Africa Overland!

After 5 weeks in Tanga and a couple days in Zanzibar, I met my group of 7 other travelers and an Aussie driver to begin the 39-day overland journey from Dar es Salaam to Cape Town, South Africa. Over the course of the next 5 weeks, I’ll go through Southern Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia and the west coast of South Africa in a big truck designed just for these kinds of trips. I originally wanted to travel from Cairo, Egypt to the southern cape of South Africa on my own, but without a travel companion and ample time I knew it simply wouldn’t be possible right now. This tour will go through most of the major attractions in each country, but still allows for a bit of freedom to choose what activities you’ll do and how you spend your time in each place. To save a bit of money we camp in tents and cook our own food, taking turns preparing meals and cleaning up. We buy our own groceries at local markets and fend for ourselves for lunch.


I arrived at Mikadi Beach camp just south of Dar es Salaam a little ealier than I was supposed to – there was a bit of confusion about the actual start date for the tour and our date of departure to start driving southwards. I ended up with an extra day on the beach, but with a breezy little Banda right on the white sand beach, I didn’t have any problems with kicking back for an extra day with COLD beer. I had a couple totally lazy days – reading, updating my journal, neglecting my blog, wading out into the 30 degree sea water at high tide, and lounging around in the sun drinking Stoney Tangawizi sodas and the odd Kilimanjaro beer.

I met my tour group after a day of solitude and was so happy to hear that there would only be 8 of us in the group for most of the trip – lots of space in the truck and not too many to cook for. There are 3 guys and 5 girls, 6 from the UK, one American and myself. We are all in our 20’s and here for many of the same reasons, so we’ve been getting along really well. My biggest worry about this kind of organized tour was that I’d be on a party bus full of gap year kids looking to drink for 5 weeks straight and gaze at lions in a hungover state from the top of our truck. Thankfully that is totally not the case! We’re on the road now and I’m about 6 days into the tour, so I’m starting to get the hang of camping every night, cooking with a small charcoal stove and waking up early every few days for a long drive to the next spot. I’m seeing things from a very touristy perspective and not interacting so much with the locals as I was in Tanga, but I’m having a great time so far. More stories to come as the journey continues....