week 96 - 97 - Morocco, our last country in Africa to explore - a diverse and beautiful place

We arrived at the campsite where Moritz and Ben were staying. It was not very busy, and we got a spot right next to them. Before we wanted to go out for dinner altogether, Tom and I wanted to plan our route through Morocco for the upcoming days. We only had ten days until we needed to be in Tangier and take the ferry back to Europe. Since Ben and Moritz had already spent several weeks in Morocco on their way south from Germany to Ghana a few months earlier, they were excellent at helping us choose some nice routes. We wanted to drive up to the Atlas mountains and also explore the desert again. Morocco has countless impressive offroad tracks; we got ourselves a guidebook and tried to select our favorite routes. After finding three beautiful tracks we would try, we were ready to go and stroll trhough town with Ben and Moritz and find a place for dinner. A small town festival was happening right next to the campsite, so we mingled with all the locals and sat down in a nice little restaurant where we enjoyed our first tajine, a famous Moroccan dish.

The next morning, we all drove to a big supermarket where we could stock up on groceries before it was time to say goodbye. Tom and I drove to Taliouine, where the first 4x4 track started. There, we left the main road onto a beautiful gravel road all the way to Foum Zguid. For three days, we were following this track, taking a break when we felt like having a snack or to take some nice pictures. We crossed some dry riverbeds drove over a very old pass roead and sometimes, the track was very narrow and in a very bad condition, but our Defender managed it well. We found two amazing spots to spend the nights and really enjoyed this time off the beaten track. Since we were mostly in the highlands, also the temperature was quite nice. This, however, was something we only realized when we arrived in Foum Zguid, the town where we filled up diesel and water before continuing on the next track through the Erg Chegaga, a part of the Sahara desert.

We started on the sand track just before noon and I was getting hungry, so we tried to find a spot with some shade, which was not very easy. There were only a few trees around us without any leaves - of course, since we were driving into the desert. Nevertheless, we stopped and ate a quick lunch, which we speeded up a lot when we stepped out of the car and stood in the heat. Without the wind from driving, the heat was brutal. We do not have an A/C, so the only cooling effect we get is when driving with our open windows. We continued into the desert and soon there were no more trees around us, just sand and more sand and then we saw the first dunes. Our initial plan was to spend the night in between the dunes, but it was waay to hot and to early to set up a camp. So we decided to go into the dunes and drive up and down, which is fun of course, but for us, it was also the only way of surviving in this heat. At least, we had a small breeze in our faces. The temperature was close to 50 degrees Celsius, almost unbearable. At around 5 pm, we were too tired to keep on driving, so we started to look for a place to spend the night. At least we now had some shade of the car to hide from the sun, but it was still boiling hot. We also didn’t feel like cooking and eating, so we were just laying around like dead flies until the sun finally went down and the air started to cool down a little. We thought it would be a good idea to take a shower in order to cool off, but the water in the water tank was literally boiling hot, there was no way for us to take a shower, we would have burnt ourselves with the water. Around midnight, it was still close to 40 degrees Celsius and therefore almost impossble to get some sleep. Our decision for the next day, therefore was an easy one, we wanted to leave the desert again. August was not the ideal time to explore this part of Morocco.

We left the desert in Tagounite and drove to Ourzazate. Our first stop was the supermarket to get an ice cream :) We then had to make new plans and decided to visit the Atlas Studios, the Hollywood of Morocco. Many famous movie sets were built there from movies like Gladiator, Cleopatra, and Passion of the Christ to name a few, and what’s special about the movie sets is, that they remain once the movies are finished. Like this, they can be reused for movies with a lower budget. We had a very interesting tour through the various film sets.

From there. we continued a few kilometers east, where we drove to a lake, it was nice to have some water around us. At Lake ‘Barrage El Mansour Eddahbi’ we spent a quiet night, the only visitors were the various street dogs from around this place, which all slept around our car.

Our last 4x4 track we had chosen was waiting for us, luckily, it led through the Atlas mountains again and therefore we were hoping for some cooler temperatures. It was a more touristy route through the Dades Gorges and over the ‘Col du Duano’, so unfortunealtey, most of the track is paved by now. On the bright side, there were almost no other tourists, since it was not the high season. To spend the night, we drove all the way to Lake Tislit, a truly breathtaking scenery with a lake up in the mountains. Hassan, a Berber who takes care of the lake, stopped by when we had set up our camp. He spoke French and some English and we had a nice chat about this place and his life up here. He invited us to visit his friend and his family the next morning for tea before we would leave again. It was a very nice experience to meet the traditional family and taste their delicious bread and have some tea altogether. We really enjoyed this stop a lot.

From Lake Tislit, we drove straight to Fès, a traditional Morrocan city in the north. These towns are mostly car free with very narrow streets, so we decided to park our Defender and treat ourselves to a nice Riad in town where we stayed for two nights. We both had our first job interviews online, so it was nice to have the possibility to have the video calls in a hotel room, and since it was the low season, we got some great promotions. We really enjoyed the two days in Fès. We went on a “Free walking tour”, something we really enjoy in every city we visit, and we learned a lot about Morocco and its culture. We also visited the Hamam and tasted delicious food in some nice restaurants, it was a real treat after the many 4x4 tracks and wild camping spots from the past days.

From Fès, we drove to Chefchaouen, our last stop in Morocco. Chefchaouen is also known as the “blue city”, since everyone started to paint their houses in all shades of blue. Now, it is a beautiful traditional city to visit. This time, we stayed on a campsite just on top of the hill of Chefchaouen, a very nice campsite, where it was easy to explore the city by foot. We also went on a “free walking tour” and enjoyed our last two days in Morocco a lot, before it was time for us to catch the ferry back to Europe. Tom went to the barber to get his last shave on African grounds, then, we chose a nice little restaurant for our last dinner and we had an amazing dish, Chicken Bastilla, we were definitely in food heaven. We then returned to the campsite to go to bed early, the next morning, we had to wake up very early to reach Tangier in time for the ferry.

We had to leave very early to reach the ferry to Spain. It was unreal and sad and exciting at the same time to be leaving Africa and go back to Europe. What a journey this has been. Our luggage is full of amazing memories and our hearts are touched from countless beautiful souls we got to know along the way.

week 95 - 96 - driving through the desert, a dream comes true

It took a couple of days until I was feeling better again. Malaria definitely knocks you out, but luckily, if you get the right treatment and medication, it also goes away rather quickly again. Until I fully recovered,we spent a few days in the Airbnb apartment in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania. While I barely moved out of bed druing these days, Tom was very diligent and did a service on our Defender. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find a mechanic who had time, but he was allowed to return to the campsite where we were already helped the first day we arrived in Nouakchott, and they let him do an oil change and some work on the car in their backyard. Luckily, we had all the spare parts we needed with us. The Mauritanian people truly were very welcoming and helpful! At the campsite, Tom also met Ben and Moritz, two Overlanders from Germany who were on their way back home after traveling for six months to Ghana and back. When I finally started to feel better after three days of fever and staying in bed, we decided to go out for dinner all together before Tom and I left the city to drive into the desert the next morning.

Initially, we had planned to drive a longer route through Mauritania, but we shortened the route a little bit. Our first destination, therefore, was the Terjit Oasis, where we spent the night at “Chez Jemal”, a beautiful small auberge where you can camp as well. It was insanely hot, close to 50 degrees Celsius. After driving through the desert on the perfect tar road for a few hours, the car and everything inside of it (including us) was boiling! I had never in my life experienced such a heat. Luckily, Jemal had a small pool where we could cool down. There, we met Gabriel, a backpacker from Italy who was staying at the auberge as well and painted some very cool graffiti on the walls (of course, with the approval of Jemal). We had dinner together and Jemal’s wife cooked a very delicious couscous for us. We enjoyed the evening hours a lot. Once the sun went down, it was still well above 30 degrees, but at least there was no sun burning down on us. We sat on mats with Jemal and his family and friends and drank some Mauritanian tea, a green tea with fresh mint that is brewed three times. It is very sweet and delicious.

The next morning, Tom and I wanted to visit the actual oasis. Jemal explained where we had to walk to find it, it was only a stone’s throw away. When we arrived in the early morning, we were almost alone, but soon, it started to get busier. We spoke to some locals who explained to us that it was a special holiday and a lot of locals would come to the Oasis today to spend the day here with their families. They brought food and drinks and it was so interesting and nice to sit with them and watch what they were doing.

Next to us was a group of men, who were also staying at Jemal’s auberge. They arrived very late the night before. When they saw myself and Tom at the oasis, they invited us to join them for lunch. They had ordered a full traditional meal and wanted us to taste it as well. It was a very tasty goat stew with rice and a lot of dates and goat milk to drink and of course plenty of the Mauritanian tea. We were spoiled and spent a lovely day there.

After the big lunch, we decided to leave because we wanted to drive a bit further south to a point where the dunes “eat” the tar road. We read about this spot and found it interesting to visit. On our way out of the oasis, we met another backpacker who asked us for a lift to the next town Atar. This was also our end destination and where we wanted to sleep, but we told him that we first were driving south to see the dunes, and he happily joined us. So we went on a short trip into the desert and then back north to Atar. We spent the night again at a local auberge with lovely owners. The hospitality in Mauritania is truly amazing.

The following day in Atar, we filled up our Defender with Diesel and stocked up on some food and especially water, in order to be ready to drive along the famous train tracks through the Sahara for a few days. In Mauritania, there is an Iron Ore train, which is the longest train in the world, running on a 704-kilometer single track from the desert to the coast. There are no roads, but you can follow the track driving in the sand, an extraordinary offroad experience, so of course, this was something we didn’t want to miss. It was an amazing experience, driving through the Sahara with nothing in sight except a train track. We spent the night close to Ben Amera, the biggest monolith in Africa. It’s a beautiful huge rock, and not far from it, you can find a smaller version called Aishe, where international artists have carved objects into the rocks. We were all by ourselves; luckily, this place of the world is not yet swamped by tourists. We spent a unique night in the desert in between all the beautiful rock art and underneath a thousand stars. The only thing that kept us from a peaceful sleep was the heat, it was very very hot.

The next day, we continued along the track. From Ben Amera, we had to drive back towards the track first, and just when we arrived, the train was passing. It was perfect timing and we were super excited to see the train. We could follow it for quite a while because it is driving rather slow. We took our drone and followed it in the air and on the sand and had a lot of fun. We also passed some old carrieges spread along the tracks from an accident that happened a few years ago. It was crazy to see how the steel is bending in the heat of the Sahara desert.

We had first planned to spend another night in the desert in between some dunes, but when we arrived at the spot, it was only 4pm and it was very windy and of course still boiling. We wanted to set up our camp but the wind was blowing all the sand into our car and there was not much shade and it was just not very comfortable. Eventhough we were quite tired from driving, we decided to continue all the way to the coast, which was another 2-3 hours drive. But staying at this spot was just not a very comfortable option. Our goal was to reach Villa Maguela in Nouadhibou. We arrived just in time before dinner and it was such a lovely place to be. Right at the sea with a cool breeze, it was exactly what we had longed for. The hosts were very nice as well and there were two other travellers there, we all had dinner together and spend a wonderful evening.

The next day, it was already time to leave Mauritania. Our next destination was Morocco. Uwe, one of the other guests at Villa Maguela, joined us with his beautiful big MAN truck, so we crossed the border together. I was a bit nervous because I read a lot of stuff about the Moroccon border. They scan all the vehicles and search for illegal stuff, such as drones, for example, but luckily, they didn’t find ours and we had a rather easy crossing, except for the extra hour we had to wait because they closed the border at noon for a lunch break and everyone just had to wait until the officers continued their work :-D

After the border, we were technically in Morocco, but first, we had to cross the Western Sahara. Given its name in 1975 by the UN, it is the last African colonial state yet to achieve its independence. About 20% of the territory is controlled by the self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and the remaining 80% of the territory is occupied and administered by Morocco; therefore, also the border post was Moroccan. The Western Sahara is the second most sparsely populated country in the world and the most sparsely populated in Africa, mainly consisting of desert. Therefore, it is rather boring to drive through Western Sahara, unless of course, you can leave the main tar road and drive off into the desert for some fun drives on the dunes. But this needs time and a lot of planning because there are no towns where you can stock up or buy water and food and some places are occupied by the military. We, therefore, decided to just drive straight on the tar road to Morocco, which took us two full days of driving. The first night, we wild camped close to Dhakla, a small town which is famous amongst kite surfers, but since neither of us kite surf, it was not a spot where we wanted to hang around because it gets very windy. Luckily, we had Uwe and his MAN truck with us. We could park behind his big truck to have shelter from the wind during the night. To eat dinner, we all sat inside his truck and enjoyed a cozy evening inside away from the wind :D The next morning, we continued north, but Uwe stayed behind since he had some more time and therefore wanted to take it slower and explore some more of the Western Sahara.

Tom and I continued all the way up to Tarfaya. It’s the place where the famous book “Petit Prince” was written and a very small town in the middle of nowhere. We found it had a bit of a strange vibe. It kind of felt like walking through a movie set, where everyone was just put there to play a role. We wanted to camp in a parking lot in town and looked for a restaurant where we could eat dinner before. We found a small place where they served Msemen, a very delicious baked Moroccan dish. Tom also got a street food kebab, which was delicious. After walking around for a bit, we found that the people were very friendly and also curious. Before returning to our car, we sat down in another small restaurant to have a tea and a guy passing by, started talking to us. He was very inspired by our travel and even invited us to spend the night at his house. We talked for a while and shared some stories. Since we wanted to visit the very small museum in town the next morning - a museum in honor of the author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who wrote the Petit Prince - we were also in contact with the owner to ask if the museum would be open the next day. He told us he would come around to open the museum for us the next morning and he assured us that it was no problem to camp right in front of the museum, which we did. After the museum, we continued our trip up north, Ben and Moritz were staying on a campsite further up the coast so we decided to join them.

week 93 - 95 - last days together with Toby & Olga, malaria recovery and slowing down

Entering Guinea was quite easy, we crossed at a small border Crossing with very friendly officers. Of course, we had already applied for and received our online visa for Guinea. Other than some other travelers, we received the approval straight away, so we had no trouble entering the country. The road was funny, it was a perfect tar road in between the villages, but inside the villages, the tar road stopped and it was a bumpy ride on a dirt track. For our first night in Guinea, we found quite a cool little spot to camp along the main road. Besides the many mosquitos, no one bothered us there. (Looking back I’m thinking that this might have been the place where Tom and I were infected with Malaria, but we will never know for sure. All I know is that there were a looot of mosquitos.) The next day, we left early and continued towards a river, where we stopped to make a coffee and have a small breakfast. While we were preparing our brekky, a family passed by, of course, curious about what we were doing here. The Dad of the family hunted some kind of wiesel and presented it proudly to us. He also tried selling it to us but we declined politely. After some talks and assuring them that we did not want to buy and cook the wiesel, we continued.

The road got worse and worse, that kind of annoying tar road where you find more potholes than tar. We therefore decided to leave the main road and drive a 4x4 track called «la route café». It was a beautiful track, but since we were still traveling in the rainy season, it was at times challenging. Some parts were very muddy and I managed to get our Defender stuck in the mud quite badly. Luckily, Olga and Toby were there, and we had the necessary tools, like our winch so that we could pull ourselves out again 😉

Halfway in, we looked for a nice spot to spend the night. It was quite hard to find a spot off the track, it was only the small road and to the left and right there was either thick forest, fields or villages. We found a relatively private spot at the entrance to a village, but of course soon after we had installed our camp, all the kids from the village were around our cars and watching closely what these strangers were up to. It was quite funny to interact with them without really being able to talk to each other. Just after we finished our dinner, a thunderstorm was building up, but luckily, it just passed us. However, during the night, it rained heavily and the track was therefore even muddier the next day. We continued and managed to finish the track without getting stuck again.

Our plan was to drive through Guinea along the main road and visit a beautiful waterfall some other overlanders have told us about. It was too far to reach the waterfall in one day, so we looked for another wild camp along the main road. In the evening, Toby was talking to Martina, his wife, on the phone. She managed to get some days off work, and she, therefore, was thinking about flying to Morocco so Toby and her could drive back home and enter Europe together. It was a fabolous idea, but also, for Toby, this meant he would be under even more time pressure. Him and Martina started to plan their trip, and Toby now only had 12 days until he had to be in Marrakech. Driving to the waterfall to spend an extra day was no longer an option for him. Since we didn’t want to end our shared journey so abruptly, we decided to skip our trip to the waterfall and instead look for another nice spot to have a final evening together and celebrate the end of our journey together.

So, instead of driving to the waterfall, we continued towards the border to Senegal the next day. We already had a spot in mind that we found on iOverlander, which was right at a river close to the border. Just a few meters before we arrived at this spot, some police officers informed us that the road was blocked because a truck was stuck and blocking the whole road. This happened literally right at the place where we wanted to camp, but now there were dozens of cars, which were stuck for two days already, and therefore, the place was very busy and packed with people. It was another authentic and funny “Africa moment”: A truck gets stuck and blocks the road for more than a day and everyone just arranges themselves around it. The road quickly turned into an unofficial campsite with many street vendors selling their products. We decided to turn around and look for a place a bit more private. After some driving, we found the perfect spot close to a local village at a small river. We went for a dip in the river, enjoyed a bottle of wine and a nice dinner and we flew the drone to see if they managed to fix the truck in the meantime. Otherwise, we needed to plan a new route so Toby would make it in time to Marrakech. To our surprise, they had fixed the truck. We were so lucky! The huge lane was moving now, so when we left the next morning, the road was completely free for us to continue.

We arrived at the border to Senegal in the afternoon around 3pm, and thought, we could easily enter Senegal, where our paths would part with Toby and Olga. But of course, this didn’t go as planned. When we arrived at the border, the officer in charge informed us, that we could not leave the country with our e-visa. He explained to us that we needed to drive to Conakry (550 kilometers away!) to get an actual visa in our passport. Of course, we argued that this could not be true. First of all, we were already approved into the country with this visa and only wanted to leave, second, no one ever informed us about this rule when entering the country, nor was it written anywhere when we applied for the vias online. They officer was really annoying and unfriendly! He then informed us that it was his lunch break now that he wanted to eat (at 3pm…) and that he would take care of our issue after his break. He sat down in front of us and started eating. We were of course not very amused. When we talked to another officer, he told us that we would get the exit stamp not here but a few kilometers further down the road at the next checkpoint, so we decided to climb into our cars and drive on. Now, the unfriendly officer wasn’t amused anymore. He jumped out of his seat and called us back and we stopped the cars again. After some more arguing, he finally went back into his office, made some copies of our passports and told us we were fine to leave. We receieved the stamps in our passports at the second checkpoint and after the third checkpoint for the costums, where they stamped our Carnet de Passage, we thought we could finally leave. But now, the road was blocked because they had some kind of flag ceremony at the military checkpoint, so we had to wait again. While we were in the car waiting for the ceremony to end, I took a picture of this happening. When they were finished, we continued, and after a few more kilometers, we were stopped again at the very last checkpoint. They told us to wait, and suddenly, a car full of police officers apperaed. They were screaming at us and running towards me and asking for my phone. After they calmed down, I understood that one guy saw me taking a picture of the ceremony, and this was strongly against the law, since it was a military checkpoint. I didn’t think of that, and now, we had to drive back to the police station. They took my phone and checked all the pictures and we spent another hour talking and arguing with the guys. Finally, they made me delete all the pictures of the ceremony (which I proposed to them in the first place) and we were fine to go. When we arrived at the other side to enter Senegal, the border post was already closed, so we were forced to sleep at the border post. On the bright side, we had another evening together with Toby, but it was definitely not a the most cozy one. We didn’t feel like cooking so we got some street food at the side of the road and then went to bed. The next morning, we were able to enter Senegal, it took only a few minutes and we were in the country. Tom and I were heading straight towards the Gambia, since we wanted to visit this country and spend a few days there. Toby decided to come with us and enter the Gambia as well and take the route straight through this tiny country inside of Senegal. We entered the border, which was quite easy again. No visa was needed, the only thing that took a bit longer was to get a Temporary Import Permit for Olga, since Toby’s CDP was expired. But after a couple of hours, we were able to enter the Gambia. We looked for a nice restaurant where we could eat lunch together before Toby would continue in another direction. We hugged and sad our Farewells and then Toby and Olga drove off. It was quite a strange and sad feeling.

Tom and I decided to slow down a bit, now that we had some more time. We had spent so much time in the car the past weeks and we were looking forward to a couple of days without driving. We therefore only drove a little bit further west to Janjanbureh, where someone had recommended to us to visit a historic slave house. Unfortunately, it was not open when we arrived, but we met a super friendly local guy who runs a small campsite and he invited us to stay there. It was a very nice place, right at the river and very private. We enjoyed a quiet afternoon there and cleaned our Defender since it was very dusty inside.

The next morning, we started with a workout, something we also hadn’t done in weeks. After a coffee, we met the guy who gave us a small tour through the slave house. Compared to the one we had already seen in Ghana, this one was very small, but the story was just as bad as the one we had already heard. A truly sad part of African history.

We continued towards the beach and drove south, where we found a perfect spot to wild camp for a couple of days. Because it was the rainy season, there were no other tourists at all. We had the beach completely to ourselves together with some locals who were fishing and working out. The weather was great during the day, but every night, a small thunderstorm appeared and we listened to the rain and watched the lightening in our rooftent. We enjoyed these very relaxing days.

From there, we headed towards the capital Banjul. We wanted to explore the city and get some things done, like laundry and a proper car wash. We didn’t find a place to do our laundry, except one place that charged a fortune, so instead and also beause of the heavy rains, we started to look at Airbnbs and found a place with a washing machine for a very reasonable price. We booked the place and were able to check in immediately. We decided to go out for dinner. Banjul had some very nice restaurants and it had also been a while since we had our last date night, just the two of us. We found a nice restaurant in town, but unfortunately, during dinner, Tom started to feel unwell. It got worse and worse, so we quickly went home as soon as we finished our plates. Tom went straight to bed. He had a small fever, so we did a malaria self test, which was negative. However, he didn’t feel better at all. The fever went up and down and we did a second test after 12 hours, but it was negative again. I started to get worried becuase his fever didn’t go away, so we decided to go and see a doctor. We found a small clinic, and they took great care of Tom. He got tested for all sorts of possible diseases and received a positive malaria test…

Luckily, they also had a small pharmacy at the clinic, where we could get all the necessary pills. Of course, it was bad news that he was infected with malaria, but on the other hand we were also relieved since we now knew what was wrong and had the right medication to treat it. But it would definitely take time, so we went back “home” and extended our booking for another couple of days. Tom definitely needed to recover and feel better first, before we could continue our trip. Luckily, the treatment was very effective. He was feeling a lot better very quickly. I spent a day at the beach while Tom stayed at home in the air-conditioned room, and after two days, he felt a lot better and was ready to continue the trip. We went on the ferry to cross the Gambia river and drove towards Senegal, where we now wanted to take a few days and explore this country as well.

We were driving a beautiful road along a salt lake, but we decided to look for a campsite instead of a wild camp, so Tom would have a proper bathroom at least and in case he would be feeling worse again, we could also get a room.

Luckily, he felt fine, and we spent a night at “La Ferme de Saly” , a hotel and campsite with a huge pool area, where we went for a dip and enjoyed a cold beer before bed. The next morning, we continued towards St. Louis, an old colonial town which seemed to be a nice place to visit. We read about a photo gallery and exhibition, so we decided to go in for a cultural experience. The exhibition was great and spread throughout the whole city in various beautiful old buildings. We spent a lovely afternoon strolling through the small town and looking at the photographs.

Before dark, we left the city and continued towards the beach, where we wanted to wild camp. However, when we arrived, the beach was packed with locals who were enjoying their day off, since it was a Sunday. We parked next to a hotel and decided to chill at the beach until it would get less busy and we could set up our camp. It was very cool to mingle with everyone at the beach. There was a dog who seemed to really like us, he wouldn’t leave our side during the whole time we were staying at the beach. After sunset, most people left and we slowly walked back to the parking lot and our Defender. The security guard came towards us and asked if we wanted to stay for the night. We said yes and he offered us to open the hotel gate, so we could camp and sleep inside the gate with more privacy. We didn’t expect this at all and it was such a nice gesture of him! We cooked a small dinner and went to bed soon after. The beach dog was staying next to our car all night, and even brought two dog-friends along. We later found out that they all belonged to the hotel:-) The next morning when we got up, I was somehow not feeling great. Very low on energy but I thought maybe I just didn’t sleep that well. We packed up and offered the security guard a small tip for letting us stay here, but he refused to accept it! We greatly thanked him for letting us stay and continued our journey.

We drove towards the border to Mauritania. I didn’t really feel better at all, it actually got worse and worse, and by the time we reached the border, I barely managed to stand up and wait in line at the immigration office, I had to sit down all the time. Luckily, the border crossing was very easy and relatively quick. Tom managed everything he could on his own. The visas for Mauritania, we received on arrival against a payment of 55 Euros (it was much cheaper to pay in Euros than in Mauritanian currency). Theyalso didn’t accept our Carnet de Passage, and we had to pay for a temporary import permit, but it was not a problem and also a straightforward process and not very expensive. Soon, we were ready to enter Mauritania. Our first destination was Nouakchott, the capital, where we planned to stock up for a few days in the desert. But by the time we reached the city, I was quite sure that something was wrong. And after Tom just had malaria, we figured we best don’t lose time and go straight to a hospital. We found a clinic and I told them my symptoms. I got tested for malaria and I was positive. They gave me a prescription with all the medication which I easily received at a pharmacy and told me to come back the next day for some further tests. Unfortunately, everyone at the clinic was only speaking French, and even though I do know some French, it was rather hard for me to understand all the medical terms and explanations and why I had to come back the next day.

We decided to not camp and look for an Airbnb instead, since it was crazy hot and I just wanted a cooler place to get some rest. Unfortunately, getting a sim card and internet was another mission in Mauritania. Apparently, it used to be very easy to get a sim card here, that’s why a recent terror attack was planned by using Mauritanian sim cards. Because of this incident, they had to change the security measures to get sim cards and now it was almost impossible to buy one without a local passport. We drove to a campsite in town we found on iOverlander, where they had wifi, and explained our situation. The guys there were super helpful. They let me rest in their restaurant, which had comfy mattresses on the ground (a very common thing in Mauritania) and Tom was allowed to use their wifi and could check for a place to stay. He found an apartment which was rented out by a French family. They were super nice! We were able to check in right away and even got a small discount. They recommended another international clinic where the doctors could speak English, in case we needed further assistance for my malaria treatment. We were both very relieved when we arrived at the apartment and finally got to rest. It was another busy border crossing day, but me being sick made it even more exhausting for both of us.

week 91 - 93 - happy festivals, aweful history and very sad reality

The border crossing from Togo into Ghana was straightforward, but it took some time because Olga’s Carnet de Passage (CDP) was expiring and they wouldn’t give us a ‘Temporary Import Permit’, which you need if you don’t have a CDP. But after a couple of hours of discussions, the officer wrote an approval letter to extend the CDP for a few days, so we had time to cross through Ghana. We entered Ghana and took the road to Akosombo, a town a little bit up north from the coast. Shaun, an old friend of Tom, who came with us to the AfricaBurn Festival in Cape Town, is a huge fan of Ghana. He had spent quite some time here and he fell in love with a place called River Cottages in Akosombo. He wanted us to see this place as well and invited us to stay there for a night when he heard that we would be passing Ghana on our way back home. River Cottages sn a small little paradise with a few cottages in a beautiful setting right by a river. We arrived and jumped right into the river and enjoyed chilling a few hours at this beautiful spot. We had a bungalow to ourselves and there was also a pizza oven which we could use, so we decided to have a pizza night, which was a lot of fun and delicious!

Martin, another guest from the UK who was also staying in a bungalow on the property, joined us for some beers. He was in Ghana for work and has spent a lot of time in this country. He told us a lot about it and he loved listening to our travel stories. In fact, he was so excited to meet overlanders that he connected us with his business partner Alpha, a Ghanaian who lives in Accra. So the next day, we headed towards the capital, where we met Alpha, who invited us to stay at his house.

Alpha is an architect and owns a beautiful house on a compound where he is building more houses. He is a very interesting guy with many skills and interests, but most of all, he is an enthusiastic overlander himself. He drove from Ghana all the way to Sweden in his beautiful Deux-Chevaux, a crazy trip! He is also a passionate filmmaker and made a documentary about ‘Sodom and Gomorrha’, the world’s biggest electronic waste dump in the middle of Accra. Tom was really interested in visiting this place as well so Alpha told us where to go. Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to join us, but he assured us that it was not a problem to go there on our own. The township that developed around the e-waste dump is considered to be safe. So the next morning, we took a taxi to the place and went on a stroll by ourselves. It was an interesting but also intense and shocking experience. The amount of trash was unbelievable but what was far worse, was seeing all these people living right in between these mountains of waste. For them, it’s an opportunity to make money, by collecting precious metals such as copper and bras. In order to collect it, they have to look through the trash and burn the plastic, which is very poisonous and bad for their health. It was truly devostating to see this. However, the people were very friendly and we talked to many of them and everyone was very happy to tell us about their life.

When we returned to Alpha’s house, he introduced us to his brother, who invited us over for dinner. We had a fun evening and later went out to meet a friend of Shaun, who showed us some bars and the food night market in town. We could have easily spent a week at Alphas place, but after two days, it was time for us to continue our trip. We decided to drive along the coast and visit Elmina, a fishermen’s town with a beautiful old castle that was initially built as a trade port but was later used as a slave house.

When we arrived at the castle just after dark, the security guard told us that we could camp on the parking lot. The next morning, some curious people came to talk to us. One of them was Sam, a local journalist, who was in town because of a special festival that was happening that day. He offered to take us on a stroll through the town and we explored the area together. We met many local fishermen who were repairing and building their boats and there were soo many local tourists around, all visiting for the festival.

Since we still had some time left until the ceremony started, we decided to take a tour through the Castle. Sam and his assistant joined us and by coincidence, we were joined by three girls from Ticino, the Italian part of Switzerland. They were there for a vacation. The tour was very interesting and when we were finished, we decided to walk back into town to watch the big parade that was happening for the festival. It was a big parade, where also the king attended, and the streets were packed with people. The parade ended in the small port, where people hopped on decorated boats and everyone was singing, dancing and celebrating either on the boats or on the piers.

From Elmina, we continued further west along the coast. Unfortunately, traffic was terrible and it took us a while to get out of the city. We initially wanted to drive to another beach but since it got late and we were stuck in traffic again in the next town, we decided to stop at a local church and ask if we could spend the night there. The people were very friendly, and we were welcome to stay. The next day, we crossed the border into the Ivory Coast. The border Crossing was simple and easy and we continued straight to the coast. We were welcomed by heavy rains, it was the first country where we actually really realized that we were traveling in the rainy season. When it rained, the road transformed into a river, but shortly after it stopped, everything dried very quickly again. Luckily, the rain only lasted for a few minutes every day. The landscape we drove through was very green, but unfortunately, it was not the green rainforest you would expect, but thousands of hectars of plantations. It weas either rubber tree plantations or palm tree plantations that we saw next to the roads.

Our plan was to spend a few days at the beautiful beaches, the Ivory Coast has to offer. Our first stop was in Assouindé, a small town before Abidjan, the capital of the Ivory Coast. Unfortunately, there were many signs which forbid driving on the beach and wild camping, so we asked at a little beach hotel if we could camp on their premises. The owner allowed us to camp in the parking, which, unfortunately, was behind the hotel and not facing the beach, but the restaurant and pool area were quite nice. We were all tired from driving and the border crossing, so we ate dinner at the restaurant and went straight to bed.

We had been texting with another overlander, Paulo, who was driving in the opposite direction towards us and told us that he had found a nice spot to camp at the beach a bit further west from where we were. We, therefore, decided to join Paulo and his friend the next day. On the way, we stopped in Abidjan, the capital of the Ivory Coast, to get some groceries and Toby needed to buy a new convertor because the old one unfortunately broke a couple of days ago. We found everything we looked for in the very big and busy town of Abidjan, but getting out of this place was another mission. They were repairing the highway, so traffic was rerouted, and everything was just one big mess. It took us about 4 hours to reach Jaqueville, which is only 70 kilometers outside of Abidjan. But finally we managed to get out of the city and arrived at the beach in the late afternoon. There was still time to relax a little, have a beer and chat with our overlander company. We cooked a risotto for dinner and we enjoyed a lovely evening.

The next day, we still had time to share some information about the upcoming route and exchange Sim Cards, and then it was time for us to continue. We tried to find a last spot somewhere along the Ivory Coast where we could wild camp, but it turned out that it was not so easy. The coastline is highly populated, so finding a hidden private spot was almost impossible. We looked at the map and decided to drive into a small fisher town and ask them if we could stay at the beach. The people were very welcoming and happy to have visitors and they let us stay at a beautiful spot right at the beach. It was not private, but this didn’t matter. Everyone from the village came by to say hi; they also brought us some jerrycans with water to shower.

Just when we had set up our camp, a young boy came by. He brought a backpack and sat down with us and started unpacking everything he brought with him. He told us, that his name was Frédéric. Apparently, a white man had bought the land we were staying on at the moment, where he wanted to build a hotel. He was the one who gave the fishing gear to Frédéric, to keep it there until he would come back. He also gave him two surfboards and taught him how to surf. Frédéric told us that he wanted to go fishing and surfing together with us the next day. We agreed, and expected Frédéric to go back to the village for the night, but just when we were about to climb into our cars and go to bed, Frédéric put up a tent in between our two cars and told us he would stay here for the night as well. So just like that, we had some company at our camp :D When we got up the next morning, Frédéric had already caught some fish. He told us a lot about the village and his life here and his plans in life. We ended up staying two nights and we enjoyed the place and company a lot. On our second night, we decided to watch a movie and set up our little beamer outside. We informed Frédéric and he spread the word in the village, so many people joined us to watch a movie – that was an exciting experience for us and probably for them as well 😊

Before we left the next morning, the fishermen from the village proudly showed us a small crocodile that they had caught and killed to eat. It was sad to see the dead crocodile, but we were also happy we didn’t ran into it alive at our camp. Even though it was still quite small, its teeth were super sharp.

We left the small fishermen’s village and drove inland towards the border to Guinea. We spent the night close to a town in the Ivory Coast, where we found a perfect wide open field and asked the local family who was living next to it, if we could camp here for a night. They were super lovely and excited to have foreign guests. After we showed them our cars and the camping set-up, they brought us some fresh passion fruits from their garden. Before we left the next morning, they asked us to take some pictures together. Of course we agreed, but then everyone left again into the house. We were already wondering if they had changed their mind, but then they all reappeared again. They went to change into their most beautiful dresses! It was so cute to see how excited they were about having us as guests. Luckily, we still carry our polaroid camera, so we were able to take some pictures and give it to them, so they don’t have to look at the pictures only on their phones. From there, we drove to the border to Guinea.

week 89 - 91 - challenging roads, countless checkpoints and spooky voodoo

We had only a few kilometers left in Cameroon before we would reach the border to Nigeria, but ahead of us was the trickiest part of the whole route from South to North along the West Coast of Africa. Cameroon and Nigeria are huge countries facing different political challenges and instabilities. Unfortunately, this also leads to security issues due to rebel groups that hide in the mountains. For tourists, there is only one border post open, which means that everyone has to take the dirt track from Banyo in Cameroon to Gembu in Nigeria or the other way, and it’s a track that requires a good 4x4 vehicle and some high ground clearance. Overlanders who don’t have such a car have to ship around. Our timing wasn’t ideal either since it was the beginning of the rainy season. But our Defenders are well equipped and being two cars also gives a lot of security. From the hotel in Magba, where we spent the night, we drove to Banyo in one day. It was the first stretch on dirt roads, and we were not as fast anymore as when we could drive on tar roads. We only managed to drive 86 kilometers in a day, but on the bright side, the route was very scenic, and the weather stayed dry, so we enjoyed the drive through the Cameroon Highlands a lot. Just before we reached Banyo, some dark clouds appeared ahead of us; a big thunderstorm was building up. The minute we arrived at the spot where we wanted to spend the night, it started pouring down. It was a heavy short shower, and the lightning passed us in the distance while we were sitting in our cars to wait for the storm to pass. Luckily, after only 15 minutes, the sky cleared up again, and we could set up our camp. Some friendly visitors from town, who saw us driving here, came to say hi. We cooked spaghetti carbonara and then went to bed, hoping the road would dry until the next day.

We drove into the small town of Banyo early in the morning to fill up our tanks and change money because this was the last town on our way to Nigeria. Unfortunately, there was no diesel at the Petrol Station, but we found someone who sold us some jerrycans - for double the price, but at least we could fill up our tanks.

We left Banyo and started on the muddy track. The rain from last night soaked the roads, and after only a couple of hundred meters, we saw the first car stuck. Luckily, our Defenders were driving very smoothly through the mud. Some other cars struggled more, and once, we even had to pull another vehicle out after they couldn’t get out of the mud anymore. We continued slowly; luckily, the track dried out quickly in the sun. Without any major issues, we managed to drive the whole way to the border of Nigeria. We enjoyed this track a lot, and the scenery was just stunning.

The border crossing into Nigeria was relatively easy. That’s a big advantage of taking small, remote borders; usually, they are quite fast to cross. We reached the town of Maya Ndaga just in time before it got dark. In 12 hours, we drove around 70 kilometers; that’s how slow we had to go that day. In Maya Ndaga, the options for spending the night are either a basic hotel or camping at the military checkpoint because wild camping is not considered safe in this area. We asked the friendly military officers if we could spend the night at their checkpoint, and they welcomed us warmly, like many overlanders before. We parked our cars and used the remaining time before sunset to stroll through town. A soccer game was happening in the center, and everyone was there to watch. As soon as we arrived, the attention quickly shifted from soccer to the three white strangers. The kids loved following us around, and we loved taking pictures with them. Also, we spotted countless old Land Rovers all over town. It was great to be out of the car and interacting with the locals. Before dark, we returned to our military base to spend the night.

We had another day on the dirt track ahead of us before we would reach the tar road again. Unfortunately, it started to rain during the night, and it was still raining when we got up in the morning. This meant the road was quite slippery, but we tried it and drove slowly. The rain didn’t stop all day, but luckily, it was drizzling and not pouring down. We took a short break halfway along the route. While I was making some coffee, Tom checked something on the car and, by coincidence, realized that our front radius arm was broken. This was no good news at all.

We weren’t quite sure where and when it happened, but we knew we still had about 30 kilometers left on rough roads before reaching a village, where we could try to fix it, since it defnitiely needed some welding. We had no other option but to continue even slower than before. Just when we thought we had almost made it, a very damaged bridge crossed a small river in front of us. We checked the bridge out on foot before driving on it with our heavy cars and decided to rather drive through the river instead of over the bridge, since it didn’t look stable at all. When we finally reached the tar road and the small town of Guroji, we asked around if there was a place where we could weld our radius arm. The friendly people directed us to the right place, where we found a welder just at the side of the road. When we parked our cars and the guys started their work, it only took a few minutes until we had around 40 kids around us, watching closely what was happening there. After 2 hours, our radius arm was welded back together – we will not pass any vehicle inspection in Europe with it, but it will hopefully get us home.

Since it was getting late, we asked the village people for a place to spend the night. A man told us to follow him and brought us to his brother’s house, where we were allowed to camp inside the gate in front of the house. We cooked some dinner and the kids stayed and watched us through the fence until they had to go to bed, and early the next morning, they came back to see what we were up to.

We packed up and continued, and even though we were back on a tar road now, it was still bad and nerve-wracking to drive because of the countless potholes. Driving the 320 kilometers to Takum took us the whole day; we spent 9 hours in the car and only took one small break on the side of the road. That’s where we met Salah, a guy from Jordan traveling on his bicycle. We were quite impressed to see someone cycling around Nigeria on his own. After all, we were in an area that was not considered very safe. Even more worrying for us was the story he told us. The day before, he just missed a kidnapping that happened on the road a couple of minutes before he passed. He saw the empty car with doors wide open and cell phones inside ringing, a very scary scene to drive by. We knew we were in a dangerous area of Nigeria, but hearing that an actual kidnapping had happened only a few hours earlier was not calming our nerves. Nevertheless, we continued and asked at every checkpoint if the road was safe to drive. All the officers assured us that it was, saying that after the incident from the day before, they placed more even more soldiers along the roads. We trusted them since there was nothing else we could have done anyway, and drove to Takum. A stretch of about 50 kilometers was very spooky indeed; we saw empty villages with houses completely destroyed and overgrown by plants and no one was living there anymore. Because of the political tensions in this area, everyone there had left their homes and moved to other places. When we finally reached the hotel where we planned to spend the night, we were all quite happy, not just about getting out of the car but also about having that dodgy stretch behind us. We parked our cars inside the gate and the lady working at the hotel’s bar was very friendly and offered to take us to a nice local Restaurant in town because we all didn’t feel like cooking. We hopped on motorbike taxis and drove to a place where we enjoyed some fish and rice before we returned to the hotel and went to bed.

We left again early the next morning because we planned to drive another big stretch. Unfortunately, after only a few kilometers, Toby informed us that Olga’s clutch was not working properly anymore. It got worse and worse, and we were afraid we would lose it completely. We started to reach out to other overlanders we met along the way, who had car problems as well when they were traveling through Nigeria, and luckily, we received a lot of contacts quite quickly. Someone sent us a location of an old Defender which they also used to get some spare parts. I didn’t have much hope though, that this Defender would be the right model and still have a working master clutch cylinder, but it was worth a try. The locations was in Gboko, a small town along the way not too far from where we spent the night. We found the Defender and asked the people there, if we could have a look at it, and we were very fortnuate: it happened to be the same make as Olga, and the master Clutch cylinder was still in. We didn’t know if it was still working, but it was our only chance. It took some time to find the real owner of the Defender, but when we finally got ahold of him, he was willing to take the master clutch cylinder out and sell it to us for a reasonable price. We looked for a hotel where we could park the cars, replace the parts and spend the night. Toby managed to replace the master clutch cylinder in the evening before going to bed, we did a small test run the next morning and everything worked fine. We were able to continue again.

We were now out of the to be considered dangerous zone in Nigeria, which felt good. There were still many checkpoints along the roads with mostly very friendly officers, but we could make some stops again along the way, to buy local street food and even go for swim in the river to cool down a little bit. Also, the orads got better and better. We drove to Itobe, where we spent the night again camping in front of a hotel and continued on our last stretch in Nigeria towards Ilise the following day. Here, we spent our last night camping in front of a hotel, and we found a very cool place for that. The owner of the hotel is an Overlander himself and welcomed us warmly to stay there completely free of charge, and we could use a bathroom to shower, and they even prepared breakfast for us in the morning; it was a fantastic place. Next to the hotel was a nice bar, so after dinner, we went out to enjoy a drink before bed.

The next morning, we first looked for a place to wash our cars before driving towards the border to Benin. The last few kilometers before we left Nigeria, we had to pass countless checkpoints again, but we finally reached the border. In total, we counted 222 checkpoints on our drive through Nigeria, of which 54 actually stopped us. It definitely takes some patience to travel through this country, not only because of the bad roads but also because of the checkpoints. The border crossing into Benin took us another couple of hours until all the formalities were done, and we just managed to drive into the capital Pointe-Novo before it got dark. The main reason for going into this city was to buy a sim card because we couldn’t find one at the border, but unfortunately, all the shops were already closed when we arrived. We had to spend the night in the city and return to the mobile store the next day. However, Porto-Novo was quite challenging to find a good place to spend the night. We drove to a few parking spots, but the security guards always told us we were not allowed to camp, and all the hotels we asked also didn’t understand why we wanted to camp on their premises instead of taking an expensive room. We almost gave up because it got dark when we asked some police officers if they knew a place. They were very friendly and tried to help us. They called their colleagues at other spots around the city and finally escorted us to a place where we were allowed to camp. It was on the main road next to a fuel station, and it was loud, but on the bright side, it was very safe since there were police officers around all night, and we were allowed to stay there completely for free and use the toilet of the fuel station.

In Benin, we needed to apply for our visa for Ghana and the Ivory Coast, but since we entered on a Friday night, we had the whole weekend to spend and explore some other parts of Benin before driving into Cotonou, the biggest city, to go to the embassies. We decided to visit Aubomey, a town up north in Benin, which is famous for its Voodoo culture. This tradition is very strange to us, and we wanted to learn more about it. When we arrived, we started looking for an English-speaking guide. Even though Voodoo is widely spread in this area, it is not easy for a foreigner to find out, if and where Voodoo ceremonies are taking place. At the Royal Palace, now a Museum, we found a guide and someone who could translate into English. Together with the two, we first visited the fetish market, where everything used for voodoo ceremonies can be bought. They also showed us some Voodoo temples, and they promised to try and find out about Voodoo ceremonies happening in the area. The fetish market was quite intense to visit because we saw a lot of dead and alive animals the people use in their ceremonies.

Our guides managed to find out about a Voodoo dance ceremony that was happening close by and offered to take us there. So we went, and what we experienced was unique and very strange. We were brought to a place where many people were gathering, at least 200, and amongst them were some dressed up «Egunguns.» They are dressed-up people, wearing special costumes, and apparently, the people around do not really know who is beneath the costume. The «Egunguns» represent death, and they run around and approach the people around, who then have to give money to them to calm them down and make them turn around. This ensures that death will not come and get them anytime soon. What was strange for us, was that everyone seemed to be very afraid of the Egunguns, because they also tend to get violent if they do not receive the money. Even our two guides were also worried for us to not get hurt. We agreed on an amount we were willing to pay and our guides gave the money to the Egunguns when they approached us. Once, this money was spent, the guides told us we had to leave, and it got quite hectic because the Egunguns were already approaching us again and we had to run away from them. It was for sure an extraordinary experience, but also interesting to see how strongly these people believed in this tradition and how powerful beliefs can be.

We spent the night at a hotel in town, where we asked if it would be ok to camp in the parking if we ate at the Restaurant, and they agreed. In the morning, we drove to the chameleon church, an actual church shaped like a chameleon. Since it was a Sunday, they had a ceremony there as well, it was mostly women and kids and it was very similar to a ceremony of a Christian church. They were singing beautiful songs, and sitting with them for a while and listening to their voices was nice. We then continued towards Cotonou in the South.

On the way, we stopped at Ganvié, a small fishermen’s village built on stilts. For once, we left our Defenders on the car park and took a boat to explore this place. It was quite touristy but still nice to see the people there living completely on water. We saw some small boats with only small kids in it, who were paddling around on the lake without anybody watching them. I’m always impressed how in Africa, a lot of times, even very young kids are left alone in situations we would consider to be extremely dangerous for them. But then again, I don’t know how many accidents actually happen. They all waved at us and seemed to have a great time. We enjoyed a refreshing drink at a bar on stilts and returned to the cars.

Afterward, we drove towards Cotonou and found a spot at the beach just a little out of the town center, where we could camp. We enjoyed the sunset before we cooked dinner and went to bed. The next morning, we got up early to drive straight to the embassy of Ghana to hand in our visa application. We did some things in town, like laundry and buying groceries, and then went to a beach bar to chill. To our surprise, we saw a guy kitesurfing just in front of the beach bar we sat in. Toby quickly got his gear ready, and we helped him to start his kite as well. When it got dark, we decided to camp right there at the beach, since we felt very safe, even in the center of this city. I enjoyed this Cotonou a lot; it’s not too big and busy but still offers some nice restaurants and shops and most important, it has a beautiful and very clean beach.

We could already pick up our Ghana visa the next day and went straight to the embassy of the Ivory Coast to hand in the application. They needed a little more time due to a local holiday the following day. But this wasn’t a big issue since we enjoyed staying around. At the beach, we met Melanie, a Swiss who was in Cotonou with her boyfriend, who grew up in Benin. They showed us some nice places and joined us for dinner at our beach camp. The following day, they invited us over to their apartment for drinks before we went out for dinner all together.

After these couple of days, our visa was ready to be picked up, and it was time to leave Cotonou again. We continued along the coast and drove straight to the border of Togo, which we managed to cross the same day. In Togo, we found a cute little spot at the beach, where we spent the night. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the time to stay around in Togo. We needed to continue because of Toby’s deadline and we agreed to use some extra days in Ghana and the Ivory Coast instead of here, so we left this country after not even 24 hours. Before crossing the border, we stopped at a small bakery and got some delicious pain au chocolat and croissants.

week 87 - 89 - border hopping, driving days and daily challenges

We left Luanda very early, at 5am in the morning, and reached the border to DRC in one day. The road was perfect tar and the border crossing was quite smooth. We were out of Angola in no time and when we reached the DRC side, officers came walking towards us, asking for our passports and the Carnet de Passage, before we even parked the cars. They took our documents and sent us to a tent where we had to present our vaccination card with the yellow fever vaccination. When we returned, back to our cars, we received our passports with the stamps. It was already getting late, so we asked the officers if it would be possible to camp at the border. They first said yes, it wouldn’t be a problem, so we went inside the restaurant at the border post to taste our first Congolese beer Tembo, which was a pleasant surprise! While we were enjoying our beers, an officer appeared and told us that we couldn’t spend the night at the border post. We therefore had to leave and look for a place to sleep. We reached a nice spot just after dark, but while setting up our camps, we realized that mosquitoes seemed to like this place as well. We cooked something as quickly as possible and went to bed to escape the stinging beasts.

The next morning, we got up early and continued on our route, which took us through two busy towns, Matadi and Boma. Other Overlanders have told us that it took them 4+ hours to pass these cities because traffic was crazy and people were just everywhere on the roads. We were more lucky. After one hour, we were already out of Matadi and also Boma wasn’t too busy. We decided to take a break and enjoy a cold drink in town before we continued towards the border to Cabinda. Eventhough the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a huge country, our route only crossed a very small part of it, so after one day, we were already out of the DRC again.

The last part of this journey unfortunately didn’t go as smooth. First, we took a wrong route, which sent us on a very sandy path. We only realized, that we took the wrong road, when a guy stopped us and told us that we were driving towards an inofficial border post, where we would not get our passports stamped. He was very helpfull and offered us to show us the correct way, unfortunately, this meant driving all the way back on the sandy piste. We easily lost an hour driving back and forth. We were all tired and got a bit stressed, since we had planned to cross the border before dark but this seemed impossible, now that it was getting late. To top it off, there was a road toll checkpoint that kept us up for ages. When we finally reached the border post, it was already closed. However, the immigration officer on the DRC side still stamped our passports and even called the guy from the customs who lived close by, so he came to stamp our Carnet as well. We were now out of the DRC, but not yet into Cabinda. We drove to the Angolese border post a bit further down, but of course, nobody working anymore. On the bright side, there were some friendly military officers who invited us to camp right in front of the immigrations building, so we could do the paper work first thing in the morning. The « first thing in the morning» turned out to be at 9am and it was almost 10am until we were ready to enter Cabinda, but we had spent a quiet and safe night at the border post. We drove through Cabinda without many stops, the last Kwanzas we spent on diesel and beer and crossed the border again the same day. We now had reached the Republic of Congo, and after an easy bordercrossing again (2 borders in one day) we heading towards Pointe-Noire, a city at the coast. We managed to buy sim cards and we stopped at a nice grocery store, where we treated us to some ice cream 😃 we also found a super cool spot to camp, at a Restaurant right at the beach. Since we were all a bit exhausted after this day, we decided to eat at the restaurant. Tom and I shared a huge seafood platter and really enjoyed it a lot.

Even though, it would have been lovely to spend a day at the beach, we decided to continue the next day. After all, we and especially Toby has a deadline to be home and you never know what the new day will bring. Some more action was waiting fot us, before we even had left the town. We were still on the busy market road with many people and cars, driving super slow, when suddenly, we heard and felt a push against our bike rack. A taxi driver had opened his door and hit our bike rack, which fell off! We stopped to have a look, and of course, this was a big attraction for everyone around. So many people around us were trying to help or just watching and the taxi driver was trying to tell us that it was our fault. Luckily, it was «only» the swing arm, which broke, so we could quickly take it off and mount the bike rack back on again to continue our journey and leave this busy town. The broken swing arm, we took with us, to fix it another time somewhere else. We continued on a beautiful road through the thick rainforest. On the way, we stopped at a water point where we could fill our water tanks. When we reached the small town of Dolisie, the first place we saw on the street was a welder. We stopped and asked the guys working there, if they could fix our rack. Luckily, Toby is also a trained metal worker, so he knew exactly what we had to do. The welders at the workshop did a good job and after a couple of hours, our bike rack was fixed again.

But of course, this took time again and it was already getting late, so we decided to sleep in Dolisie. We read about a restaurant where Overlanders can camp for free, so we decided to check it out. The owner was very friendly and just when we started to set up camp and to cook dinner, another Defender appeared. It was Maé and Oré, a French couple, traveling North to south. We had already texted each other on Instagram and initially had hoped to meet along the way, but we thought our schedules wouldn’t quite match. It turned out that they were a bit faster than expected and we were a bit slower, since we had to fix our bike rack, and on coincidence, we ended up at the same unofficial campsite. It was lovely to meet them and we spent an evening full of laughters and of course, the next morning, we had to have a look at everyone’s Defender and also went for a dip in the pool, before we all continued our journey again.

We headed north through the Republic of the Congo; we didn’t take the route through Gabon, because the road in Congo is much better. We had three full driving days ahead of us and wild camped every night close to the main road. On our first night, we got stuck in the mud, but luckily, being two well-equipped cars, it was not a problem to pull us out again. We hoped to see some elephants or gorillas along the way, but since we were only driving along the main road, of course, this was quite difficult. On the other hand, we met many lovely locals along the way and made great progress. After 3 days, we reached the border to Cameroon. The border crossing was surprisingly easy. They have a new online application process for the e-visa and it worked very well, we only had to show the PDF we received by mail and then we got the stamp in our passports. Our first night in Cameroon, we spent again at a wild camping spot and drove into the busy town of Yaoundé the next day.

We wanted to drive to Didier’s Garage, another Overlander Hotspot. Didier is a French guy who runs this workshop in town, and he lets Overlanders camp there and also work on their cars. This was perfect for us, as it was time to change the diesel filters as well as the air filter, so this was the perfect place for us to stay. When we arrived at the workshop, Didie warmly welcomed us, and there were also three other Overlanders. Simon from Belgium, who is traveling solo in his Defender, Amy and James from the UK who are traveling with their dogs in a beautiful but huge Sprinter van, and Jung, a Korean guy, who is also traveling solo in his van. It was so much fun hanging out with these guys at the workshop. Toby ended up working on Landies again, but this time, he helped Simon to fix some problems instead of working on Olga. We went out for dinner altogether and had a great time. We decided to take an extra day in Yaoundé to have some time to relax. Toby also wanted to grease his propshaft, so we planned to leave early the following day. For our second night, Jung took us out to a Korean restaurant in town, where we got to experience a very authentic Korean Cuisine, it was delicious and such a fun night.

The next morning when we wanted to leave early, we realized, that our cable to charge our car, was plugged in inside the workshop and the workshop was locked. So we had to wait for the mechanics to arrive… We left the workshop shortly after 8am and just when we passed the many police checkpoints and managed to drive out of the busy town, Toby heard some weird noises again from his rear differential, the one we had replaced in Luanda. This was quite bad, because we were now driving towards the border to Nigeria, and this road was supposed to be very bad. So we were actually driving towards the only section where it was very essential for us to have a fully working 4x4. Also, this border route was very remote, so definitely no chances to fix anything, if we would break down. We therefore decided to turn around and go back to Didier’s place, to have a proper look at the differential. Simon and Jung were super excited to have us back. We took the differential apart but couldn’t really find anything that was broken. So in the end, we cleaned everything thoroughly and put it back together. In the meantime, another car arrived - with a Swiss license plate! Christian and Regula from Lucerne were traveling from Switzerland to South Africa in their car. It was lovely meeting them! We improvised and cooked something with the food everyone could provide and had a cosy evening at the workshop. This time, however, we made sure to not have any cables plugged in inside the workshop, so we were able to leave early the next morning. We managed the whole stretch until Magba, where the tar road ended. We spent the night in a hotel parking, since this area of Cameroon is considered to be not very safe to wild camp, due to some rebels who hide there in the mountains.

week 86 - 87 - mechanics, workshops, and amazing people

From the beach we continued on the EN100 up north. The road was perfect tar except for 60 kilometers of gravel. On the way, we passed another Overlander Defender with two French ladies, who were traveling from France along the west route, just the two of them. They make some very interesting documentaries of their trip, which are quite inspiring to watch, especially for us, traveling in this direction. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to spend a night together, but nevertheless, we enjoyed the quick chat on the road and exchanged our contacts so we could share some tips along our journeys.

We weren’t sure where we wanted to spend the night. Driving again to the beach would have meant, leaving the main road and driving towards the coast for an hour and then back again the next morning, and since we now wanted to bring some distance behind us, we decided to look for a spot just off the main road. For Tom and I, it was our first-time wild camping in Angola (excluding the beach with Marjin and Noortje) and we must admit we were a bit nervous. But this is, what we signed up for; driving up North we would be sleeping mostly in places like this, somewhere hidden from the main road but out in the wild, because on this side of Africa, there are not many campsites. Toby took the lead, since he is more experienced with finding wild camps to spend the night. He checked the map on Google for some possible spots. We found one and drove there to have a look, but when Toby stepped out of the car, he quickly jumped back in; the floor was covered with some huge creatures crawling around. After the first shock, we had a closer look: they were very big but quite beautiful crickets and they didn’t seem dangerous, so we decided to stay 😊

Just when we parked the car and started to cook dinner, a Military Jet flew very close over our heads, and it made a circle around our camp. This was very intimidating, and while we were wondering what they were up to, some more jets flew over us, this time just doing their thing and not minding us anymore. We came to the conclusion, that they were probably just practicing. On Google Maps we saw that a military base was close-by. After these first few stressful minutes, we finally could sit down and eat and we went to bed very tired.

The next day, we wanted to drive to Lobito, a small fisher town at the coast of Angola, which is famous for its old colorful buildings and a nice beach. We stopped at a Paderia (bakery) to get some sweets and had lunch at the Alfa Beach Bar. The owner invited us to stay for the night, but since it was still early, we decided to drive a bit further and check out another place at the beach. We found a tiny fisher village just before sunset and asked the people living there, if it was possible to pass here to drive to the beach. They were very friendly and showed us the only road that lead down to the beach, and it looked quite bad; the rains had washed away most of it. After inspecting the whole section, we came to the conclusion that it should still be possible for our Defenders to drive it. We filled the biggest holes with stones and sand and slowly and carefully drove down to the beach. The whole village was watching us of course😃 But the struggles paid off: the beach we found down there was empty and just beautiful. We collected wood to make a bonfire and had a fun evening at the beach. The next day, all of us were a bit lazy, so we decided to rest for a day and continue early the next morning instead.

From here, we drove inland towards the Calandula Waterfall, Africa’s second largest waterfall, and the Piedas Negras, some famous black rocks close-by. Again, the distance was too far to drive it in one day, so we spent a night close to a local village along the route. We asked a farmer if we could camp on his land and he welcomed us very friendly. We continued towards the waterfall the next morning – the road up there was very bad with many deep potholes. When we reached the hotel, from where you can view the waterfall, Toby told us that Olga was driving very weirdly, she was making a lot of noises and it did not feel good driving her at all. After drinking a beer and taking some pictures of the waterfall, we started checking the car and found that the screws, which were used to attach the suspensions to the chassis were actually too small. Now, that we had been driving a lot of bumpy roads, they were moving inside the holes and already had damaged the chassis. This was really bad and something that we needed to fix as soon as possible. But we also needed a place where we could get the right screws, which meant driving into Luanda, Angola’s capital city, which initially, we wanted to avoid. But we couldn’t change it, we carefully drove to the Piedas Niegras, the famous rocks, which were on the way to Luanda. We spent the night there and continued the next day. On the bright side, we still got to stay at the sleeping spot, which was recommended  to us by the two French girls and some other Overlanders, and it was amazing. Tom and I used the time to do some yoga and Toby already did some further checks on his car. We cooked some pasta and went to bed, ready to be leaving early the next day.

Driving to Luanda, we tried to not exceed 60 kmph because we didn’t want to damage Olga’s chassis any further. I texted Alexander, a Land Rover mechanic in town who was recommended to us. He said we could come directly to his place to have a look at the car. Unfortunately, when we arrived, he wasn’t there, and all his mechanics at the workshop didn’t speak English. He texted us that he needed to sort some things out in town, but that we should start working with his guys and he would try to translate. This was not what we expected and it was not easy to communicate at all. Of course, Google Translate helped, a little, but we really needed Alexander. Unfortunately, he didn’t end up showing up at all on this day, but he offered us to camp at his workshop and promised to come by the next morning. This wasn’t how we had imagined our day and night, but there was nothing we could change about it. We cooked some dinner and spent the night in between old Land Rovers…

The next day, Alexander arrived around 10 am and we finally could start checking Olga. For some unknown reason, he was more interested in checking out our Defender than looking at Olga. He was a very nice guy and he definitely knew a lot about Defenders, but, working together with him, especially focusing on Olga turned out to be a little mission. Tom and I decided to do an oil and filter change as well, since we were already at a workshop and had driven 5'000 kilometers since our last service. We also wanted to do the same for Olga, so Alexander went to buy the filters and oil in town, which took him 4 hours! When he returned just before sunset, we only managed to change the oil and filters on both cars, but Olga still wasn’t ready to leave the next day. We had to accept this fact and arrange ourselves with the situation.

Even though, they weren’t super efficient, all the guys from the workshop were very nice, so we ended up going out for dinner altogether. They showed us a cool local Restaurant and we enjoyed getting away from the workshop a lot. For the next day, we decided to try another tactic; Tom and I left with our car early in the morning, so Alexander would give his full attention to Toby and Olga. In the meantime, we went to do some laundry, buy groceries, and we met with Ana and Fabio, a couple we met in Botswana a few months back. They live in Luanda and took us to an amazing Korean Restaurant, which was a great change of cuisine for once – of course, we brought some take-away for Toby when we returned to the workshop afterwards. Our plan had worked, him and Alex managed to change the screws on the chassis and were just ready to finish up, when we returned. They were about to finish up and took a final look under the car, when they realized that the rear diff was very worn and leaking. Alexander strongly suggested to replace it here before continuing our trip. One thing that made Alexander very trustworthy was, that he didn’t want any money from us at all. He offered us all the second hand spareparts for free as well, and he happened to have a diff for Toby, which was in better shape than his, so we trusted him and his suggestions. However, this meant another full day of work. We were desperate to leave this place but we all came to the conclusion that it would be worth to invest this extra day. On the bright side, in the meantime, we became a little famous in the Defender community in Luanda. The Land Rover Club Luanda reached out to us on Instagram and invited us to visit them and have a braai together. Since we had to stay an extra day, we gladly accepted this invite. Ugo, the president of the club sent us his address and also told us that it would be no problem at all to sleep at his house. We were so much looking forward to a real shower! When we arrived at Ugo’s house, we couldn’t believe what we saw: In the middle of Luanda, he had a 2ha property with 7 horses, and many beautiful dogs, a big pool and about 5 houses, His parents and brothers were also living on this property with their families and they had organized a big barbecue just for us. We had a fun night and enjoyed their company a lot! The next day, we were all a bit hungover but we still got up early to go back to the workshop to get the work done on Olga. It was looking good, Alexander worked hard and finished everything. Ugo and his brother Victor invited us to spend another night at their house and also invited some more people from the Land Rover Community, also Alexander and his wife joined us for dinner. We had another lovely evening all together and Toby, Tom and I were ready to leave Luanda early the next morning.

We were staying in the South of Luanda and needed to go North. Because of the crazy traffic in this city, it alsmost took us three hourse to cross it. When we finally were a bit out of traffic, we wanted to fuel up and continue. Just 10 meters before the petrol station, Olga ran out of diesel. Since the rebuild in South Africa, the fuel level indicator was a bit off. This wasn’t a big problem in Africa though. Very soon, we had many helping hands who pushed Olga the past few meters to the fuel station. However, when we were there, they told us, that we could not pay with our international credit card. I tried to get some cash at the close-by ATM’s but all of them were out of money. It was the beginning of the month, which means, that all the Angolese People get their salary from the bank. It was crazy and impossible to get cash! Luckily, we still had an extra can of diesel with us, so we used this one to be able to move a little. We left the fuel station and parked our cars on a parking lot close by, when Tom realized that Olga was leaking. We opened the front and realized that the steering oil was spilled everywhere. A friendly local who was standing next to us and spoke english very well, came to ask if he could help. We showed him our problem and he straight away went to a shop and brought us some steering oil, he didn’t even want money for it. He also gave us his number in case he could help some more, because he lived very close. We texted Alexander and asked him about his opinion, he recommended to come back to his workshop to have a look at it, but we really didn’t want to drive all the way back. We cleaned everything and refilled the steering oil and hoped it would be ok. Now, we still had the challenge to find fuel. We called the friendly stranger from earlier and asked him, if he could pay for our fuel with his local bank card (which is the only card they accept at the fuel station) and we would transfer him the money. He agreed straight away and came back and we went back to the fuel station together. Once more, we were amazed by the helpful people in Angola! Unfortunately, the next bad surprise was waiting for us: once the tanks were full, we realized that Olga’s fuel tank was leaking, too. This, however, made our decision easier: we definitely needed to drive back to Alexander’s workshop and have a proper look at everything. You probably can imagine how frustrated we were. None of us felt like driving back there. Even worse, it was now 4pm and the rush hour traffic had just started. We all just wanted to scream or cry and definitely not go in direction south again. But it didn’t help. The traffic into the city luckily wasn’t bad, and when we reached the harbor, I remembered reading about the Yacht Club, where Overlanders can camp for free. We decided to try our luck, because everything was better than sitting in traffic for the next three hours trying to drive out of the city again. The next day was a Saturday and everyone assured us that traffic would be way less in the morning.

We drove to the Yacht Club and one of the managers warmly welcomed us. After telling him our struggles, he straight away organized a bucket for Olga’s diesel, and told us where we could park, and then invited us to some beers at the bar – what a legend!! It was exactly what we needed! He was soo lovely and our mood increased a little. And on the bright side, we got to see another beautiful side of Luanda - our campspot was front row with a beatiful view over the skyline of Luanda - which otherwise, we would have missed 😉

Toby left early the next day to drive to Alexander’s Workshop, and Tom and I wanted to refill our gas bottle first and get some Pastel de Nata (a Portuguese sweet) at a bakery to bring to the guys at the workshop. Just when we were packing up and trying to fixate our bike on the rack, which led to another almost breakdown, because the steel brackets were bent and it didn’t fit anymore, the owner of the Yacht Club came to say hi. He offered us to get cash at the restaurant, we could just pay with our international credit card – once again, a stranger just helped us to sort out one of our issues without even being asked. We also managed to fill our gas bottle and drove to Toby, who unfortunately, wasn’t as successful. Somehow, him and Alexander didn’t really get along too well. Probably, because Toby knows a lot about Defenders himself, Alexander didn’t like all his questions and it just didn’t work well between the two. We tried to help with the communication, but we couldn’t do much. Alex told us that the rear bushes were worn, and there were no spare parts at Alexander’s Workshop, so there was nothing much we could do there anyway. We reached out to the guys from the Landy Club to ask if they could organize some bushes for us. They could organize them and so we drove again to Ugo’s place and changed the bushes ourselves. Once more, we were ready to leave the next day, but once more, plans changed… We got up the next morning and Tom wans’t feeling well at all. He was already having flue symptoms the past days but they now got worse, and we didn’t want to take any risks – after all, we were in a high Malaria Risk Zone. So instead of leaving Luanda, we went to the clinic to get a Malaria test. Ugo took us there, he was super kind! Luckily, the Malaria test was negative, but still, we decided we would take this day and relax. We all could use it after the stressfull events from the past days and Ugo and the whole family were beyond welcoming. Tom stayed in bed for a day and Toby and I relaxed at the pool. For dinner, we ordered some pizza and enjoyed it a lot. Also Tom was feeling better again towards the evening and glady had some pizza with us.

Toby and I used the drive to pick up the pizza as a short testdrive with Olga, and found that the steering was still pulling to the right when accelerating, eventhough we had exchanged the bushes. We started a google research and we successfully found the issue: it turned out that the front bull joint was very loose, which luckily, was an easy fix: it was just a screw that wasn’t really thightened, but this could have ended very badly. Toby thightened the screws and we went on another test drive, and finally, the car was driving smoothly again. We were now ready to leave Luanda, after spending a full week here unintended. But in the end, it was necessary to invest the time, there was nothing we could have changed about it. It cost us a lot of nerves but it also led to many new beautiful encounters and some new friends in a place far away from home. Eventhough, we didn’t really plan to spend all this time in Angola, everyday we made another amazing experience with the Angolese people, and this gave us soo much trust and confidence back. And it was also nice to see that even in these stressfull situations, Toby, Tom and I managed to communicate well and function as a Team. We were definitely ready for West Africa now.

week 84 - 86 - visa organization, car repairs and meeting old and new friends in Angola

We crossed the border into South Africa and drove straight to Windhoek. On the way, we passed the tropic of capricorn again - for us, it was already the third time crossing it on this journey :-) It’s hard to believe that we were here with my parents exactly 8 months ago. Where did all this time go?!

We arrived in Windhoek on a Sunday night and wanted to start the next morning by organizing as many visas as possible in Windhoek for our trip up north. Toby also needed to see a mechanic; the first 1’500 kilometers after their complete rebuild of Olga, their Defender, brought up some issues on the car, which must have happened in the workshop. Since we would need to move around in the city a lot, we preferably didn’t want to sleep in the car. The first night, we were invited by Doren, a guy Toby and Martina met while in Windhoek a few months ago. He was hosting a little braai and invited us to join. We ended up spending the night in our cars in his driveway ;-) The next day we left early and started driving to all the embassies in Windhoek to gather information. We discovered that we could organize visas for Nigeria, the Republic of Congo, and the Democratic Republic of Congo here. For Ghana, we needed a residence card from Namibia; without it, we would not receive a visa in Windhoek. There is no embassy of the Ivory Coast in Windhoek, so we would need to organize this visa later, and for the other countries en route, we can either apply online for a visa or we don’t need one at all. After visiting all the embassies, our next stop was the mall, where we took some new passphotos of us and printed all the necessary documents for the visas. We then returned and handed in our first application at the embassy of the Republic of Congo. For 1300 Nam$ (~65 USD), we got our visas within two days, which was faster than what they initially told us, but after sharing our story about Toby’s pregnant wife waiting for us back home, I think they fastened up their process, and we even did not have to pay the “express-fee,” which would have been double the price - yay! We received our passports with the visas on Wednesday and went straight to the Embassy of Nigeria to hand in our next application. The lady working there was very friendly, but also, she didn’t have much power to fasten up things for us. It seemed like it was the most organized embassy of all the ones we visited, and therefore, the process was straight forward and there was nothing to change about it. We had to pay an extra fee of 3000 Nam$ because we are not Namibian residents (~150 USD), but at least it was possible to get a visa after all. The total costs came to 240 USD, including the express fee; it's not a cheap visa, but on the bright side, we already had it the next day. ASnd after we heard many stories from other Overlanders, who couldn’t get the Nigerian visa abroad or had to pay a lot more than us, we were still quite happy with how it went. Unfortunately, we were too late for the DRC embassy on that day, so we only managed to hand in our visa application there on Friday morning. They told us it would take 7 (!) days to receive it; again, we would have had the possibility to pay an express fee (but even the lady working at the embassy told us she would not spend that money because it would not be much faster). After we told her our story again and that we needed to get home as soon as possible because of Martina, who is pregnant and waiting for Toby, the lady however assured us to hurry up. We received the visa for the regular fee of 1200 Nam$ (~60 USD) on Tuesday already :-)

During these ten days in Windhoek, we (especially Toby) spent many hours at different mechanics; we treated us to a couple of dinners out and had many nice braai nights in our super cool Airbnb apartment. During this time, we got to know Toby (and Martina) better, which was very nice. It felt like we had already been friends for a long time. After spending months of traveling and living in the car, we shared a lot of hopes, fears, and thoughts in general about life and especially about going back home to Switzerland. And Talking to Martina on the phone, who was already back, was also interesting and sometimes increased but also decreased our joy of returning home.

On Thursday, we were finally ready to continue our trip up North. Our next destination was Angola, and we had some people we wanted to meet up with. There was Noortje and Marjin, the couple we met the last time Tom and I were in Angola and with whom we spent some lovely days at the beach. Of course, we wanted to see them again since we would be driving through Lubango, the city where they live. Marjin was even able to take some days off work, and we planned to spend some days together at the beach again; this time also, their kids would be joining, whom we didn’t meet the last time. We also wanted to meet up with Maarten and Renske, a couple from the Netherlands, who is driving from North to South along the West Coast of Africa in a fully electric car. And to top this, their goal is to charge at least 51% of their energy from solar power! A very inspiring project. When we told them that we were finally ready to leave Windhoek and on our way to Angola and that we could meet somewhere along the route, they told us that they were staying with a Dutch couple they met on the streets of Lubango while getting some groceries - it turned out that “the Dutch couple” was Noortje and Marjin :-D.

Toby, Tom, and I drove straight to the border to Angola and spent the last night in Namibia at the Piscas Hotel, where Tom and I already stayed before and after we entered Angola the last time. Marta, the receptionist, still remembered us. The following day, we could leave early and directly drive to the border, which took us 4 hours to cross. We still managed to go all the way to Lubango and arrived just after dark. Marjin, Noortje, Renske, and Maarten warmly welcomed us. They even cooked a lovely curry for us, and we spent a great evening sharing maaany stories around the fireplace in their backyard.

The following day, Maarten and Renske gave us a full car tour. It was very interesting to see how they equipped their 4x4 to drive all the way from the Netherlands to South Africa and back up again, using mainly solar power. Of course, they need a lot of space for their solar panels, but on the other hand, they have storage in the front of the car since there is no motor and the battery doesn’t use that much space.

Toby, Tom, and I spent another day at Noortje and Marjin’s place. We cooked “Gschnätzlets and Rösti” for them for dinner (a very typical Swiss dish), and the next morning, everyone was ready to leave and spend a couple of days at the beach, at the same spot we already went together last time. This was a welcome change of scenes after all the visa organization and mechanical work on the cars. We enjoyed the few days on the beach, laying in the sun, going for a swim, Toby even speer-fished his first fish, which was delicious, and Judah and Salome, the two kids, taught us how to catch crabs. We truly had a blast. Unfortunately, Tom wasn’t feeling very well, so he spent most of the time in the shade doing not much; I’m not sure if he had corona; the symptoms were very similar. But luckily, after two full days without driving anywhere, he recovered again and was ready to continue. We said our goodbyes and continued up north. From here, it was also all new territory for us - and we were very excited to explore some more of Angola.

week 81 - 83 - Cape Town quality time, Afrikaburn and mechanics again

Coming back to Cape Town felt like coming home. After spending several weeks in this lovely city, we truly fell in love with it, but this wasn’t the only reason we returned to Cape Town. We came back for several reasons. Our initially planned trip - driving to South Africa in our Defender - was now ending, and of course, money was coming to an end as well ;) Therefore, we had to face the truth and think about going home. A few weeks back, we began to discuss different options. One, of course, was to ship the Defender back and fly home; another was to keep the car in South Africa and continue the trip later. A third one came up, which we initially never thought about. We met Toby and Martina, a Swiss couple who traveled through the Middle East and Africa in their Defender. Our traveling schedule was entirely aligned towards the end, so we thought of driving back home together along the west coast of Africa. This route is less traveled than the east coast and has its challenges. It includes transiting through many countries and therefore includes many border crossings with different entry requirements. Furthermore, these countries face different political situations; some countries are very unstable, which sadly leads to a lot of corruption. But after overlanding for more than a year and a half thorugh Africa, we also became very curious to explore the western part of it. However, it was clear to us that we would not want to drive up on our own. Being more than one car has many advantages, number one of course being safer, but also sharing the workload, for example for researching (many different rules apply to enter all these countries and they change all the time) and having a second car in case you get stuck on bad roads or if you have any other kind of problem. Traveling with someone also means spending a lot of time with them; you get little privacy when you live in a car, and it even gets less when you travel together with someone else. Therefore, it is crucial to have someone who is on the same page and someone we get along with. Even though we had never met Toby and Martina in person, it soon felt like we had known each other for a while already, after we started getting in touch to discuss the option of driving back home together. We were sure it would be a match. But as it goes, as soon as you have a plan, life will come in between to change it. Just after we agreed to go on this journey back home together and started making plans, the two called us in January to tell us that they were pregnant and expecting the baby end of August. They therefore had to make some new plans and after long long talks, they decided that Toby would drive their Defender back to Switzerland on his own together with us, and Martina would fly back to prepare everything for the baby at home. However, before Martina would leave, the four of us planned to go to Afrikaburn (a pretty famous festival in the desert of South Africa) together, to have a great ending to Martina’s trip and a great beginning to our journey back. So, meeting Toby and Martina and going to the Afrikaburn was the main reason we returned to Cape Town. Also, we wanted to go to a suitable Landy workshop in town once more and have our Defender thoroughly checked before starting this journey. Along the west coast of Africa, it is more challenging to find spare parts and Land Rover mechanics. This time, Tom wanted to be there and help with all the work on our car, so he would know better what to do if anything happened. Stefan, who runs a small Landy workshop, had time and booked us in for a few days to check on our Defender. Of course, we now also needed to replace the second-hand injector we installed in Zimbabwe to get us to Cape Town.

Since our home on wheels was now in a workshop for a few days, we needed another place to sleep. Once more, we were lucky. Shaun, Tom’s friend from Switzerland, was joining us for the Afrikaburn with his girlfriend Judith. He owns an apartment block in Cape Town and invited us to stay there for the week before the festival. Besides working on the Landy and preparing stuff for our trip back and for the Festival, we also met up with the lovely people we had met in Cape Town in the past, like my friends from the Yoga Teacher Training and Tom’s friends from his previous trip. Also, we had a little project and upgrade to our Defender going on. We found a very cool second-hand e-bike, which we could use for the Afrikaburn, but also we thought it would be very nice to have a bike to get around once we have set up our camp. Because of the roof tent, it’s always a bit tricky to go to places when you installed everything at a campsite. With the e-bike, we gain a lot of mobility. But we also needed to mount a ramp to the Defender so we would be able to bring the e-bike along on our journey. We found some very cool people in Cape Town who helped us getting a ramp and mounting it to our Defender.

After a week, the Defender and we were ready to go into the desert to Afrikaburn. This festival is organized by a worldwide community. Their biggest festival ‘Burning Man’ takes place in the U.S., and Afrikaburn is the second biggest event after this. The concept is always the same: coming together to create art, costume, performance, theme camps, music, mutant vehicles, and much, much more. All of this is based on a volunteer and gifting culture. This means you cannot buy anything at the festival. You have to bring along all the food and water and whatever else you need for the time at the festival. Tom has already been to Burning Man three times; for me, it was the first time going to a “Burn,” but it was the first Afrikaburn for both of us. We decided to join a camp because having people and a common area to chill is nice. Johnny from Wilderness also came to Afrikaburn and invited us to join him and his camp. It was a super cool bunch of people, very international; we had a lot of South Africans, a couple from Norway, two girls from Germany, and of course, Shaun, Judith and Tom, and I from Switzerland. Our camp organized a brunch everyday. Therefore, we built different groups. Our “Swiss Group” made “Rösti, Speck und Spiegelei mit Zopf und Birchermüesli” (hashbrowns, bacon, and fried eggs with a special bread and Muesli - a very Swiss breakfast) on the first day and everyone loved it. In return, we got treated to Shakshuka, Norwegian waffles, and Tacos. The festival was fantastic and hard to explain in words. Seeing what people build and produce and how creative everyone gets is amazing. Wandering around every day, there is so much to explore. At night, the whole world changes a lot again; everything lights up, there are a million LED and fairy lights and it’s hard not to get lost in the desert. We enjoyed our time and I was super happy we visited this festival.

Unfortunately, Toby and Martina couldn’t join us from the start at Afrikaburn. They realized just a few weeks before the festival that their chassis had a crack, so they had to strip their whole car down to repair the chassis and had it built together again. Otherwise, Toby could not drive the car back to Switzerland. They primarily did the whole job by themselves with some help from a workshop in Cape Town. It was incredible to see what they had managed to do in only three weeks, and luckily, they managed to come for the last four days to the Afrikaburn. We were delighted when they arrived and enjoyed the few days together to the fullest. Of course, we also wanted to contribute a little bit to the festival, so we decided to cook a fondue one night and invited people around us. It was such a cool vibe and people loved the melted Swiss cheese on a piece of bread, definitely one of the many highlights of this week :-)

After the festival, unfortunately, it was time for Martina to fly home. She and Toby drove back to Cape Town, where they had to fix some final things on their car; the 500km drive into the desert and back was quite a good test drive. Tom and I decided to spend a couple of days in the Cederberg because we love this area a lot. Back in December, Tom did a hike called the “Wolfberg Cracks” with Flo and I also wanted to do it, since it sounded amazing. We drove to a nice campsite on Monday and went on the hike early the following day. It was totally worth the slight detour!

After the hike, we drove straight to the workshop, where Toby was waiting for us. Martina had already left to the airport earlier that day. Unfortunately, Toby still had to wait for some parts until the next day, so we were allowed to camp in front of the workshop. Since we had the time and were waiting anyway, we decided to drive our Landy on the lift for a last check as well - what a good idea. We only then realized that our rear brake pads were used and the brake disc was already damaged. It definitely needed replacement. Also, our transfer case was leaking after we had just revised it a few months earlier in Cape Town at another workshop. Of course, we called them to tell them that their job hadn’t lasted long, and they offered to pay for the revision we now had to do again. It’s always costly to drive into a workshop with a Landy, but on the other hand, we were happy that we realized these things before we were somewhere in the bush where we could not fix it properly anymore. We also took the chance and stocked up on some last spare parts.

On Wednesday night, we were almost ready to hit the road, but Toby had to wait one more day to get the new suspensions that he needed. Simoné and Marcel, a couple from South Africa, who had met Toby and Martina in Kenia while traveling, invited us to stay with them for our last days in Cape Town. They have a lovely house in Camps Bay and it was amazing to spend a couple of days there before we started our journey; we spent all day Thursday and Friday driving around the city and organizing things and had two amazing last braais with friends at Simonés and Marcel’s place. We also visited their workshop, where they produced some very cool braai tongs, which they gifted us for our journey back.

On Friday afternoon, we finally hit the road to drive up to Windhoek, where we would try to organize all our visas before continuing up north. Saying goodbye to everyone and Cape Town was a bit emotional for us. Luckily, the first three days on the road together with Toby were already a lot of fun. We met another Defender-couple on the road and share our camp for one night and then continued with our two Landies up north. We had such a good vibe together, and we’re excited to be sharing this next part of our journey with him - and we are very sad that Martina cannot join us, but we’ll try our best to bring Toby back home in time together with the two Defenders and ourselves :)

week 79 - 80 - mountains, ruins and mechanics

The roads from our last stop in Mozambique at Willie’s Mango Farm up to the border to Zimbabwe were much better than the N1 we had to drive the previous day. It was a scenic drive and we arrived at the border around noon. Exiting Mozambique was easy, even though we had to wait for about 20 minutes until the officers stamped us out. We were the only ones at the border, but I’m not sure if the system wasn’t working or if the two immigration officers working there didn’t have much experience with European travelers passing through this little border post. But eventually, we had our passport and the Carnet stamped correctly and were ready to continue to Zimbabwe. For the first time in a while, we were asked to show our Covid certificate first before we could pass to the immigration office. Again, we opted for the visa on arrival, which wasn’t a problem at all. We paid the 30 USD each and received a tourist visa for 30 days. On the other hand, the car’s fees were higher, 30 USD for mandatory insurance, 10 USD for road tax, and 10 USD for carbon tax. We paid the fees and decided to cook a small lunch right at the border, because we were getting hungry. We offered a coffee to the immigration officers and the health check guy, and since it was their time for lunch as well, they invited us to join them to eat together. A lady was cooking Sadza (the typical African maiz dish) with some meat and veggies for everyone working at the border and we only had to bring our plates and were served a delicious meal. We had a blast with everyone asking them about their favorite spots in their country and telling them about our travels.

We first wanted to drive to Chimanimani, a place up in the mountains in the east of the country. We read about a nice farm that offered camping and texted the owner Tempe, who told us we were very welcome to stay at her place. The drive up to Chimanimani was beautiful but also quite long, so by the time we arrived at the Farmhouse, it was already getting dark. We decided to do a quick workout before dinner and bed, and to make new plans the next day. It got quite chilly at night; we could definitely feel the height, but drinking a hot cup of coffee in the morning under some blankets while listening to the birds and watching the horses around our car was very nice and such a change from a couple of days earlier when we were still sitting at the beach in Mozambique.

We wanted to hike in this area and check out Tessa’s pool, a famous waterfall and swimming spot nearby. We packed up our camp and drove to the Outward Bound Center, a big outdoors center where you can park the car to go to Tessa’s pool. The Center is also a place where schools or companies go to spend some days out in nature for team building events and being out in nature. The manager welcomed us warmly and also invited us to camp there. It was a beautiful spot, so we set up our camp and walked to the pools, where we went for a swim and enjoyed the scenery. The manager of Outward Bound also called the national park office for us to ask about the hiking options for the next day. It is mandatory to bring a guide with you to go on a hike in the Chimanimani National Park (like in many other places in Africa) so he informed them that we would like to come to the office early the next morning to go on a hike. They assured us that they would have a guide ready.

At Tessa’s pool, we met Michelle and Adam, another overlanding couple from the UK and Canada. When we were chatting about our travels and plans for the next day, they spontaneously decided to camp at the outdoor center with us and join us for the hike the next day. We cooked dinner and went to bed early, to get up even earlier the next morning to start a big hike. It was still dark when we got up at 5 am. We quickly made a coffee and cooked some porridge for everyone, before we drove to the National Park’s office. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t on our side; it was very misty and quite cold as well. The guide at the office told us, that climbing the highest peak would not be a good idea, because usually, the view is very bad on days like these. Also, it would be a 12-hour hike, and we all agreed that we were not very keen on that. So we opted for an easier route, which took us to different pools and waterfalls along the way. The weather eventually cleared up a bit as well, and we got to enjoy a very beautiful hiking day in Chimanimani. It was definitely one of my favorite hikes of the many we have done around Africa.

When we returned in the late afternoon, we went for another quick dip in Tessa’s Pool and returned to the Farmhouse, where we met even more Overlanders. The campsite at the Farmhouse is only meant for one group, but everyone staying there was totally fine to share the place, so we ended up having a very nice gathering. Since no one felt like cooking, we went to a local restaurant and got ourselves some plates of Sadza, meat and veggies for take-away for a dollar each and enjoyed listening to many travel stories everyone had to tell at the campsite. There was a young couple from Germany who is traveling through Africa on their bicycles (something I always find very impressive and inspiring) and Ellie and Bob from the Netherlands, who had been traveling a very similar route to Tom and me and were about to end their trip in South Africa soon, and of course, Adam and Michelle who had joined us on the hike. Another pleasant surprise was, that Adam turned out to be a great guitar player and singer. Since Tom and I had been carrying a guitar with us for a year and a half without using it (we had that romantic idea of learning how to play the guitar on our travels while sitting around campfires at night - but unfortunately this never happend…) it was amazing that finally, someone made use of the guitar and the rest of us could enjoy listening to the beautiful songs and while drinking a hot cup of tea to stay warm.

The next day we drove to Lake Mutirikwi, to find a nice camp spot at the lake, before we would visit the Great Zimbabwe Ruins the day after. The lake was beautiful and the weather was very hot; we couldn’t wait to jump into the lake. We found a fenced place with access to the lake. There was a guard who told us that for 5 USD, we were allowed to camp. He would also be around all night long for security. This seemed perfect for us. We texted Bob and Ellie who were also keen to camp at the lake. They joined us, and we had a nice evening with a small braai.

The next day, we drove to the Zimbabwe Ruins and shared a guide who walked us through the old place and knew much about its history.

The campsite next to the ruins was a bit run down, and we all fancied a shower or a swim after walking around the ancient ruins in the heat. So we drove to the fancy Great Zimbabwe Hotel next door. We read on iOverlander that it was possible to camp there; however, they charge a lot. Tom was keen on testing his bargaining skills again, so we went to give it a shot - and he was very successful. Instead of paying 100 USD for the four of us, he bargained it down to 35 USD. We parked our cars, went straight to the pool, and ordered a nice drink at the bar. We also had some lovely neighbors at the campground, an expat family from the UK, currently living in Malawi, who made a short Easter trip with their kids. They drove in a regular 4x4 pick-up and brought a big Teepee tent where the whole family could sleep. We had a blast together and lots of wine, so the next day, everyone had to cancel their plans, and we all just had a lazy day again at the lovely pool and stayed for one more night.

Tom and I were under a little bit of time pressure for various reasons (I’ll explain later), so unfortunately, we could not explore the north of Zimbabwe. We wanted to do one more stop in Bulawayo as our last stop in Zimbabwe before driving back to Cape Town. So the next morning, we started the long drive, when suddenly half way in, our turbo failed, and we lost power in the engine. Luckily, the Defender was still running, but something was off. We continued slowly and tried to find a mechanic in Bulawayo, who could have a look at our Defender. We found Aldo, who could book us in the following day. We made it to Bulawayo, and stopped at the train museum first, a very interesting place to visit.

We then bought some groceries (only essentials, since Zimbabwe is quite expensive) and looked for a car wash, before we went to have dinner at the Bulawayo Club, a former gentlemen’s club now open to the public and serving excellent food. The special dinner was to celebrate our 2nd anniversary. We arrived there early and had a drink first, when Bob and Ellie texted us that they also made it to Bulawayo. We told them about the nice restaurant we found and asked them to join us for dinner. One takeaway from traveling through Africa has been to be open toward others. A lot of times, we were invited to join people we had met for family celebrations and birthdays or other gatherings, and we appreciated it a lot! So even though it was our anniversary, we didn’t want to seclude Bob and Ellie. We had a super fun evening together with them, and there would be plenty of time to have a romantic dinner again for the two of us :-)

We camped at a campsite in the city and left early the following day to see the mechanic. Aldo and his wife, Cathy, run a little workshop, and they are skilled and very friendly and helpful. We couldn’t find a mechanical problem, so Aldo referred us to a guy in town where we could check for any electrical issues with the computer. It turned out that finding the right guy with the right computer wasn’t so easy either, but eventually, we found the Richard who owned the correct computer for our car. It turned out that one of our injectors was broken - an expensive problem and not so easy to fix. Spare parts would have to be ordered from South Africa, which usually takes a few days to arrive. We were bummed but once more amazed at how helpful everyone around us was. It seemed like everyone in town started to look for a solution to our problem, and eventually, we found a guy who could sell us a used injector from another Defender TD5 that we could use to get to Cape Town. It was getting late but we managed to change the injector at Aldo's workshop and we were allowed to camp right in Aldo’s and Cathy’s backyard. promised us to bring his computer first thing in the morning. The error message was luckily gone and after a short test run around town, we were ready to hit the road again. However, Richard’s wife, Sheila, didn’t allow us to leave before we tasted the best pizza in town and also went to the market to buy some souvenirs for us - African hospitality at its best :-)

We decided to leave out our last planned stop, Matopos National Park in Zimbabwe, to get to Cape Town as quickly as possible, where we could get our car properly fixed. So we drove straight to the border to Botswana, slept in Palapye for a night and continued the next day to South Africa. Driving these long distances, you realize how big Africa is. From Bulawayo to Cape Town it’s 2’100 kilometers, the same distance as from Zürich to Kyiv! We didn’t want to push our luck with the new injector either, so we didn’t go over 90kmph. This meant spending three full days in the car. But the roads were all in excellent condition, the border crossings were very quick and easy, and we arrived in Cape Town safe and sound. On the way we also celebrated 150’000 kilometers on our Defender! We started the trip in Switzerland with roughly 107’000 kilometers, unbelievable how many roads we have driven since then!