It hadn’t even dawned on us until a fellow traveler and new friend asked how long we had been traveling that we realized we have been living on the road for one year. One whole year! An entire year of exploring Southern Africa, making new friends, seeing unbelievable sights and exotic animals. Also, one full year of almost always washing our laundry by hand, living in campgrounds, living in the dust or rain or other elements, and having exotic, and not-so exotic, animals come a little too close for comfort. Overall, the last year has been an awesome experience which we have loved. That said, we have also had our moments, or days, we hope not to repeat. Below, both Jen and I answer a few questions we thought of and some questions we’ve been asked to give you a glimpse into the last year of us touring through Africa.
What was the best day so far?
Jen: We had just gotten the trailer and had gotten across the border into Namibia on the day our visa for South Africa expired. Our first camp in Namibia was in the Fish River Canyon area. We had food, but no cooking fuel. Just boxes that had been shipped over in the Jeep with everything we thought we would need, why buy it if we already owned it? We spent the day at our campsite emptying boxes and setting up our ‘home’ for the next few years. I loved this day! We had already been in Africa for 3 months, but finally getting our vehicle, trailer and being on the road and getting things into place felt like the actual start of our adventure.
Jared:The drive north into the Marienfluss Valley in northwest Namibia. We started in a small, remote camp and drove with our friends Paul and Julie, and another family that was headed that direction that wanted to convoy with us for safety. The first 10-15 miles were what I would call technical offroad trail, steep, rocky, and rough. Once we reached Red Drum (yes, that is a real place name, and it is named after a red 50 gallon drum someone left there as a marker) the road turned to shallow sand. After another 5 miles, including driving through a couple of Himba villages, we turned a corner into the amazing and expansive Marienfluss Valley. It was awesome to drive down the valley covered with golden grasses and studded with “islands” of rocky hills and ridges. We ended the day on the Kunene river, looking across to see Angola on the other side. Driving out a few days later was just as magnificent.
What was the worst day so far?
Jared: Probably the day in Johannesburg we heard the clicking noise from our transmission. We had heard this noise before, in America, and it preceded losing 5th gear, and went away when the transmission was fixed. Our hearts sank when we heard that sound, as we knew we would have to take out the transmission and have it looked at. I can fix most things with a little coaching, but getting into the guts of the transmission is over my head. Luckily, our friends Roger and Jenni were letting us stay at their house as long as needed, so we weren’t too put out by it. This did mean changing our plans to stay in South Africa through Christmas before heading north through Mozambique.
Jen: In Mozambique, after 250 miles and 8 hours on some of the worst potholed road I’ve ever seen, we manage to get to the one and only camp for miles and hours. It seemed nice enough, until I got out of the car. I immediately had ants crawling up my feet and biting me. They were everywhere! The sun was setting and it is not safe to drive at night (animals and people walking in the road). It was too late to find anywhere else to camp. After I had a small come apart, we searched the camp area for about 15 minutes to see if we could find somewhere with less ants, as they had begun to crawl up the tires of the Jeep and trailer. We found a small piece of ground that had minimal ants. The grounds keeper was very nice and allowed us to camp on this little stretch, which was not actually a camping spot and built us a fire nearby. I sat at the fire in a plastic chair with my feet not touching the ground, drinking a Gin & tonic, which in this case was what some might call an “attitude adjustment”. Until this day, I couldn’t have told you of “worst day”. They are all pretty awesome!
What has been the biggest surprise of the trip?
Jen: Everyone says Africa is the hardest, when comparing it with other overland world travel. I wan’t really sure what that meant, but tried to prepare myself for “hard”. Thus far, I have not yet found this hard or difficult. I find it an amazing experience of different cultures, beautiful landscapes and intriguing animals. Food is aplenty, and often better and fresher than anything I could have accessed back home in a large city. Granted, we have done our best to avoid the rainy, muddy yuck and since being stuck in the sand have a better idea of what we are capable of when towing the trailer. But as I look back on our year I attribute my success in not viewing this as hard to two things. Firstly, our set up. We have a very capable vehicle with an amazingly comfortable trailer that allows me to cook just about anything. Secondly, growing up camping in the Eastern Oregon desert where dusty tracks, sage brush, rattle snakes, and black widow spiders are what you will find. No toilets, electricity, cell service or other people. You have what you brought with you, including all your water, and if you didn’t bring it you figure out how to do without.
Jared: My biggest surprise has been losing over 40 lbs living on camp food. Even more surprising, I drink more beer here than I ever did at home. I have a couple at the end of the day, sometimes with cheese and crackers, sometimes not. I think a big part of our weight loss is that we eat less, often only a meal and a half during the day. I also eat less at every meal, since we have a limited (though large by the standards of other travelers) pantry and only 50 qts. of fridge space. Jen does a good job of cooking just enough for both of us, only occasionally having leftovers, which keeps me from eating like a high school football player. I also think that the food here is actually food, not food products manufactured with the aid of chemistry. The meat is all grass fed with no antibiotics or other chemicals pumped into it. The produce is whatever will grow, and picked and sold ripe, not picked green and expected to “ripen” in transit to a market. We eat fewer manufactured foods than we did in America, which was pretty little then. I will be interested to see how much I lose by the time this trip is over.
What is your biggest regret of the trip?
Jared: That we have met so few other Americans in our travels. America is a massive country with amazing sights to see and places to experience, but Africa is changing so quickly. I think that a lot of my fellow Americans would benefit from seeing how so many people here live with so little, and yet are so happy. That, and I wish my friends and family could see and experience what we are. It it truly amazing to get to see Africa not as a tourist here only for a couple of weeks, but with more time to sink into it and see just how folks live every day. Hopefully, more Americans will make or take the time to come and experience Africa as we are.
Jen: I know it’s out of my control. But I wish our friends and family had come to visit. Africa is absolutely amazing!
One item you brought and haven’t needed?
Jen: My rubber boots. Though if we experience much more of the rainy season, I might just bust out those puppies.
Jared: Shoes. The only shoes I’ve worn besides flip-flops are my hiking boots. I’m not sure what I thought we’d do that had me bring another couple of pairs of shoes, but they’re just taking up space.
One item you didn’t bring and wish you had?
Jared: A real multi-meter for working on electrical. I have a cheap-o I bought at Harbor Freight a few years ago, and it just doesn’t cut the mustard. I didn’t expect to have much electrical work to do, and I really don’t know much about it, but what little I’ve had to do had me wishing for a better multi-meter.
Jen: A way to keep our lunches cold. There are a few times when we need to have our lunch in the car with us, such as when on a day trip away from the trailer where the fridge is. Most commonly this would be when we are on game drives inside a national park. Other times when we know we will have a full day of driving, and prefer to attract less attention to ourselves by not opening up the kitchen for all the locals to gawk at.
Name your favorite place so far.
Jen: Let’s be clear. I do not have one favorite place, and thus I refuse to answer as such. I will tell you that when out in the bush, an African sky is like no other. And with that comes amazing sunsets. Every time I see one, it takes my breath away.
Jared: While I loved both Namibia and Swaziland as whole countries, my favorite place has been Moremi National Park in Botswana. Moremi is one of the classic parks of Africa, on the Okavango Delta. Here, we had elephant, hippo, and giant porcupine in camp, saw a leopard guarding its lunch, and listened to a lion roar from our bed (he was roughly a mile away). Such a special place I recommend anyone should visit.
What has been the most memorable moment for you?
Jared: In Moremi National Park, Botswana, we had seen an elephant near our trailer after spending the afternoon driving through the park. We watched from a distance until he ambled far enough away we could safely return to camp. We continued to keep an eye on him, but he was moving, away eating jackal berries that fell from the trees. Jen started making dinner and I lit a camp fire. As it got going well, Jen stepped around the trailer to see where he had gone and said “Oh no! He’s coming this way!” She threw a lemon rind at me and jumped in the Jeep. I threw the lemon in the fire, as elephants love citrus and have been known to make a huge, destructive mess going after oranges and lemons in peoples camps. I couldn’t see where he was and thought I had better close the kitchen before he got to camp. As I stepped up to the trailer, he came around the front, not 8 feet from where I stood! The only thing between him and me was our slide out kitchen. He could have reached out with his trunk and touched me, but he didn’t even slow down as he walked by and continued on right in front of the Jeep. I watched his eye look me up and down as he walked by. It was the most exhilarating and terrifying experience of my life. I stood straddling over one of his footprints later, and I could reach out and touch our bed standing over one, and the front bumper of the Jeep standing over another.
Jen: The day I took a polaroid of a Himba woman and her baby and gave her the photo. She stared at it and smiled, then showed it to the rest of the women. Those women then wanted photos of themselves, which I obliged. I don’t think any of them had ever seen a picture of themselves. The look of pure joy on their faces to see pictures of themselves with their babies is a moment I will never forget.
How has the trip changed you?
Jen: Shall we count the ways?
First of all, it has brought to me a better appreciation for my own country. America is not without its problems, let us be very clear about that. But the level of political corruption here is appalling, access to education is not free (except grade school in some cases), and freedom of speech is a dream.
Secondly, it is amazing how little one needs to be happy. Not only do I live with less and am quite happy and satisfied, possibly even ecstatic. But we see people daily, who live in what I would consider squalor and are some of the nicest and happiest people I have ever met. It’s not about the money or the stuff. Its about the people you surround yourself with and how you spend your day. Its about quality, not quantity. It’s about personal interactions, being kind to strangers and lending a helping hand, not about how quickly I can get somewhere.
I think I am also more patient now, I look forward to the unknown and its possibilities, I have become a better and more confident cook and feel as though I understand the world a bit better after being outside my own country for a time.
Jared: I’m not sure it has changed me much, but I do have a couple of new perspectives now. The first is that living with less nets us more living. We have 50 Qts. of fridge space, and don’t have access to a supermarket every day, so we focus on making sure we use what we buy and buy what we can use before it goes bad. We don’t have a TV or even movies on a computer, so we chat more, with each other, with people we meet along the way. It’s nice to really get to know people, without having the TV to escape to rather than deal with them. Our trailer puts us outside a lot, so we really appreciate sunny days, starry nights, shady trees, and scenic vistas. We once stayed 5 nights in a little campsite in the middle of nowhere just for the sunset views over the valley below.
The other perspective is really a better appreciation of what we, as Americans, have in America. Much as the news and politicians will tell us how America isn’t great any more or how bad it is, American life is, for the most part, fantastic. By and large, we can count on other drivers following the rules of the road. When we have a contract with someone, we can count on them meeting it or the courts honoring it. Our politicians are not pocketing billions while the majority of our populations can barely feed themselves and their families. Really, just about everyone does get enough to eat to stay alive. Sure, we have our problems, but racism and health care costs haven’t really changed in decades. I have come to truly appreciate “first world problems” for what they are, complaints about the lack of perfection in our society. Problems we see here are much closer to life or death problems than I have ever experienced in America.
What was the scariest thing you’ve heard go “bump in the night?”
Jared: As much as I would like to tell you about some amazing animal experience in the dark of the night, it has to be the thunder. I don’t know why, but thunder here sounds like it is right on top of you and it seems to circle around you rather than move off into the distance as it does at home. It has even woken me up at night, something that never happened at home. Once over the initial shock, it is fantastic to listen to it rumble seemingly in winding circles. Who would have expected even the thunder to be different here in Africa?
Jen: In Moremi, Botswana sitting around the campfire we began to hear quite a few lions roar. This, by the way is an amazing sound! As the roars sounded to be getting closer, we decided that it might be time to turn in for the night. Maybe an hour or so later, we woke to the sound of something outside the trailer. We thought we could hear it sniffing around, and it sounded big! We laid there quite still until it passed, and then began to speculate as to what animal it could have been… lion? hyena? The next morning we searched the dirt around the trailer for any paw prints. We could not find a singe one! How is that possible?! We could hear it right outside our bed! Later, talking to someone about this experience, they said they knew what it was… a porcupine. As they saunter along, their long quills not only make a noise, but cover up their paw prints.
These are just our personal highlights. The similarities are pure coincidental, we didn’t discuss our answers until after each of had written them. The difficulty we had narrowing down answers to these questions speaks to just how much we are enjoying our trip. The amazing and diverse scenery of Namibia, the unforgettable animal encounters of Botswana, the breathtaking vistas and dormant potential of Zimbabwe, the marvelous Mozambican beaches, the majestic mountains of Lesotho, the vast diversity of options in South Africa, the ingenuity of Swaziland, and the superb laid back atmosphere of Malawi, we have loved it all. So far, our days are like pizza, even when they’re bad, they’re still good. We cannot imagine what the rest of our trip has in store for us.
Throughout the trip, we have met awesome people and made great new friends. We met Paul and Julie in Luderitz, Namibia and bumped into them a handful of times after before deciding we should plan on traveling together. They taught us a lot about how to live on the road, have a plan without making much of a plan, and how to appreciate the little things every day. Who know’s what our trip would have looked like had we not met them. Roger eyeballed the Jeep as we waited to get into a camp spot in Etosha Park, Namibia. He walked over, as many do, to ask about our noisy American truck. The conversation turned to future plans, he and his wife Jenni wanted to got to Khaudum and so did we. Paul and Julie were not sure about the deep sand roads we’d heard of, so they were going to skip it and we didn’t want to go in alone. After 5 days in Khaudum, we can’t imagine not knowing Roger and Jenni. They graciously let us stay at their house in Johannesburg while we got repairs done, and were even glad when it took longer than expected, giving us more time together. Roger’s two sons, Lee and Kevin, were our roommates for the couple of months we were in Johannesburg and showed us what that city has to offer. At Sitatunga Camp, in Maun, Botswana, we became friends with the owners, Gerald and his wife Karina, and one of their managers Owen. We spent a lot of time at Sitatunga and they were great about recommending places to get stuff done and things to see around Maun. Many evenings were spend around either our campfire or the Bush Baby Restaurant at the camp visiting with them. We really hope to see them again. One American couple traveling though Africa we did get to spend some time with is Jim and Ann. They’re from central Idaho and we met them in Windhoek and again in Malawi. It was great to spend our on-the-road anniversary with them, learning how to play the local game, bao.
Before the trip, I spent a lot of time developing a budget for our trip. I even broke down our costs to dollars per day. We have kept track of our spending and monitored our $/day and were pretty happy with it, until we realized we weren’t looking at how much time my budget allowed for in each country. We realized that we were traveling much more slowly than anticipated, which cuts into our overall budget. We decided that we enjoyed our pace though, and that we would find a way to make it work. What we’ve come up with is instead of driving up through West Africa, we will travel at our pace through East Africa (Tanzania, Kenya,Uganda, and Rwanda), then return south to see Zambia and Angola before returning to South Africa for some time in their amazing national parks before shipping home. We still aren’t sure where home is, or what we will do when we find it, but that is our current plan.
The Year in Numbers
Miles Driven: 22,680
Countries Visited : 8
Border Crossings: 10
Nights Spent in the Trailer: 285
Times Stuck: 2 (in the same day!)
Photos Taken: 5642
Average Diesel Cost: $3.56/Gallon
Tire Punctures: 2
Small Levels Bought (for leveling the trailer): 4
Great recap of the first year. We found we truly enjoy slower travel, as well, and decided it is truly about the journey not the destination so follow the path that works for us. Fun to see how similar some of your answers were;) Enjoy one of the world’s most magical regions.