Africa 2012

There are hundreds of excuses to postpone a dream like overland travelling, luckily a thousand reasons to follow your dream. You just have to listen to those. August 2012 was for us the moment to start our trip.

Africa is a continent where seasons are key to take into account. Therefore we decided to ship George, our car, to Cape Town and start our journey. The trip started with the amazing South African desert flowers and we travelled at the end of the dry season in most countries, the best moment to see wildlife. Great example is our visit to the Busanga Planes, North Kafue NP, in Zambia, where we were one of the last visitors of the season. In a few weeks/months the water would be one meter high. Given guests were gone and most of the staff already left we were allowed to camp in the parking lot of a safari lodge for free. Normal rate for the lodge was 700 dollars per person per night, 3 nights minimum stay.

George took quite a beating in Africa and we had multiple repairs to perform. Things that got broken or provided issues are poor braking, broken shock absorbers, loose front axle 200km from civilization, timing belt issues (4 times?), gearbox problems and rattling things (read everything). Yet somehow we managed to travel half of Africa without any flat tire! In the end George became unreliable and would require major repairs. Parts were not at hand, given elections safety became a concern and at that point in time we decided to end our journey in Marsabit.

Below you can find a short video of our trip.