Africa!

You have no doubt realised by now that I am quite severely behind with these entries, and having now met up with my mum in South America, catching up is not all that easy to do! Leaving Egypt and Jordan behind, my adventure took me south to South Africa, where after over six months of independent travel, I finally caved in and joined an organised tour. While the tour was excellent, and many parts of it will remain highlights of my year abroad, I am only going to post one entry about the entire six weeks – more of an overview than a week-by-week recap of my travels. So here goes!

*CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE!*

Heading into Africa with a very much romanticised image of what lay ahead, I will admit I started my journey very hesitant to book a tour, with a great, ambitious plan to cover the continent independently. Of course, this ambitious plan didn’t take into account the nightmare of a week I had just spent in Egypt, and I very quickly began to question my decision. Planning to visit eight countries in only six weeks, the distance alone was motivation enough to choose an overland tour, however, in a part of the world with a number of different languages (none of which I speak), challenging immigration and customs, high crime rates, often low standards of living, and an obvious difference in physical appearance between myself and locals, I forgot about my dreams to be the next Bear Grylls, and went online and booked!

Travelling with Acacia Overland, my African adventure began in the cold, wet weather of Cape Town, ending 47 days later in the heat, humidity and pollution of East-Africa’s most populous city, Nairobi. Visiting South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania and Kenya, I would love to be able to say the tour gave me an understanding of life in the African continent – however, I would be lying! While the tour was brilliant, and the game viewing, tourist activities, campsites and cities visited will remain a highlight of my year abroad, I am under no delusion that my ultra-touristy transit through these countries gave me any real understanding of the reality of the communities within, the people of these communities, and of the lives which I looked out on – from the comfort (and sometimes safety) of the overland vehicle. However, I did still have a good time!

While I initially booked tickets to Africa thinking it was relatively ‘off the tourist radar’, it turns out ‘overlanding’ Africa is actually all the rage, and any dreams I had of travelling for weeks on end without bumping into another tourist were only that – dreams! Countries in the south and east of the continent are by far the most popular (a.k.a. safest) places to visit, and there were only very few days when our truck didn’t come across another group of western travellers, often over-indulging at a bar or pub, and very rarely showing any sort of cultural sensitivity or interest in being immersed into the communities they were ‘visiting’ (imagine the main character from Little Britain, drunk, dressed in drag, and seductively dancing to ‘Like a Virgin’ on top of the bar in a small African village… hmm). Of course, as part of my own journey to becoming a culturally aware traveller, I did think it was important to understand this strange western behaviour (not the Little Britain version), and chose a karaoke bar in Swakopmund, Namibia, to join in the over-indulging of alcoholic beverages – and would like to apologise to all who had to endure the rather lengthy and pitch-defying rendition of Meatloaf’s Paradise by the Dashboard Light. I promise I won’t do it again.

With 36 nights spent in a tent, a camp kitchen to prepare and cook three meals a day, limited drinking water and electricity, and ‘questionable’ bathroom facilities in many campsites, there were certainly some interesting experiences along the way. However, with a pimped-out MAN truck, iPod dock, personal lockers, occasional wi-fi, freezer, eskies and secure (mainly animal free) campsites, I could hardly say I had to ‘rough it’, and the tour was a great success.

Passing through some of the most spectacular scenery, eye-opening cities, incredible game reserves, and challenging communities of my year away, the tour was a very basic overview of an amazing, complex continent. Covering a total distance of around 11,500km, it felt like the tour passed through four different seasons in only six weeks – from sweltering in the full sun of the Namibian desert, and lazing on the pristine beaches of Zanzibar Island, to sweating my way through the jungle on a Tanzanian Spice Tour, and rugging up at night in the Serengeti (I even had to put on a scarf and beanie!) as hyena and buffalo wandered around my tent in search of food (they know me too well!).

Etosha National Park, Namibia

The game viewing – undoubtedly Africa’s biggest tourist attraction – was absolutely spectacular, and with such a diverse range of climates and natural environments covered, I was lucky enough not only to see the ‘Big Five’, but also all their friends! Etosha National Park, in Namibia, absolutely blew my mind as the first game-drive destination, welcoming me to the world of safari with a pack of lions in the first 20 minutes, and following it up with countless elephants, giraffe, kudu, zebra, hyena, springbok, rhino and even a cheeky hornbill! The park has a man-maintained waterhole (which is the perfect place to camp late in the dry season, as it attracts hundreds of animals daily) where we pitched our tents for two nights – surrounded by the magical sounds of the African wilderness, and more animals than my camera could ever capture in just one photo!

The game viewing continued as our truck travelled north, where I took a scenic flight over the stunning Okavango Delta, adding hippo, white rhino and crocodile to the already impressive list of animals seen, and I was lucky enough to watch the remarkable wilderbeest migration from the somewhat cramped confines of the small five-seater Cessna aircraft. An early morning game drive through the slightly greener pastures of Chobe National Park, Botswana, added baboon and buffalo to the wildlife list, while a sunset cruise down the Chobe River was absolutely spectacular (albeit trashily touristy) and not only got the adrenalin pumping with what was almost a crocodile kill, but also kept the hoards of tourists captivated with an impressive river crossing by a herd of elephants.

Taking a break from the ‘tour’, a group of us hired a car in Zambia, driving over the border into Zimbabwe, where a self-drive safari in Hwange National Park very quickly taught me the rules of give-way in the wild… and it turns out the elephant always wins! I was also lucky enough to get a little refresher on my road rules, thanks to a police officer who pulled me over – only to ask for a drink of water! The thirsty western tourists are just so useful sometimes! Hwange added an elephant graveyard to the list of sights seen, as well as the face-only-a-mother-could-love African painted dog.

Heading further north, Lake Malawi added parasitic intestinal worms to the wildlife list, while Tanzania finished off the Big Five with the elusive leopard – of which we managed to see two – and cheetah, gazelle, black mamba (in an enclosure… not in the wild unfortunately!), hedgehog, honey-badger, thousands of flamingos, and the inquisitive and less-well-known don’t-leave-food-in-your-tent-unless-you-want-a-hungry-visitor-in-the-middle-of-the-night-hyena (I think this must be a special variety!).

Needless to day, the game viewing lived up to expectations!

While much of the tour was spent in campgrounds (aka secure compounds), there was some opportunity to wander cities and large towns independently, and while the tour didn’t offer much in the way of cultural immersion, we did manage to find some opportunities to involve ourselves with the communities we visited. A ‘township tour’ in Cape Town dredged up my high school studies of apartheid and racial segregation, and gave an amazing insight into the conditions many people lived in following white settlement in South Africa – it also involved drinking beer from a paint tin – understandably a highlight of my year! A visit to a bush community in Botswana’s Ghanzi region provided spectacular photographs and an insight into a very ‘different’ way of life for us – and all just for a bribe of a couple of cigarettes! And the brief break in Zambia allowed time for a small group of us to visit a local school, where our taxi driver’s wife was the teacher. We spent an amazing couple of hours with the local school children, treated to a series of hilarious performances from the students, and getting a tour of the extremely primitive, yet positive and encouraging school facilities – a truly memorable experience.

Overall, my journey through Africa was an absolutely amazing, challenging, thought provoking and eye-opening experience, from which I hope I carry lessons learned throughout the rest of my life. It is one of the few times on my trip where I have really felt a ‘tourist’, rather than a ‘traveller’, and one of the few times when it has been almost painfully obvious to me how drastically our lives, roles and places in society are defined and determined not by our thoughts and actions, our character, or our choices in life, but rather by the money in our pocket, the colour of our skin, and the nationality on our passport. I hope I now truly understand how fortunate I am to be Australian.

In eleven months of travel, the list of people I have to thank in this world has reached epic proportions, and there’s no way I will ever manage to thank them all. However, I do want to say a very special thank you to the people I encountered on my trip through southern and eastern Africa – thank you to the communities that welcomed me with open arms; the street vendors, artists, salespeople and entrepreneurs who tolerated my ridiculous attempts at the local language, and my crazy bartering skills; the many travellers from all over the world who I met along the way, and who made my journey so much fun; and most importantly, I want to thank the people who taught me that regardless of our language, our background, our social standing or our financial situation, sometimes the greatest gifts are given when we very least expect them – and with no physical shape, price tag, refund policy, and no need for wrapping paper, Africa taught me time and time again that joy, and sharing it with others, is the greatest gift of all.