April 28, Cape Town
This is just a quick post to let you, my gentle readers, know what our plans are, and what we've been up to since leaving Livingstone 4 weeks ago.
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| Looking pleased and relieved to have bought Stanley |
Terri and I flew down from Livingstone to Cape Town on Wednesday, March 30th, determined to buy an overlanding vehicle for our upcoming Africa adventure. We stayed in a rather ratty little backpackers located on the loudest intersection in the city for the first 4 nights, but our search for vehicles was frustrating. We couldn't find anyone selling a complete setup like we wanted (a pickup truck, or "bakkie" as it's called here, with a camper insert in the back). Trying to buy the truck and the camper separately looked expensive, with
Alu-Cab offering us a new, well-engineered but cramped camper (Terri called it a man-cave for its dark, low interior) for 190.000 rand (about US$ 12.500) without a vehicle underneath it. We had a line on 2012 HiLux pickup trucks for about the same price. Then we would need to buy lots of extra kit to make the camper liveable and fully functional. It all seemed more expensive than we wanted, and more hassle.
We took a bit of time to look around Cape Town on a sunny Saturday afternoon, enjoying the pretty Waterfront with its markets and good food, and climbed Table Mountain on Sunday, but we mostly kept our noses to the grindstone, going to government offices futilely looking for a Traffic Registry Number (they weren't willing to give one to non-resident foreigners), visiting dozens of car dealers, spending time on the internet, and all in vain. By the evening of Monday, April 4th, we were discouraged, and at a low ebb in our enthusiasm. The only bright spot was that we had moved into a much nicer and cheaper place to stay, an AirBnB house in funky gentrifying Woodstock. At that exact moment, my former colleague Charlene sent me a link to the
Africa 4x4 Cafe website and on there we saw the perfect vehicle for us, a 2002 Mitsubishi Colt club cab pickup truck with a
Blinkgat camper in the back, freshly returned from a big trip as far north as Tanzania under the ownership of another Canadian. The ad dated from early February, and we were worried that the vehicle would have been sold long ago. Without much hope, we sent off an e-mail and Terri went to bed. Before turning in myself, I checked my e-mail one more time and found an e-mail from Etienne, the owner. The vehicle was still for sale and he was very keen to get it off his hands, as he had had to return to Canada without having sold it. There were a couple of people interested in it but they weren't going to look at the vehicle for another week or so.
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| Living out of Stanley |
In the morning I told Terri that the car was available but was in Johannesburg, stored in a garage. Within an hour, we had bought air tickets to Johannesburg for the next day, found a place to stay, rented a car and were upbeat and nervous. On Wednesday, April 6th we were on a cheap flight to Johannesburg and, after a long delay at the car rental desk, took off in our US$20 a day rental car, listening to our GPS and getting lost. We headed straight to the garage and looked at the vehicle. It seemed like what we wanted, and after a day of nervous thought and trans-Atlantic WhatsApp negotiation with Etienne we settled on a price (a bit under US$10,000) and started the process of bank transfers to pay for it. By Friday night we had paid the purchase price, started the process of getting our Traffic Registry Numbers (via an "agent" who presumably greased a few palms at the government office), gone through the huge quantity of camping, cooking, cleaning, repair and electrical equipment that came with the camper and settled on a plan. We would borrow the car for a few days to drive it around and test out how we liked living out of the camper so that we would know what (if anything) we needed to buy. Then we would return the vehicle to Johannesburg so that the paperwork of changing ownership, along with a few repairs (oil change, oil and air filter change and a new leaf spring for the back axle) could get done while Terri and I went to NZ and Switzerland respectively for brief business-oriented trips. Then, when we returned, we would pick up our newly optimized vehicle and head for Kruger National Park to start exploring the continent. Unfortunately, our tickets to NZ and Europe, already bought, were leaving from Cape Town and we were now in Johannesburg, requiring another cheap-o return air ticket to Cape Town on the delightfully named
Mango Air.
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| Meeting Erin Conway-Smith in Johannesburg |
Once we had our plan, everything happened relatively quickly. We spent the weekend enjoying our laid-back backpacker joint (The Birches, in Linden) and visiting an old friend of mine (Angelo) from long-ago grad school days, along with a fellow Thunder Bay-ite,
Erin Conway Smith, who is now a correspondent for the Economist based in Johannesburg. We had interesting discussions about the ongoing political scandals in South Africa and some of the other countries of the continent that Erin knows. In the afternoons we went running and cycling in the Johannesburg Botanical Gardens and shopped for groceries.
From Monday afternoon to Thursday morning of that week we took our new vehicle, freshly renamed Stanley (short for Henry Morton Stanley ; Etienne had called the vehicle Zulu) for a three-night camping trip. We drove northwest to the Magaliesberg, to
Sleepy River Caravan Park, where we spent two idyllic nights watching birds, testing out our gear, eating well and enjoying the star-spangled sky. The only problem we found was that our gas burners weren't working well, presumably getting gunked up by dust; either we need a new stove or a pressurized air source to blow out the gas pipes. The bed was comfortable, the working space inside the camper was ample, and the electrical system, with a fridge/freezer, storage batteries and a solar panel, worked idyllically. The only downer was the horrible traffic we encountered in Pretoria when we went to pick up our
Wild Card, the amazingly good deal on South African National Parks where for US$100 each we get unlimited access to all the parks in South Africa (although we still have to pay for accommodation).
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| Stanley at Magalies Sleepy River |
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| Robert Broom and our tour guide at Sterkfontein |
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| Krugersdorp Game Reserve |
It was again an idyllic spot to camp, and whetted our appetites for further adventures. Thursday morning we drove back into Johannesburg, left the vehicle at the garage, got a lift to the airport and flew back to Cape Town. Our AirBnB hosts, the irrepressible duo of Leonie and Shanaaz, surprised us by picking us up at the airport. The next day Terri flew off to Auckland, while I stayed one more day before flying to Switzerland.
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| My mom, sisters and I gaping at the wonders of the universe |
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| Pub quiz with my friend Avery |
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| Hugh playing quizmaster |
My ten-day jaunt to my old haunts in Switzerland was fun, with lots of mountain biking, skiing, socializing, wine, abortive ski tours, indoor climbing, reunions with old friends and colleagues and even a Leysin Pub Quiz.
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| My sister Audie mountain biking above Sierre |
My court hearing (I'm in a dispute with my former employers) went well, but there was no immediate verdict, leaving me in suspense for a few more months. And then, suddenly, I was back here in Cape Town, trying (so far unsuccessfully) to arrange vehicle insurance and buying
a fancy GPS and
map set for our journey. Terri arrives tomorrow and we fly to Johannesburg on Saturday to pick up Stanley, buy some groceries and hit the road to Kruger National Park for a 6-day trip.
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| Me riding the El Dorado trail near Sierre |
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| Saakje |
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| Skiing terrible snow in the fog |
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| Taking our skis for a walk |
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| Me showing my poor climbing skills |
And then? Well, the plan until today was to drive from Kruger straight into Mozambique, drive north along the coast as far north as the Quirimbas Archipelago, then double south and west into Malawi. From Malawi we plan to do a huge sweep through the outer reaches of Zambia, down into Zimbabwe and then a big north-then-south wave through Botswana and Namibia before finally returning to South Africa by mid-October, in time for another side trip to Europe to do some tour guiding. After returning from this in late October, we might head to Madagascar for a couple of months before picking up Stanley from a secure parking spot and heading north. We'd like to get as far north as Sudan before cutting across Chad into West Africa; this is the toughest part of the trip, as it's mostly regarded as being impossible to cross the Sudan-Chad border given current conditions in Darfur. However with South Sudan suddenly reverting to peace, maybe a new route possibility will open up from South Sudan into Chad. If we get into Chad, then we can drive west through the Sahel to Mauretania and then double back east along the coast before making a run through the horrible roads, expensive countries and unpleasant border crossings from Nigeria south to Angola. The last leg would be driving back south from Angola through Namibia back into South Africa where we would try to sell the camper again.
We've created
Instagram,
Twitter and
Facebook accounts for this trip, along with
a Google Map, so I hope that at least one of these channels of digital communication helps you follow our progress over the coming months. We're pretty excited, and I hope we manage to convey that excitement to you, gentle readers. Stay tuned!!!!
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| Ostrich at Krugersdorp |
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