We stared at the menu with skepticism. A pile of limp, pale, thick-cut fries was piled in the corner of a glass-doored display cabinet. On another wooden shelf was some kind of withered, skeletal fish. Both options looked like they’d been waiting for quite a while for a brave customer.
What are the roads like in Zambia? The short answer – shocking. The potholes are out of this world. They come in all shapes and sizes – miniature, jagged edged pockmarks that look like the lunar surface; road-width trenches that sneak up on you; corrugated fill-in jobs. Journeys in Zambia often take twice as long … More Does Zambia Have The World’s Worst Potholes?
Zambia was zooming past at great speed as we crossed it’s great arterial highway. Golden brown scrubland, dry skeletal trees, yellow-tinged earth, low rolling hills. Small villages clustered by the highway, clusters of tiny thatch huts with people and livestock standing around, sweeping leaves or carrying bales of wood. This truly felt like wild Africa. Meeting local … More Staying Overnight In A Tiny African Village
We arrived in Livingstone just before dusk. The streets basked in the orange glow of the setting sun. This was an exciting time in our Africa road trip – after we drank some gin and tonics and a camped on the shores of the Zambeze – we’d be seeing Victoria Falls.
Stop! Elephants! We missed them at first, and drove straight past. Then we saw the herd in the rear-view mirror. A handful were eating by the side of the highway. Another car pulled up and told us to go back the way we came; and sure enough, a few hundred metres away was the rest of the herd, at least … More Driving on a highway with a herd of elephants
Our headlights were illuminating the tall, wooden, arched gate. ‘Welcome to Chobe national park’. Through those gates were elephants. Further beyond that was the border to Zambia. But we were in a pickle; we were denied access and could go no further.
We had grand ambitions for Botswana. The goal was a drive from the Namibian border to the town of Maun (pronounced something like Mau-oon), gateway to the magnificent Okavango Delta wetlands area. It was a huge distance which would cover almost the entire country.
Southern Namibia was so vast and empty, it felt like we were driving across the moon. The arrow-straight gravel highway was so long, and so straight, it touched the horizon with a pinprick. The vast pastel sky seemed to be about a hundred times larger than usual. We felt extra excited now; Cape Town was well behind us, and … More Camping in the deserts of Namibia
Everything was dark when we got up in Cape Town. The cloudy night sky was smudged with black ink. Our car was waiting in the driveway, packed and ready to go. It had been raining last night, and the clean white paint was beaded with glistening droplets of water. We didn’t feel quite so fresh. It was well before dawn, earlier than we were used to, but we were … More The Unofficial Road Rules of Africa – a Driver’s Guide
I did a road trip through 7 African countries by 4×4, with two travel buddies. It was an epic adventure – after more than five weeks on the road, we’d camped in lion territory, fixed flat tyres and run out of fuel, forded rushing rivers, and drove over sand dunes. And it required a lot … More Preparing for a road trip in Africa
StickyMangoRice 