporter who interviewed us! It was so strange! He only asked a few questions about how many km’s we had driven and from where, not where we were going or anything regarding our adventures. Very strange... I would imagine the article will be really incorrect, if we ever get to see it. In Oudtshoorn we visted the Cango Wildlife Ranch where we could spend a few minutes with a grown cheetah, 2 young cheetahs which we all did, then Andy and Fran also wanted to hug the tiger which they did with buckets of enthusiasm. PS. Andy was not afraid of the big cats but had a little ‘reaction’ to a wallaby...

Next destination was Franschhoek for a tad of wine tasting. We found a lovely cottage to stay in called La Bourgogne for R1050/night, we all thought the accommodation was stunning though Andy was not impressed with the bathrooms, think there was some dust behind the toilet or something, and was tormented by the fact that the windows wouldn’t close properly and the cottage got doomed to death as he slept so badly because of a hundred apparent bugs. Fran was really keen on doing wine tasting on horseback, so off we went the next morning and got on our respective horses, sans Milan who checked out the town instead. We rode through the lovely vineyards and the rugged terrain. Our first wine tasting was at Rickety Bridge where we were given 40 minutes to taste 5 wines of our choice. A little too short and at the end the riding guide had to come and collect us as we were spending too much time tasting and buying wines... It was a lovely winery and the wines were really nice! We ended our horse riding with another tasting at Mont Rochelle where Milan met us for lunch. In the evening we had booked a table at Haute Cabriere where we had a fantastic dinner and, yet more, wine :o). Haute Cabriere is an award winning south African restaurant, Andy swears that Milan’s (marinated by Louise) cooked on the braii beef fillet was better than their Haute cusine.

A week had gone already and we headed to Cape Town. Fran called a place in the Cape Quarter (De Waterkant) just by chance to check the price and it was amazingly good value and an excellent location! It was a very cute little townhouse with two floors and a terrace on the top with great views over the city. Plus it was walking distance to everything around – perfect! The remaining week we walked around V&A, ate lots of kg’s of prawns, lots of kg’s of ribs, lots of burgers and fish and just enjoyed the café’s and good restaurants. Andy and Fran managed to do a helicopter ride over the city and Camp’s Bay which sounded great. We checked out the District Six Museum which was really interesting and we had a guide who had lived in that area of the city when he was little, but in 1966 it was declared as a white area and the authorities moved all the blacks and coloureds to the Cape Flats and bulldozed the area.

We also went to Robben Island one morning which is where Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years along with many other black and coloured political prisoners. The prison itself is nothing special but the tour is done by an ex-prisoner which brings a very personal touch to the whole experience. Andy and Fran finally decided to do a Township tour which turned out to be very interesting and we’re glad they saw that part of South Africa as well. With only a few days left we spent one day out on the peninsula where we went to Cape Point, Cape of Good Hope and visited the penguins at Boulders Beach. We spent nearly the entire week calling Table Mountain about the cable car running or not, it seems that even though it was built by the trusty Swiss as soon as there is a slight breeze they shut it down and go home for the day. We finally managed to get up the mountain on the Saturday morning; this is where we tried to test Andy’s fear of heights by tempting him with an abseil over the edge, as expected we failed, maybe next time.

Unfortunately their 2 week holiday was finished already, time went so fast, but it was lovely to catch up with ‘home’ again. Thanks guys for a great 2 weeks!

After they left we spent 5 days in Simons Town close to the penguins and mostly spent time on the peninsula hiking and taking photos of the views and the penguins. We are currently in Table View (Saltycrax Backpackers) which has a beautiful beach full of kite surfers. Tomorrow we will head a little north to extend our visa’s which expires in 10 days and then also visit Paternoster.

A quick update

2009-02-01T10:37:00.004+01:00

Current location: Franschoek, South Africa.

Since it's been so long since we updated the website and I have bit of time while Louise is out horse riding with Andy and Fran, i'll take this oppurtunity for a brief update.

Since we entered South Africa we have seen a few areas but have spent most of the time relaxing with friends just south of Richards bay, we spent christmas and new years with Dudley, Christine and the rest of their family.

We attempted to see the Drakensberg, seems that it rains there alot at this time of year. After that and a failed attempt to visit the battlefields it was back to Dudley and Chris's for a week of diving in Sodwana Bay, which was absolutely brilliant.

Then we went for a big marathon drive and went from Sodwana to Port Elizabeth in 1 day and a half, about 1500 KMs, to pick up Andy and Fran, who have joined us for 2 weeks. So far with them we have spent a few days in Addo elephant park. Garden route and route 62, where the girls and Andy were ecstastic to pat cheetahs and a tiger. Yes we have been proved wrong there are tigers in Africa.

Now we are in the wine region and will head to Cape Town in the next day or two.

Milan

Botswana, Zambia, Malawi & Mozambique

2008-12-10T10:58:00.001+01:00

Current Location: Barberton, South Africa

Botswana, Zambia, Malawi & Mozambique – 8 October to 25 November 2008

6 Weeks with Milan’s parents (Oh dear..)

Well as you may tell by the last few cryptic entries in the blog, it had been hijacked. We have now regained control and after some much needed R&R are finally in the mood to update it.
It sounds weird that we need to relax since we are on ‘holiday’ but even that is strenuous, in particular when you travel with people that are always on the go and can’t seem to relax... hmm hmm no further comments.

After leaving Kasane in Botswana we headed straight to Maun with an overnight stop at Savuti Camp in Chobe National Park. Now one thing has to be mentioned about Botswana’s parks and camps, they are wild places. No fences at all (except surrounding the ablution blocks (showers, toilets etc.) where you will find a couple metre tall brick wall to keep the thirsty elephants from breaking into the loos), where lions, hyenas and other such beasts wander through the camp, mostly during the evening and night when you are trying to have a relaxed and romantic meal in the bush. There have been numerous occasions when we have rushed back into the car when there had been a slight rustle in the bushes nearby, or elephants trumpeting in the camp next door to ours. It is truly a wonderful experience to listen to the lions roar and the hyenas laugh in the night, as long as you are safely tucked away in your tent off the ground!

Another unique experience to the National Parks in Botswana, is that you have to collect all your firewood yourself, in the park they won’t let you bring outside wood in. This means that you have to get out of your car where hopefully there are no predators lurking in the bushes, which is a little tricky as they are mostly extremely well camouflaged. Having exercised this previously, Milan and I were ok to step out of the car in the park, the other duo were a little reluctant but happily got out of their seats searching for logs on the ground after us, making sure all car doors were kept open to make for an easy run back to safety if need be.

At Maun we spent a few days in a campsite (Cedia Hotel – ok but not fab) before we headed over to Tony and Denise’s, a Kiwi couple that have been living in Maun for quite some time. They accommodated us (thanks very much, we’ll be back to put one of your gearboxes back together!) while we waited for C & Ian to arrive and let us use the services of their maid, who happily did our washing while the gardener washed a very dirty car. In the meantime we had a few problems to sort out, number one being the electrical system in the car seems to not hold a charge and our fridge drains the batteries in a few hours. Unluckily the problem has still not been solved and we are still searching for a good auto electrician. Where are they??! The other thing we did was an overdue sort out of all our belongings we brought with us in the car, a lot of it ending up being donated to the locals as we haven’t used it yet and figure we won’t use it. Who needs a thermos when you have a Kelly Kettle, or even better, coffee shops?

C & Ian arrived mid October and after resting over a weekend at Tony and Denise’s place the four of us were ready for the 6 week adventure together. The booking system for the camp sites in Botswana’s parks is a very tricky and illogical one. You can only book accommodation at their head office in a trailer in Maun, otherwise you might not be let into the park at all. We visited the little lady in her air conditioned office and Milan with his best African accent convinced her to help us poor tourists out. The camps are always fully booked, people pre-book months in advance and never show up or bother to cancel their booking since you only pay on arrival, she said we should just show up and they will fit us in no problems but “eiish its very hoht”. Feeling good about that response we headed to Moremi National Park and told the guy in the office that the little lady from Maun had called and told us we were coming, plus here is a letter from her to you asking you to accommodate us in the campsite. ‘Mam, I never received a phone call and we are fully booked so we can’t let you stay.’ ‘But she called and spoke to someone in this office, and here is a letter from her to you asking you to give us a campsite. There are reserve sites for people like us that have no booking,’ I replied with a smile. ‘You are asking me to risk my job here by giving you another person’s campsite.’ The little man was really starting to annoy me now... I told him, ‘There are no other people at the camp and you have specific sites for people that have not made a reservation because your booking system from Maun does not work!’ I began to lose my temper and started a small heated argument with him, and after he demanded the money for the few nights at the campsite I stomped out and mumbled a few nasty things under my breath.

Anyway, we picked our camp site out of the trillion that was there and not taken and had a light lunch before we tested our first game drive with all four of us in one car. With Ian being quite a large guy, we gave him the front seat next to Milan which meant he was also chief navigator with the use of our GPS, Mr. Garmin 276C. Not really being a technical guy he struggled a little with the navigational duty but what does it matter when you are enjoying a beautiful park spotting animals in the bushes. Our first game drive went very smoothly and we were ready for drinks and dinner when we got back to camp. This is the time when we heard something in the bushes but sounded like quite a small thing, so Milan stomped his feet and the animal ran away. Only then we got the Maglite out and found a hippo a few metres away from us! C & Louise ran to the car and jumped in, Ian ran for cover on the other side of the car, and Milan stood with Maglite in hand at the front of the car not knowing what to do next, all of us on the floor with laughter. What to do when a hippo is on land and close to you? Don’t shine a flashlight at him – oops failed at that one already, don’t get close to him or provoke him as they can be extremely aggressive and are very fast on land, oh dear, I think we failed at that one too. After a nervous fit of laughter, we shone the light around our camp site and found two more hippos grazing the grass just on the other side of the road of our camp site. Oh well they didn’t seem interested or disturbed by us so we got back to our dinner, occasionally flicking on the flashlight to check the surroundings.

We decided to take a boat ride on the Okavango Delta and we were booked for a sunset cruise one afternoon. When we got to the jetty there was already a group of Germans who were getting on the boat and we were about to walk on it as well, when we were told to wait before getting on. The skipper talked with the Germans and asked if they minded if the four of us could join them, which was a little strange as we had booked the boat as well. Unfortunately they did not want four extras on their boat cruise as they would not have as much fun if we were there with them. Hmm, ok then we’ll just go on one of the other boats without the Germans, no problem. A small group of South Africans turned up just as the double-decker boat with the Germans pulled away into the Delta. ‘Hey, we reserved that boat!’ One of them said. In the mess of it all, we ended up going with the South Africans on a smaller boat and had a lovely sunset boat ride all together, without the Germans, sometimes things work out for the best!

A few days of early morning and late afternoon drives in the park, getting stuck in the mud once but got pulled out by a lovely South African couple on honeymoon, we carried on to Savuti for a nights stop before moving on to Kasane and the border crossing into Zambia. The road from Savuti north to Kasane is hours of slow driving through deep sand and it’s a lot of first and second gear, and since Milan had a bit of a head ache that day I was in charge of the driving. Managing quite well I cruised through the sand, handled the herds of elephants beautifully and felt quite proud of myself actually. Only once we stopped did Ian inform me that he was struggling to keep up with my speedy driving. Oh dear, how was I possibly going too fast when Milan drives even faster on this road? I slowed down a bit until I got stuck behind a local 2 Wheel Drive bakkie (a pickup for the Europeans) which got stuck in sand. There is a reason why 4WD is a must for these parks... They got their long chain out and tied it to our car and we pulled them out of the sand.

We finally made it to Kasane and decided on a campsite when we all got into a quarrel as to how we should park the cars on the tiny spot C had chosen for us. This went on for probably an hour as Ian and Louise drove in and out of the site at numerous angles after finally parking up and heading for the bar, in desperate need of a cold drink (possibly alcoholic). There we went on another afternoon boat ride on the Chobe River which felt more like a booze cruise than a relaxing boat ride, although it was very nice and we witnessed a teenager elephant that was going crazy on the shoreline of the park.

A few days relaxing at Kasane and we carried on back to Ihaha Camp in Chobe National Park where we bumped into huge herds of elephant driving to the camp. This park is known for its large amounts of elephant. Experts say the park should be able to handle about 65’000 elephants, so when there are 120’000 instead it’s not unusual to see them on the road every second of the day. They are amazing to watch though and are so full of energy, especially the little ones – I love it! We did some game driving at Chobe and were very happy to see some lions, a nice change to elephants everywhere. As C and Ian only had 6 weeks to cruise around all the countries they wanted to see, we had to move on, off to Zambia we went!

We crossed the border ferry from Kazangula into Zambia and never did we expect so much hassle on the other side! We thought we were done with difficult borders, unfortunately we were wrong. It was the middle of the day, very hot, very sunny, and while the girls watched the cars, the guys sorted out all the paperwork for Zambia. A little surprised at all the costs, almost USD 250 by the end of it just to enter the country. There was carbon tax, road tax, ferry tickets, community tax, car insurance and visa fees. After hours of sorting it all out, we made it to Livingstone and found a lovely campsite on green grass in a quiet area (The Bushfront).
Since C and Ian had already been to the Victoria Falls and done river rafting a few years ago, they decided that was for the young ones and they opted for a more placid afternoon in a canoe dodging hippos rather than rocks. Milan and I on the other hand, signed up for a full days rafting for USD 135 each – we couldn’t be there and not do the rafting, plus we had written postcards to our friends that that was what we were going to do, so we had to really. Having rafted before in Austria it was not new to us but the rapids were huge in comparison to the mild ones in the Tirol. We got in the raft and headed for rapid number 1 out of the 25 named ones (there were probably 50 that we went through but none large enough to be named we guessed). Our guide fell out and a girl as well, and we were very close to the rocks on the right side. Oh dear, what were we in for... Rapid after rapid we made it and didn’t flip over once! After a few hours on the river we had had enough and we celebrated with a few beers on our way back to the starting point. Very happy and proud to have done it – but probably would not do it again... (well Louise wouldn’t at least).

We left Livingstone and drove to Lower Zambezi National Park and found a lovely camp site called Mvuu Lodge just outside the park. A little shocked at the USD 20 per person per night camp site price, we were too tired and hot to drive any further so we parked up just next to the river – a beautiful spot. We had already seen quite a bit of wildlife as we drove towards the lodge and as it was so hot and humid, we decided to stay for 2 nights and just relax at the lodge. Little did we know that it was tsetse fly hell and Louise ended up with bites the size of American pancakes on her thighs and bum – ouch! We went out for a boat ride on the Zambezi where we went up to the park gates and we saw quite a bit actually, until the dark rain clouds came closer and the storm hit us like a curtain so we had to rush back to camp where we saw an elephant walking around our cars having a little drink from the river.

Our next destination was South Luangwa National Park, but which road should we take? Do we drive through the park on a road that everyone says takes 10 hours, or do we drive backwards the way we came and go via Lusaka? We took the latter option and drove on a steep and windy road towards Lusaka. Luckily we were at the end of the stretch when we noticed something was not right with the car, the steering broke (tie-rod snapped). Oh no! Knowing how to handle an irritated Milan when it comes to cars breaking down, the three of us left him to fix it with cable ties and took lovely pictures of him under the car instead. Off we went again and headed to Pioneer Camp about 30 km’s away where we could camp for the night and get parts for the car the next day.

Early next morning Ian and Milan drove into Lusaka on the hunt for car parts. A few hours later they came back with an unbelievable story: Ian had been pulled over for speeding AND reckless driving! We couldn’t believe it! Ian always being so sensible and organised – which nationality is he truly, we wondered. Edmund was fixed once again and we were on our way to the beautiful South Luangwa National Park.

We drove into Flatdogs Camp just outside the park and chose a spot for the next few days. South Luangwa is known for its large number of cats so we were very eager to spot them on our drives. It’s a stunning park, very wild with windy tracks and plants and trees growing everywhere. The rains had just begun a week before so the animals didn’t need the river to rely on water anymore, so a lot of them had started to move further into the park up north, where we were not able to go. It was very tricky to spot any animals in the thick bush. We decided to go for two night drives with the camp and the first evening we saw a lovely pack of lions resting by the river banks, and the second evening we saw a leopard off in the distance. One problem with the park is the off-road driving and a lot of the guides not respecting the animals enough. A dozen cars are out in the evening for a few hours in search of the leopard. This means that headlights are on plus a large lamp on each vehicle is scanning the bush for eyes in hope of finding the rare cat. When one guide spots the leopard, every single car races to it as well, and frightens it away. This is what happened with us that evening but we were very happy our guide turned off the engine and all the lights, and waited until all the commotion was over and the leopard had ran away. Shame.

Our safari trips were over and it was time to move on to the next country, Malawi. We headed to Senga Bay where we stayed at Cool Runnings for a few days to relax on the beach of Lake Malawi. This is also where Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman stayed when they cruised through the continent! Next stop was Cape MacClear where the place we had been recommended, Fat Monkeys, was full and looked quite hectic, so we checked out Eagles Nest instead which turned out to be a fantastic place to stay! We camped at the end of the private beach in a stunning setting. Milan, Ian and I went for two dives one morning but we weren’t all that impressed actually. The visibility was not good and it was some small fish hanging around in the rocks – it wasn’t beautiful like the ocean, but it was fresh water diving which was a little different to salt water diving. We booked a sunset ride with the catamaran and went snorkelling where we saw more than on the dives! It was a beautiful way to end our stay at Cape MacClear.
We hopped over to Mozambiqe with our first stop in Tete, a pretty grubby town with nothing for tourists. Milan was feeling a little achy and was pretty sure it was malaria again, so we needed a room with air conditioning in case he would get a fever. Lucky we still had the wonder drug, Coartem, with us and he started with the treatment straight away. Everything seemed to be fully booked in Tete that night. So our only choice was a lively hotel which seemed to double as a brothel, we got the only spare room they had, and C and Ian had to camp in the car park. After a sleepless night in the car park, we were all up early and started our drive to Vilanculos, a popular beach resort mostly famous for its archipelago. We spent most of the day driving and a few 100 km’s from Vilanculos, we stopped for tourists that had broken down on the side of the road. Thinking Ian had stopped further back to buy coal or cashew nuts, Milan reversed backwards and BANG, drove straight into Ian’s rental car. OOPS! The whole front of the car was pushed in, breaking the radiator in the process. Ian and Milan fixed and fiddled with it for a good hour until we could try to drive it to the coast. Driving it was no problem but finding accommodation in Vilanculos turned out to be. Since the tornado a couple of years ago took out a lot of the hotels and houses on the beach, and our once dear Lonely Planet was once again incorrectly updated, we were driving around for a while until we found Vila La Mar. A beautiful self catering house overlooking the beach where we stayed for 3 nights and just rested until Milan was 100% again. Vilanculos itself is not a nice town, it’s very spaced out so you need to drive to get anywhere, and the people are very hassly towards tourists. We carried on to Tofo, a little further south, where we found a self catering chalet on the beach called Casa Barry. We checked out the possibilities of diving here, as it’s known for excellent dive sites, but were a little shocked to find out that all the operators charged USD 80 per dive. Since it was supposed to be really good diving and we might see whale sharks as well, we decided the three of us would do one dive at least. The visibility was again not great, only 7m or so, but we saw amazing creatures ranging from turtles to moray eels to a cow fish. Our trip with C and Ian was over and it was time for them to return the rental to Pretoria in South Africa, catch a flight back to NZ, and for us, we just needed to relax!

P.S. If anyone is considering using Doxycicline as a malaria prophylaxis, be very wary of the sun. C and Ian used it and it took a toll on their skin, in particular Cs, she had sun blisters and pink spots all over her legs and arms.

Zambia a la Ian

2008-12-10T10:36:00.002+01:00

Current Location: Barberton, South Africa

1. GETTING IN
Three and a half hours and USD 280 lighter we managed to enter Zambia and headed off towards Livingstone. Our entry into Zambia was USD 65 more expensive than M & L’s as there was this little road user tax issue, which for some reason appears to be only applicable to rented vehicles crossing at Kasungula – how bizarre.

2. GLOBAL WARMING
There’s this little secret that the world doesn’t know about yet. Vic Falls from the Zambian side n’existe pas.

3. LOWER ZAMBEZI
It’s hot so hot... and sticky... One sweats like a pig just blinking one’s eyes. There’s biting bugs everywhere – we’ve been bitten by so many bugs in so many places, we know not anymore which bug bit us where or when. Our host assures us that the sleeplessness of the staff is not an indication that the Tstese fly carries sleeping sickness , but faire attention for the striped bitch (that fearsome mossie that will give us all malaria).

4. TESTING THE THEORY.
Theory has it that if one wears dark colours ( C & I), one gets ravaged by the Tsetse fly but if one wears light colours ( L & M) one comes out unscathed. L, who foolishly wore a long white dress will testify that theory is wrong ( or was it the dark coloured underwear).

5. JEEP
Now that we’re in here do we exit by transiting the National Park (130 kms) or going back the way we came (50 kms of 1st gear driving plus 160 kms of tarseal). No-one seems to be able to tell us the state of the road through the national park and stories vary. One minute its good road thats just been graded and the next it will take us upwards of ten hours. Lonely Planet does not recommend the route and nor does M’s GPS system. We do however have a landi (and a mitsubishi) and the camel trophy beckons ... alas we wear clothes emblazoned with the word
“jeep”.

6. THE STING
Landi alert, shes sliding on the corrugations – miles from nowhere we’ve snapped the track rod end. After an initial hissy fit M ties it all together with good old no. 8 wire and cable ties and we limp on into Lusaka. Next morning we venture forth to find a spare part, and on heading back to our campsite we are stopped by the local constabulary. Lets see now .... its K150 for reckless driving. (I had just overtaken a car doing 40 kms per hour) and K 185 for speeding. (it didn’t seem to register that I was doing 68 kph in a 100kph zone just like it didn’t register that K150 plus K185 does not equal K305 ( USD 75).

M: Can we discuss this?
PO(female): Yes but... I’m not sure what will be coming out of your mouth.
M: The fine’s a little harsh for the offences committed.
PO: I can offer you a discount and reduce the fine to K200.
M: K50 seems more reasonable
PO: Ok if K200 is too much, you can just pay K100.

The deal's done.

7. WHITE HUNTERS – BLACK HEARTS
In game viewing terms South Luangwa is billed as the best thing since sliced bread. Beautiful but overrated in terms of critter viewing – (unless you’re into dead hippos)... but wait... it is the start of the rainy season (to which we can attest after a cloudburst that left the inside of our tent sodden) so the critters are moving away from the river. Our night drive (the 4 of us and 2 Italians) had its moments: our driver stalled between an irate elephant and the mango tree it wanted and then we saw it .... “a leopard” but far far away. The Italians morphed, Jekyll became Hyde before our eyes. Suddenly there were cars, spotlights a running leopard and us bringing up the rear – our guide wouldn’t take the direction the Italians instructed to short out the other drivers (there was a river there) and boy was there a big time dummy spit – we were gobsmacked.

8. DIESEL
At USD2 per litre this is an expensive country – it’s off to cheaper climes.

Botswana by Ian

2008-10-31T11:56:00.002+01:00

Current Location: Livingstone

17 – 28th October

Chapter 1 - Meet spot
Meeting seasoned overlanders somewhere in Africa is a harrowing experience – you think you’ve reached an agreement, booked your flights, and arranged your rental car and accommodation – the meet spot changes! Even when you’re on the continent, fine tuning meet spot details is demanding – sometimes international roaming works, sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes there’s internet sometimes there’s not. C’est comme ca.

Chapter 2 – Friends
One would be lost without them – big thank yous to Ruedi/Eunice and Tony/Denise.

Chapter 3 – Things that go bump in the night.
Braii time at Xakanaxa (Moremi) and Milan’s cooking up a meaty feast. Suddenly he’s running towards the darkness on the edge of camp stomping his feet.
Ian: What was that Mil?
Mil; I don’t know but it ran away (as he prods the steak)
C: It was black!
Mil: Can you bring me the maglite Louise?
AAAAHHHHH – hippos (one in front , 2 behind) - vooom, we’re in the landy before you can blink.

Chapter 4 – Photography
The name of the game is creativity. You go game driving at sparrow’s fart or dusk because the light is best and you photograph things like eyeballs, tusks and birds in flight (wings up not down of course). The trick is to get the birds to fly and game park etiquette would indicate that it is unacceptable to honk one’s horn but acceptable to slam one’s door or risk becoming lion’s brunch by leaping out of the landy and playing silly buggers. The perfect shot of two fish eagles looms, cameras are focused, door slamming fails and as Louise leaps from the landy C starts muttering, “the focus on my camera is fuzzy, very fuzzy, --- it’s gone, eagles are flying. Mil’s camera clicks a squillion times. We’re all left wondering why C turned her camera off.

Chapter 5 – Tourists
A visit to Okavango Delta is not complete without a sunset cruise. There are two boats for hire – USD 50 per hour – seats 12. C decides to canvas the campsite for other punters only to find she’s too late as a group had already formed. The ferryman decides that we should join the initial group as they are four persons short. Boy did the ferryman get the bums rush. His horror was matched only by ours as this group of German tourists outright refused to allow us to join their party. (we were looking rather like “locals” by this stage of the game). The wharf became even more of a circus with the arrival of a group of South Africans just as the Germans were pulling away. The Germans had commandeered the double-decker boat that the South Africans thought they had booked.

Chapter 6 – Gravy
Lessons in the art of photography are generally followed by cooking classes. Tonight is gravy making class. C is in charge of soaking rather expensive shitake mushrooms while Ian is in charge of chopping up onions, garlic and ginger. All ingredients are tossed in a pot for M to deal to. After an agonising wait for the gravy to simmer M finally decides it has passed the taste test --- he lifts the gravy off the fire “s---t” was all we heard. “Tucker F anyone?”.

Chapter 7 – Meltdown
We’re leaving Botswana – it’s hot - very hot. C and L have both melted down and it’s I’s fault. No one’s talking to I anymore. We fill out our leaving forms at window 1. C uses red pen, L uses green pen, I uses blue pen (M guards the cars). We all pass the test and are allowed to leave. Now we have to check the cars out at window 2. I has no carnet de passage and has to fill out a temporary export form. In the confusion of moving from window 1 to window 2 Ian ends up with a red pen in his hand and fills out the form under the watchful eye of “Big Momma” behind the counter. On completion “Big Momma” takes the form, looks at it and says “eesch all official forms must be completed in blue pen – do it again”.

Namibia

2008-10-31T11:47:00.002+01:00

Current Location: Livingstone (Vic Falls) Zambia.

7 September – 8 October 2008

As Edmund had suffered a few injuries on our way through the last countries, the first thing we had to do was to drive down to Windhoek and get him fixed up properly. Arriving in Windhoek felt like driving into a New Zealand town and not Africa at all. It was clean and organised, modern buildings and everything looked new. The first night we ended up staying at The Cardboard Box which was an ok place for us as they served food and cold drinks, although it seems to be more of a back-packers place for teenagers who want to score in the evenings. The next day we moved on to Puccini House which was a lovely self catering place and since we left Edmund in safe hands for the next days with The Landy Center just around the corner, we stayed in a room which was a nice change to the tent for the next week. We hired a little Toyota to cruise around the lovely town for the next few days so we could pick up some bits and pieces for the second chapter of our trip. Arriving in Namibia was so different from all the previous African countries we have travelled through so I like to call it the start of the second part to our trip.

We picked up Edmund after a few days and this had been done to him; new clutch (ouch – pricey!), front corner was re-welded, rear shocks were modified and various bushes were replaced and a full service, they even washed the seat covers. All in all is was quite a good price for all of that, knowing that back in Switzerland all of that would have cost an arm and 2 legs. After doing huge piles of washing in the first washing machine of the trip (luxury!!), stocked up on food, having dined out at wonderful places in town, we were ready to explore Namibia good and proper and the first destination was Etosha National Park for 4 days.

After having seen the lack of wildlife all throughout Western and Central Africa it was fantastic to finally see so many animals! It’s currently the very dry season in Namibia (also very hot!) so you have a very good chance of seeing lots of animals at the artificial waterholes in the park, rather than being spread out. We mostly saw elephants – they are great to watch as they have such personalities and the little ones are just too cute. We were also very lucky to see a small leopard on the side of the road next to his kill which was up a tree, and we also saw a black rhino at dusk at one of the camps waterholes. Our four days in the park was up and we headed down to Khorixas via the Petrified Forest and Vingerklip. We were a little disappointed in the Forest as I think we were expecting a forest of petrified trees, hence the name, however we were shown 3 trees that were around 260 million years old, so nonetheless it was nice to see, but we wouldn’t do it again. The Vingerklip on the other hand, is a 35m-high pillar of limestone and said to be around 15 million years old, and it stands surrounded by only beautiful landscape in the middle of nowhere.

We decided to head up to northern Namibia by Angola, to see Epupa Falls, drive over Van Zyl’s pass and to track the desert elephants in Purros before heading down to Swakopmund and the dunes at Sossousvlei via the Skeleton Coast. On our way up north we stayed at Porcupine Camp in Kamanjab. This is a new camp run by mother and daughter of German descent. They have their pet turkey’s, ostriches, dogs, ducks etc walking around everywhere so you have to be careful where you put your feet. They were both hilarious and cooked us a very nice meal which we enjoyed whilst watching the neighbouring porcupines come for a feed only a few metres from us. The camp was lovely and we highly recommend it!

Next morning we headed up to Ruacana which is just by the Angolan border and we stayed in a nice camp called Hippo Pool which was recommended to us by 3 German interns in Windhoek. The camp overlooked the Kunene River and it was very calm and peaceful. This is also where we met Ralf, a German overlander, and it was funny to realise that we had met a lot of the same overlanders throughout the continent.

The North-Western part of Namibia is called the Kaokoveld and it’s a vast area of desert mountains that is crossed only by sandy tracks laid down by the South African Defence Force. It’s often described as the last true wildernesses in Southern Africa. It is also home to the Himba, a group of nomads in which the women never wash and cover themselves with a mixture of ochre butter and herbs and animal fat to protect themselves from the sun.

We didn’t get very far the next day, only 40km’s or so to Kunene River Lodge. This was a beautiful camp next to the river hidden in the tall trees around us. This is where we met Christine and Dudley who are very ;o) keen bird watchers and were on the hunt for the very rare Cinderella Waxbill (a bird). We were both heading in the same direction and decided to meet up the next day at Epupa Falls. The camp was right next to the falls and theoretically you didn’t need to have a shower because every so often you got sprayed with water from the falls. The location was yet again stunning. Christine and Dudley showed up and after much conversing about cameras (also very keen photographers and divers) and diving, we decided to drive down Van Zyl’s pass together. The track we were about to tackle was labelled as ‘Not Recommended’ on our GPS and nowhere to be found in any guide books, so we decided it be best to meet them at the top and drive the descent together. Little did we know, however, that the drive to the top was quite (!) tricky as well. It was sandy and rocky and steep most of the time. When we reached the top we saw Dudley changing his tire – they’d gotten a flat. A quick change and some lunch we began the climb down. The average speed we had was about 8kms/h or thereabouts and very hair-raising at some points – the track is only allowed to be done from east to west, as its very narrow and steep going down, driving it the other way would be suicidal. I had to get out a few times because it was too steep so I thought taking pictures of the car was a better option than being strapped in your seatbelt and holding on to something for dear life. Thankfully Milan managed the drive very well and we celebrated with cold beers at the top end of the Marienfluss (a 50 km long plain surrounded by beautiful hills).

We decided to stay a few nights at the camp in the Marienfluss to decide what the next step was going to be. Since Milans parents were joining us in mid October for 6 weeks we decided to join Christine and Dudley for the remainder of their time on an extensive holiday by going to Purros and then to the Caprivi Strip for further game viewing, and just good old fun, and then meet C and Ian in Botswana. We will come back to Namibia in a few months again to do the south of the country.

Only an hour into the drive south towards Purros and the Landcruiser got stuck in sand. Having done this before we got them out with the winch in no time and we carried on the track which was labelled ‘Aggressive elephants and flash floods’ on our GPS. Being the dry season we thought that flash floods were highly unlikely but the danger of elephants was of course there... It was a fabulous drive through the dried out sand banks and on our way into Purros camp we spotted our first desert elephants having a play in the water. After 3 nights at Purros we headed out early in the morning down the Eco-Trail through the sand banks of the river through a gorge. We spotted recent elephant prints and followed them for about an hour or so until we saw two young males playing just metres from us. It was amazingly beautiful to see them. We were also very lucky to see a brown hyena that morning!

We followed the Eco-Trail towards Sesfontein and planned to stay at Porcupine Camp in Kamanjab that evening. The track was a little trickier than we had anticipated and we got stuck twice each that day in the sand bed of the dried river. As the evening dusk crept upon us we decided to bushcamp before Kamajab. The next day was a long days drive up to Rundu, by the Angolan border once more just before the Caprivi Strip. We drove to Popa Falls and stayed at what Lonely Planet names as Namibias best camp site. Another lovely camp site just on the Okavango River where we could lounge in the pool in the river, which was a fenced floating area in the river close to the hippos and crocs. Early morning bird watching boat ride was organised with Christine and Dudley and we have now been officially converted to bird watchers. Next stop was further into the Caprivi, Bum Hill, where we slept in the trees for the first time. We went out for fantastic game drives in the early mornings and late afternoons and enjoyed numerous sundowners at Horse Shoe Lagoon looking at all the elephants wander down for their drinking sessions. One evening we counted up to 150 elephants!

After Bum Hill we crossed into Botswana and said our goodbyes to Christine and Dudley in Kasane.

Yaounde to Windhoek

2008-09-13T18:45:00.002+02:00

Location: Windhoek, Namibia

21 August – 7 September

As Milan was still not 100% from the malaria, we took it easy out of Yaounde and stopped in the southern town of Ebolowa where we stayed at the lovely Hotel Port Jaune. The next day we crossed the border into Gabon and decided to stay at Hotel Ngue in Mitzic for the night. We arrived quite early so we walked down the street to get a drink and relax a bit. This is where we found a bottle for sale called ‘Gin & Tonic’ – since the locals drink from morning to night we decided to join in with a beer and a G&T and watch them down a milk carton of red wine in ten minutes, get back in their car again which was loaded with goats and chickens and drive off.

We carried on to Lopé from where you can go on mandrill and lowland gorilla treks. Having been to eastern Africa before and knowing how good the wildlife is there, we decided to skip any upcoming national parks and not take the chance of being disappointed with the western/central Africa NP’s. We had the coordinates of a well known overlander bushcamp just after Lopè, S00 09° 110, E011°44.449 on top of a hill overlooking the surrounding savanna. It was a beautiful location and we watched the bush fires burning the dry grass in the distance. Next day was Franceville, then Lekoni where we were searching for the well known canyons which are supposed to be about 10 km’s after you exit the town. We drove around for hours trying all the small tracks off the main track but without any luck. We gave up and found a bushcamp in the middle of the hills with nothing around us at all – it was so peaceful. Little did we know that once the sun goes down, lady bug looking things come alive and millions of them fly around in the air. We quickly packed up and escaped into our tent, where it sounded like rain drops where hitting our tent all night, but it was in fact the little bugs.

We continued the sandy track to the Congo border, and thought we had gone back to Europe when we entered the town of Oyo. We later found out that this is where the president was born and hence is full of European looking houses, street lights, fancy motor boats and jetties on the river, its the Chinese invasion. We carried on early and on our way to Brazzaville we met Pawel, a Polish cyclist who has been travelling from Morocco to Congo in 5 months, the same as us. We had a chat with him on the side of the road and said we would meet again at Hippocampe (Vietnamese hotel and restaurant where overlanders can camp for free) in Brazza in a few days. When we arrived in the city we met a German/Austrian retired couple who have driven their Magirus from Europe to Brazza in 2 years(!), so they like to take things very slow. We applied for a transit visa at the Angolan embassy but gave up after realising we were not going to get it since only 2 visas have been issued by them in the last 4 years!

Pawel showed up on the Friday and together we attacked the Brazza (Congo) – Kinshasa (DRC) ferry / border crossing the next morning. We had ‘pre-booked’ fixers on both sides of the border to help us get through. Many travellers get turned back on the Kinshasa side with their visa for DRC cancelled, without any reason. The officials claim that this is because you don’t have a visa for onward travel, meaning Angola, but currently the only way to get the Angola visa is either in Nigeria or in DRC Matadi. We were particularly nervous that we would not get off that boat on the other side. The whole endeavour took almost 9 hours and we witnessed officials beating people for no reason, and the Red Cross people just turned a blind eye to it. It was the worst thing we had experienced on this trip so far. Luckily we made it together and we arrived at the Catholic Mission St. Anne and celebrated with a few local beers! Note for other travellers – the Brazza side is so much worse than the Kinshasa side, and on the Kinshasa side they will spray your car for health and safety reasons which costs around USD 50. Glad to have made the hardest border crossing in Africa, we went to bed in good spirits with smiles on our faces.

Wanting to reach Namibia as soon as possible we headed for Matadi the next day where we applied for the Angolan transit visa, it’s a 5 day visa and the only one they issue apparently. We had heard from other travellers that the visa is issued on the spot, this was unfortunately not the case for us. After filling out the forms and having an ‘official’ interview with them, they said we should come back tomorrow for the visa. Happy to have that done we were well tired by this point and decided to spoil ourselves by checking into Hotel Ledya which is USD 100 per night.
Next day we headed to the embassy only to be told that the visa was not ready and we should come back tomorrow. Having no patience for their embassy bollocks anymore, we argued and argued with them, the crying trick didn’t work either unfortunately. The visa cost USD 80 each and all they need to do is put a silly sticker in your passport. Could we at least have our passports back please so we can leave Matadi and explore some surroundings? No this was not possible, they did not have the key for that safe. We returned to the hotel where we found out that the Hotel Director knows the Angolan Consul in Matadi. We spoke with him the next morning where he called his friend and we were told we would get it that afternoon. The Hotel Director was an extremely nice man who said we did not have to pay for the coming night’s room and dinner, since it was not our fault that we were still in Matadi and could not leave.
At 4pm we could pick up our passports with the visas in them. We have no idea where our passports had been. Had they been flown to Angola to get stamped, or Kinshasa? We got them finally and left the staff without any thank you’s – they were the rudest and most unhelpful people we had met. We don’t know any consulate where the staff is watching ‘24’ during working hours. Maybe our voodoo dolls can come in handy here....

Happy to leave Matadi we headed for the Songololo border early. It was an easy border crossing and our impression of the Angolans was good. The Angolan roads are known to be the worst on this continent and only too soon did we realise the damage to Edmund. The 2 shock absorbers on the back right had come off. This was not such good news as that meant that we would only drive on the worst roads possible with 1 shock on each front side and 2 shocks on the back left. Spirits were down but we carried on driving 30 km/h on the sandy road and made it to Nzeto for the night. Up at 5 we drove and drove, through the capital on the day of elections (no problems at all – it was good to see they all wanted to vote) and found a place next to the road, in a dug out area, for the night, S10°50.261, E015°02.266. Having a huge landmine problem from the recent war we decided it probably best not to go off road and be blown up in the process.

Angola turned out to be an extremely beautiful country which could be a great place for tourism. The nature is stunning and would be perfect for hiking, rock climbing etc. Angola was a bit of a shock to our system as this is the first country we have visited which was Portuguese. This was also the first country we had travelled in where the people in the villages were asking us for food. After 4 days of early starts and early nights, we crossed the border into Namibia on the 7th and were extremely happy campers! (The Chinese are building the roads in Angola so a lot of it is brand new tar).

Garoua to Yaoundé – Cameroon

2008-09-13T18:36:00.003+02:00

Current Location: Windhoek, Namibia

5 – 20 August

We headed for a Toyota garage in Garoua which we knew stocked Yamaha parts and could possibly help with Anne and Reiniers falling apart bikes. Once we were on the street of the garage, we stopped for a quick chat to let the bikes go first since they knew the name of the garage. As we were about to leave a serious looking officer walked over to us and demanded our passports. Thinking this was a normal police check we handed them over but after 10 minutes of not knowing what was going on and no sight of the officer, Milan walked into his office to ask what was going on. It turned out he was going to fine us for stopping in the middle of the road. After a lot of hot air from Milan and Reinier had been exchanged with the officer and possibly a lot of foul language, we left the station with Anne receiving a warning for the wrongful parking. It makes no sense at all we know!

We found the garage just up the road where they ordered the parts they needed with pick up in Douala. We found a so-so hotel in the town, the only one open out of the 3 available, ready to carry on the next morning. As we were getting new car insurance with AXA, we got a call from Reinier that Anne had fallen off her bike. It turned out that in the rain, she had slipped and her bike had fallen on her foot. We caught up with them in the hospital and after a lot of waiting, buying medicines, bandages, etc etc, Anne was allowed to leave with her broken leg. Being Africa it seems they do not stock anything in the actual hospital, the patient/friend has to take the list of items the doctor writes down to a pharmacy in the town and buy them over the counter. We went to four pharmacies before we found crutches for her as well..... This caused a bit of a crisis to their travels. What to do next?

After a lot of discussions they decided to courier their bikes down to Yaounde and they would take the train, then see what to do once they were there. While they were packing together their belongings and separating what they needed and didn’t need in the coming weeks, Milan decided to add to the fun and get malaria again. We went to a clinic to get tested but at that time of night (19:30!!) they couldn’t do tests anymore, but the nurse was sure it was malaria and said he should start with the treatment and come back if it doesn’t get better.

Coartem it was and a very feverish Milan spent the next few days in the room. Not getting much better and starting to get kidney pain we decided to take him to hospital and see what the experts say. He didn’t want to go to the same hospital Anne had been to – too many fat mozzies and looking like it was a Russian hospital from a 100 years ago. We took him to a private clinic where he was put into an air conditioned room, had blood taken to run tests and eventually had a drip stuck into his hand with quinine, painkillers, vitamins, antibiotics etc.

After 2 nights in hospital he was allowed to leave, but had to continue taking quinine tablets for some days. Still feeling quite weak the next few days we took it easy to get down to Yaounde. Anne and Reinier hopped on a bus to N’Gaoundere where they would catch the overnight train to Yaounde. We met them there for some lunch and waved them goodbye, before carrying on another 30km’s to stay at a very nice place called Ranch De N’Gaoundaba. The next day’s drive was really beautiful through the rain forest, it was just getting denser and denser. We stayed overnight at Hotel Montagnia in Bertoua, and carried on early next morning to Yaounde. The only place you can camp in this city seems to be the Presbyterian Mission (N03°52.770, E011°31.344), which is a bit unfortunate because it’s run by a witch and her family and they lock the bathrooms in the evening which can cause certain issues, you can imagine. Nonetheless we could camp in their large garden which was away from all the traffic and noise of the city. The next day we thought we would get up early to do some visa shopping at the Gabonese embassy and the DRC embassy. Unfortunately it was Assumption that day and everything was closed, so we spent the weekend with Anne and Reinier and went to the restaurants in town to eat pizza’s, pasta, Indian, Chinese... yumm!

At this point Anne and Reinier had decided to fly back to The Netherlands to let the leg heal and continue with the trip once it was all ok again. A bit sad to leave Africa like this but happy to definitely come back on better terms, they decided to leave their bikes in storage for the coming months and pick them up a few months later.

Come Monday and we decided to attempt another shopping excursion at the embassies. ‘No problem no problem, pay a little extra and it will be done express for you’ – great lets do that so we can hit the road again! For DRC it was easy but the Gabonese were at this moment of our trip the rudest and most useless we had ever encountered, little did we know it could get worse! We wanted to pick up our passports in the afternoon but unfortunately the lady who stamps the visas was not there, she would be back later. When later? Just later, you just have to wait like everyone else. We waited for 3 hours out on the street with everyone else until we got fed up and decided to come back the next day. We came back the next morning only to be told the same thing again. We waited for a few hours again, got fed up so went to have some lunch and do some emailing while we were waiting. By the time we got back to the embassy our fellow visa appliers where not on the street anymore so we thought something must have happened. We walked in and were given our passports back by the gardener. Very happy but oh so fed up with their politics we went back to the mission and decided to leave Yaounde the next morning.

Embassies and Borders

2008-09-03T12:53:00.002+02:00

Current location:Matadi, DRC

This is only a quick note to update everyone on what is going on. We will provide full diary and photo updates once we get to Namibia in a week or so.

We've been here in Matadi for the last couple of days waiting for an Angolan transit visa, seems that the saga for overlanders getting an Angolan visa continues, we have hopefully been rescued by the hotel director where we are staying, he happens to know the Angolan Consul here. So later today we may get our visas. For all other travellers coming through here they will issue it but it may take some time. Abuja seems to be the only place issuing tourist visas, we will only get a transit visa for 5 days. Since we left Yaoundé, after having discussions with embassies there, we had a quick no stop dash straight to Brazzaville. We attempted the Angolan embassy in Brazza, but gave up when the owner of Hippocampe told us they have only issued 2 visas in 4 years. The ferry/border crossing between Brazzaville and Kinshasa was the most nerve racking experience we have had so far, we managed to get through after 8 hours of discussions and negotiations, with the aid of fixers and other travellers that we met in Brazza.

After spending most of Monday discussing at the Consulate, we were exhausted and annoyed at their rudeness and inefficiency, its incredible here, we decided to stay at a nice hotel for the night to calm our nerves. We went back yesterday as instructed hopeing to get the visas, only to be told to come back tomorrow, without any reason. They refused to give us our passports back so we were also unable to leave Matadi. This morning, before going back to the Consulate, we spoke with the hotel director who was nice to call his friend and we will go back this afternoon again and should hopefully get the visas. He said that since this is not our fault we can stay at the hotel one more night for free, including lunch/dinner/drinks. What a sweety! He had done his hotel school apprenticeship in Zurich at the Carlton and the Old Inn -

Wish us luck and hopefully we can get back on the road again tomorrow morning!

Nigeria

2008-08-20T19:14:00.001+02:00

Location: Yaoundé, Cameroun

20th July – 1st August

Nigeria, Nigeria where to start, well everyone has seen the news and read the papers, the horrors of this fearsome country full of thieves, kidnappers and other evildoers waiting for any white man to venture into the unknown so they can do him harm. Well how wrong the media is. Just because one part of a country has a bad reputation doesn’t make the whole place terrible. On the contrary Nigeria and Nigerians are great.

Arriving at the Nigerian border buildings, we quickly went about the business of trying to get some stamps in various documents, having been warned about Nigerian officials being corrupt etc etc... We were a little apprehensive but to our astonishment they were friendly and didn’t even request a bribe. We changed a few dollars at the worst exchange rate ever just so we had some local currency.

Once we left the border officials the road deteriorated to a slow crawl with some very big puddles every few KMs, much to our amusement our biking companions occasionally had to go straight through and got a tad wet.

We didn’t make it very far, and we nervously started looking for a bush camp having been warned by previous traveller’s websites not to bush camp, we were rather surprised that once we set up camp a happy group of farmers approached us with their kids and had a great conversation in some unknown language. We offered them our usual stash of promotion V6 sponsored by our dear Anina in exchange for some photos of the beautiful forest dwellers. The next morning we set out at a lightning pace of about 10KM/H. After a few hours of driving Louise and I got that strange feeling in our feet like the suspension was broken again after a quick check; sure enough the Malian weld was no longer holding. Quick decisions were made and the next village with a welder would be fixing the car. We pulled up at Kaiama at about 3.30 and set about looking for a mechanic or welder. We found one that felt like it was bang smack in the middle of the market. Since he was only a welder, Reinier and I pulled apart the car while the girls stood guard over the gear as we were surrounded by 50 odd curious kids and men. For the next 3 or 4 hours under the careful instructions of Reinier the welder constructed a plate that was fitted above the existing suspension area to strengthen the whole thing. As we were putting the suspension back in a big storm started to brew, within minutes a torrential downpour soaked us to the bone. With the car back together we asked our welder friend if there was a hotel in town. Sure enough there was and we had a night out of the rain in some cheap rooms.

The following day we headed in the direction of Abuja where we bush camped one night before arriving at our intended destination, Abuja. Now this is such an un-African city. It has been planned from the start and is only 30 odd years old, it’s what Nigeria’s oil money has paid for. We stayed at the Sheraton (N09°03.791, E007°29.136) for a few nights for free, apparently the manager is South African and he allows overlanders to camp in the back parking lot for free, though who knows if that is true. We met 2 Dutch couples travelling north and exchanged info on the roads ahead. Louise and I are really starting to wonder if only Dutch people travel overland. Maybe Holland is just too small to host a large population of orange lovers? While in Abuja we attempted to get an Angolan visa, that was a no go unless we wanted to wait a few weeks, so we headed over to the Zambian embassy to get one of their visas, we think we can use this to circumvent the “you don’t have a visa for onward travel” situation at the DRC (Zaire) border. The embassy couldn’t issue us a visa but provided us with a letter stating that our visas will be available at the border when we drive there. Once we got that in our hot little hands we were quick to decide it was time to get out of Abuja. Though Reinier delayed that by a few days with a mild dose of malaria.

After some extra days of R&R at the Abuja Sheraton we bid farewell to a large group of Dutchies and set out towards the northern border of Cameroon. Our first night was a bush camp somewhere just before Jos (just after Akwanga: N09°09.808, E008°25.321), the next one being after Jos 40 km’s before Bauchi (N10°12.738, Eoo9°31.868).

The latter bushcamp will forever be in our memories as we were enjoying a pleasant dinner in the bush Louise started to make a strange quiet but somewhat screaming noise and in a flash jumped out of her seat and hid behind Reinier. Suddenly everyone noticed what had caused her to freak out – a huge bug about 15cm long had crawled up on her chair and was taking a nice break on the arm rest! Everybody started to scream! What the hell was it!? It was massive and had pincers, so naturally nobody wanted to touch it. We all huddled together with our eyes focused on the monster while Milan found a big stick and played baseball with it. We ate our dinner as quick as possible so we could hurry into our safe tents when Milan felt something on his foot. He jolted up from his chair and screamed, everyone followed in unison of course. This time Anne decided to play a bit of golf with the bug until it was far far away from us. Such a monster bug – horrible.

That morning before leaving while going through the usual check the car business, I noticed a new crack in the suspension, but this time on the other side, not only was that cracked but a bolt on the rear suspension had sheared off. Once again it was time to find a welder. Luckily enough we quickly found an excellent welder on the outskirts of Bauchi, after quickly removing the suspension, as you can imagine we are quite good at it now, and setting the welder to work, I was taken into town by the owner of the welding shop to find a bolt to replace the broken one for the rear suspension. We have now removed the extra shock in the front suspension as we fear it may be the cause of the cracked chassis. It may not be long before the rear ones get removed as I am getting sick and tired of doing up the bolts.

Suspension fixed again we headed to Yankari National Park, Nigeria’s premier tourist destination. We spent a night in the car park, and were disappointed that we had to pay to camp there. They do have lovely crystal clear warm springs that made up for the lack of other facilities. Valid note however, the place has a lot of baboons and they like to climb on Landrover’s early in the morning peering into the tent. Another valid note, baboons don’t like bright lights in their faces, which is when a Maglite comes in handy, it can also be used to smack them in the face if they peer through the mosquito net of the tent.

The next day we were still heading in a north-west direction, the roads up until here had been very good, we decided to turn of the main road at Dumboa and take the shortest route to the border. It was yet another one of these famous, once was tarred now mainly potholed African roads. We slowly plodded along until it was getting a little late and decided it was time to look for camp. The bikes sent me out first and within 100 yards I had left the road heading for some trees off in the distance, the next thing you know we are stuck in the mud up to the chassis nearly instantly. Time to finally use that winch on the front of the car, hard ground is only about 5 metres away. It turned out to be the slowest 5 metres Edmund has ever done taking about 3 hours. The first 4 metres were done within about 20 minutes of winching and we got the front wheels on hard ground. This is when we realised the winch had wrapped the cable around the wrong side of itself and continuing to use it would mean no more winch. We started to dig and this was the heaviest thickest mud any of us had ever seen, after about 2 and a half hours and in pitch black we finally got Edmund out of his hole.

The following day, we got up extra early to fix the winch, a successful endeavour. The bad roads continued and just a few kilometres down the road from the mud fiasco from the day before was potentially an even worse one. The road was washed away and the only way was going straight through mud that looked just like the stuff from the night before. Expecting the worst I reluctantly headed for what looked like the best way through, this time being prepared made it a lot easier and even though I misjudged the track and drove over a large tree, Edmund passed triumphantly, lifting everyone’s spirits. We ended up walking the bikes across. As the day progressed the roads got progressively worse all the way to the border, having to cross a dry river bed just before getting to the Cameroonian border post. While we were taking care of official business the dry river bed became rather wet as water started thundering down from the hills.

Now in Cameroon the road got considerably better it was a reasonably good graded track but we ended up passing more and more water passages, either having to drive through rivers or very long puddles, the final one was the deepest, longest and had the strongest current, the bikes were walked across by Anna and locals while Reinier chickened out and sat on Edmund’s roof in his boxers and a singlet. We slowly plodded across the river having to constantly steer up river as the current tried to push us downstream. We ended the day driving around Mora at about 8 in the evening looking for accommodation. The 1st of August definitely marks the day of the trickiest roads so far having had to navigate sand, mud, potholes, rivers and swamps.

Togo and Benin

2008-08-20T19:06:00.003+02:00

Current location:Yaoundé, Cameroun

10th – 20th July

It seems that the last entry for Ghana tempted fate. We were set to cross the border into Togo on the 9th but due to ‘the machine’ at the Nigerian embassy being broken somehow our visa pickup was delayed by a few hours and we left Accra later than expected on the 9th of July. We had a great plan to stay at a lovely beach resort by Ada which involved the last stretch of road being a sandy beach. Milan was confident enough to drive through on the beach, ‘we’ve driven through worse sand than this – it will be a piece of cake!’. Sure enough we only managed a few metres on the beach and then we were stuck deep in the sand and Edmund wouldn’t budge. It seems the whole village came to us as within a few minutes we were surrounded by big eyed little kids and local fishermen, all the kids telling us they would help push and we would be out in no time. Louise took a few photos of the incident but they weren’t very happy about that as one woman came up to her, stared at her while saying something over and over again, I think it was a curse..... A few men helped us dig and we were out after 2 hours just before it got dark. Unwilling to continue to the beach resort we drove back to the solid ground and decided to stay in the hotel for USD 80, which was Louise’s MasterCard moment and it was well worth it after all that drama.

Next morning we crossed the border into Togo and arrived at Chez Alice in Lome (N06°10.083, E001°20.425) just as the Dutch bikers Anne and Reinier were packing up to leave. We persuaded them to stay one more night so we could catch up while drinking a few beers with Matt the truck driver who we knew was buying Big Milly’s in Ghana and would have useful information for our next stretch. Quoting Matt on Nigeria as he said it too many times after a few Castel’s: ‘It’s just different’ and ‘it’s f’ing cold in Nigeria’. He knew some of the truck drivers who Milan had met on his last trip 15 years ago and told us we could find Pineapple Doug at Karen’s Camp in Nairobi, Kenya.

We left Togo for the Benin border on the 12th only to be surprised that the border was 20 km’s before the GPS marking which we would have easily driven past if we had not asked – the border is here N06°14.413, E001°37.731. We drove along the coast until we found Auberge de Grand Popo (N06°16.766, E001°49.776) which Milan has such fond memories of. It was indeed a lovely spot right on the beach. The first night was so windy that we decided to try our ground tent the next night, which was absolutely brilliant. Thanks to all our friends back home for giving us this magnificent little house! Anne and Reinier also showed up at the beach and we teamed up the next day in Edmund on the hunt for the Congolese visa in Cotonou. Matt had given us some vague directions on how to find it but after driving around in the rain for a few hours asking every zemi-john (moto-taxi) where the embassy was and nobody knew or pointed to the other side of the river, we thought that perhaps he had given us wrong information in his drunken state that one evening. After 6 hours driving around the flooded, muddy, polluted streets of the city we finally found the embassy just in time to get our visas on the spot (N06°22.093, E002°29.601 – CFA 20’000) – yippie!

With our visas in our passports we headed north to Abomey where we bumped into Ellen and Erik and had a nice dinner with the 6 of us at Chez Monique. We checked out the Musée Historique d’Abomey which gives you a good insight into the gory history of the Dahomey kings and the Amazon warriors where we witnessed one throne which stands on top of 4 skulls of the kings enemies. Seeing all we wanted to see in the town we carried on with Anne and Reinier, as we were anyway going in the same direction, heading north towards the border town of Nikki. Leaving Abomey was a little trickier than we had anticipated as Anne’s bike would not start. Finally it did and we were on the road.

We pulled off the road just after Dassa in a place called Tchachegou and asked a lady if we could camp further up the little road. Of course we could and we would sleep beautifully! We drove first up the hill trying to find a suitable spot where Edmund could sleep, only to notice that the bikes were not following us. We turned back and Anne’s bike would not start again. We decided to camp there and when we turned around to park a little further towards the hills, Milan reversed Edmund into a big hole in the ground. It was the end of the day for the locals that had been chipping rocks into small pieces, so of course 4 whities trying to get a heavy vehicle out of a hole must have been an amusing sight for them. Naturally they all stayed and looked and helped us and after much laughter we were out and we set up camp. The locals were still really curious and surrounded us for some hours I’m sure. Anne and Reinier figured out that the air filter was blocked on the bike and that was what was causing the problem. The funny lady we had spoken to before arrived and we had a great laugh with her, Adele – we think she was the village loon. The rain came down and we sat under the awning, or as Reinier calls it – the yawning, until late playing cards. At midnight Anne and Reinier sang Happy Birthday to Milan from their tent which was really nice! Early next morning we were awoken by the same local people chatting and laughing at us, they must think us whities are really strange.

We left our special lady Adele and the lovely people of Tchachegou and headed for Parakou where we found a lovely bushcamp (N09°37.920, E002°39.587) for Milan’s birthday, where he made a really nice sponge and pineapple cake in the Dutch Oven!

The next morning we wanted to tackle the border into Nigeria at Nikki, which we found from turning off at N’Dali at N09°51.783, E002°43.129. Customs at Nikki: N09°55.651, E003°12.558. Police post at Tchikandou: N09°50.087, E003°21.613.We were warmly welcomed by the customs officials in Nigeria and we entered the country on a very positive note, plus it was English again!

Cameroun: the north

2008-08-15T18:03:00.006+02:00

Current Location: Yaoundé, Cameroun

We entered Cameroun at the very north at a small border town called Kerawa, it was getting late so we hunted around for customs, only to find out that they couldn`t stamp the carnet. So we headed off towards Mora in the dark, after crossing a few overflowing rivers we found Mora and what seemed to be the the only hotel in town. A few hours after we arrived, two ford fiestas pulled up full to the brim with crap and 5 brits. To our surprise they were part of the Africa Rally Challenge and had made it to the north of Cameroun in 15 days from London, www.battlestarafrica.org is their website.

After visiting the Sunday Market in Mora, on Monday we headed to Waza national park, where we were greeted by a beautiful landscape, giraffes, jackles, topis and other antelopey type things. We spent the night in the camp at the gate in the rain. The following day involved a short drive and a rather long hunt for a bush camp in the very beautiful hilly area just south of Maroua. The next day we headed for Garoua, read the next post to find out all about this hell hole.

By Milan

A change in Yaoundé

2008-08-15T17:30:00.000+02:00

Hi All,

Well it`s about time we made it a little easier to update our page, we hope to bring you the same content but in a slightly faster manner. It takes too long to produce the diary entries and with the help of blogger it will be alot simpler to produce more regular updates. Plus you get to leave us comments I think...

Anyway back to what is going on, Louise has a pain in her back so is lying in the rooftent, I have just recovered from my second round of Malaria, this time I ended up in hospital as my fever remained steady for over 2 days. We have been travelling with a couple of dutch bikers since we left Benin, and Anna has broken her leg and they will be heading home on Monday. We have had the suspension area of the car welded a couple more times in Nigeria. Rainier got malaria in Abuja. As you may tell by what I am writing we have had a spot of bad luck over the last few weeks, well you`re right and to top it all off I am using a stupid french keyboard.

We headed to the DRC embassy today to get a visa but oh no, it was closed, headed to the Gabon one and got the same reply, "we are closed". Personally I hate Africa today and could happily go home.

By Milan