About Our Trip

After 11 years of living in South Africa, we’ve decided to return to Canada. Honestly, we’re more than a little sad to be leaving what has become our home in stunning Cape Town, as well as leaving a whole host of amazing friends. We have come to really love South Africa and we will miss it and everyone a great deal. We have sold our house, are selling our cars, packing up our stuff and heading to a new North American life with our three distinctly South African boys… who have not yet even seen snow.

But before we go, we’re heading out into Sub-Saharan Africa on what we hope will be an epic, old school safari/adventure – a sort of last hurrah exploring some bits we haven’t been to and to leave the kids with a lasting impression of the amazing continent on which they were born. We have sold the house, have no mortgage or property taxes to pay, have no jobs to show up to at 9 am — so what the hey! Our kids are old enough, but not too old, and we’re probably never going to get a chance to do something like this, of this duration anyway, with them again.

We have no real idea what we’re doing and only a slightly better idea of where we are going (in the most general terms). We’re camping, with a view to experiencing the real, raw Africa, for somewhere between 3 and 6 months and have an idea that we might like to go as far north as Uganda to see mountain gorillas. Aside from some very real budgetary constraints, we want to experience African wildlife, vistas, places and people, not the prepackaged, luxury Four Seasons version.

The trip will take us from our home in Cape Town, up into the Northern Cape, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho, and coastal South Africa – if we can make it that far!

Many of the places we will be staying in will not have electricity or even running water. In some parts, we will simply camp wherever we want; pull over off to the side of the “road” and camp. In other places, we will be camping in established camps that have swimming pools, electricity, drinking water, shops and all the modern conveniences – but we will still be camping.

Given our personal Western perspective on things (and our somewhat sheltered Constantia existences – hardly real Africa), it’s hard to know how much of a crazy adventure this will really be – or whether at the end we will wonder what we made so much fuss about. Many of the places we are going to are apparently not all that stereotypically “African” in that there’s a lot more there in terms of mod-cons, shopping, facilities etc. than one might expect. Certainly most of our South African friends don’t seem all that concerned for us. Others, of course, think we are totally mad.

Here’s what we know:

• We’re going during the rainy, hot season. We should expect temperatures of 40C+ and swamped/muddy roads in some places. We’ve been told to stay away from most of Zambia as the roads essentially turn to impassible mud swamps.
• Almost everywhere we go will be malarial during the rainy season so we will all need to be on malaria prophylactics (tee hee).
• The roads will be varied: some really good tarred highways and many really bad corrugated gravel roads, riven with potholes, or awash with mud.
• Security is going to be a bit of a concern in some countries – but having lived in South Africa for 11 years now, I’ve learned that perceived threats can be overstated.

Here are the rules we’ve set ourselves:

• Camping only (unless in an emergency).
• No driving more than 8 hours in a day.
• Though we have a capable offroad vehicle, we are going to try to stay away from offroad tracks when we can.
• After a long drive, stay somewhere for at least 2-3 days.
• No night driving as we don’t want to hit or be hit by wildlife.
• No videogames for the kids (but they will have talking books, iPods and a DVD player in the car).
• Keep restaurants to a complete minimum: maybe once a week.
• Travel lightly – we all have to fit in one SUV out of which we will live for 3-6 months.
• Be safe – only stay in safe places and don’t take silly risks.

Fiona is a bit of an intrepid explorer, having traveled throughout a lot of Africa with film crews making wildlife documentaries. She’s just completed an ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania – so she’s earned her stripes. The rest of us are a lot less accomplished, with only weekend camping trips to the Cederberg in the Western Cape to our recent credit. I am digging deep to remember the stuff I didn’t listen to hard enough during my Lakefield outdoor education classes.

We’ve spent a lot of money on our vehicle and enhancing/customizing it for the trip. Fortunately, we already have someone interested in buying the vehicle from us when we return – hopefully the net cost won’t be too much. Our daily food and camp/accommodation budget is R350-ish (C$50) on average – living large! Our total fuel budget is R27,000 (C$4,000) as we’re taking a lot of stuff and driving approximately 19,000 kms in a very uneconomical vehicle (15l/100km fuel economy). Our visas and spontaneous bribes budget is US$3000 (only US dollars will do). Our vehicle repairs/tires budget is C$2000. Our unexpected, sh*t happens budget is totally unknown.

We will be updating this blog as regularly as we can as we travel (and before we leave), mostly because the majority that we’ve told about the trip has responded with something like: “Wow! Awesome! I hope you are going to blog it!”. So here’s the blog… we hope you enjoy it.