Day 189 - Overlanding Africa

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Today is Day 1 of our 42 day overland trip to Nairobi. We are taking in 8 countries: South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania and Kenya. This should give us an idea of what southern and eastern Africa are like. Apart from South Africa, this is all new teritory to Ed; Gemma has been to Africa a few times before but there's still 4 new countries for her. We'll be mostly camping along the way, and our transport is a specially converted old Mercedes truck. The idea is to be totally self-sufficient, with long-range fuel tanks, 2 spare tyres and a set of spare parts to keep us moving, and a freshwater tank, loads of food and a well-equipped kitchen to keep us happy. The truck has 29 seats of which 27 are taken, and there's also a driver called Alois and a cook called Wilson (or Nelson or Winston depending on how well people's memories work). In charge of us all is a 25 year old Australian girl called Emma who is on her second trip. We set off with everyone, well most people, excitedly making friends. We were just trying to adjust to being backpackers again after our burst of 5 star luxury. Hopefully we'll get over the change of scene pretty quickly. Rather strangely, the first day of this journey took us up to a little place called Clanwilliam, the nearest town to our New Year's Eve wilderness resort, Bushmans Kloof. We had a nice evening meal and got to know our fellow travellers a bit. Needless to say, our year long 40-odd country honeymoon trumped everyone else's trips.

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