The Beagle, a 2008 Toyota LC on a drift across Africa, piloted by Jim (FitzRoy) and Ann Colleen.
The Beagle, a 2008 Toyota LC on a drift across Africa, piloted by Jim (FitzRoy) and Ann Colleen.
The hand-wash bowl was solid ice one morning in Mountain Zebra National Park. We’d consulted our weather maps and concluded that Mnt. Zebra would be the warmest place to camp in this area – that it was the warmest place and still the water froze gives you an idea of how cold it can be here in a South African winter.
Still it was well worth the visit. We’d thought to stay only one night and ended up staying for three. The scenery is delicious – cacti and succulents and great blooming aloes. The vegetation is thick, the rocks are intriguing, and 
animals abound. Nearby, the Marakele National Park boasts the largest breeding colony of Cape Vultures. Squadrons of these huge birds rise up over the hills – we were lucky enough to get to the viewing site early before they rose too high for us to see them.
Now we are on to Addo Elephant National Park, and to a long-awaited reunion with our friends Adrian and Rentia. We’ll camp with them for four days, no doubt sitting up well
into the cold night telling stories around the fire and pouring over maps during the afternoons. We’ve missed them, this wonderful South African couple who have been so encouraging. 
We have left the villages and tribes behind and find ourselves 
driving through larger and larger towns. The industry here is flowers – and if you think that sounds pleasant, growing flowers for the floral trade, think again. In order to produce at scale for the European market, every effort is made to grow flowers better and faster. Herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, fertilizers, and any other means are used to keep up with the trade. Greenhouses line Lake Naivasha and its surrounds and the industry does employ many if mostly unskilled labor. Still, the flower trade is here to stay. Kenya does impress us in that it gets things done. There is industry. They aren’t trying to compete with China of course but they have jobs albeit without western-style regulations. They say it with flowers, you know.
On the lake it is cool and rainy, the small shelters are much appreciated. So is the endless stream of very hot water in the showers. We counted it out, 21 days without a hot shower, the last one was in Masindi Uganda. We usually managed something when we needed it but the luxury of these neat and clean showers is worth hanging around for three days – and it’s cheap here, $8pppd. There are lots of birds, hippos and monkeys for entertainment. No wifi – so posting will wait until Nairobi. There we can get laundry done. Maybe get a haircut. We will be styling – and just in time for our scheduled trip to Et
hiopia to see the Afar Depression and the stone churches of Lalibela. We are leaving the Beagle in Kenya and taking a tour – looking forward to seeing how the tour operators do things. It will be a vacation.
Over dinner at the Ruwenzori View Guesthouse the conversation turned to the experience of driving to Murchison Falls National Park from Fort Portal. Two couples had done the more straightforward route, but it took them 11 hours. After considering just how many things can go wrong on an 11 hour drive we decided to break it up by driving south then turning north.
After Jim miraculously fixed the battery cable that broke (and stopped us dead in the water) we drove half a day south of Kibale to Lake Mburo National Park. 
The area surrounding the lake resembles the big hobby farms of the western US. Ankole cattle, the unique Ugandan breed with enormous horns, are raised here in huge numbers and only the really rich could possibly own this many cows. The line between farm and park is fluid as we have seen in much of Uganda. The lake is lovely and birdlife is prolific.
Moving on, it took another three days to reach Murchison – Lake Nabugabo and the town of Masindi provided the stopovers. At Lake Nabugabo the noisy Black-Casqued Horn bills squawked repeatedly and loudly from dawn to 
dusk. They would have been annoying if they weren’t birds. However, in Masindi town at the long-running Masindi Hotel (famous for Katherine Hepburn residing there while filming The Africa Queen) birds were not the problem. It was the ridiculously loud speakers on the street that rang out terrible pop music from 6:30am to well after midnight. An assault on the senses that drowned out the song birds, this relentless barrage of bad taste made us grit our teeth and leave town as quickly as we could. We’d been warned that Ugandans love their loud speakers but this was beyond the 
pale. Even the out-of-tune screeching of the call to prayers in Zambia held no candle to this. Too bad, Masindi is a lovely town but you’ll want to be deaf to live there.
At last, we came to the Nile. The Nile dominates Murchison Falls National Park. One of the world’s seven great rivers, here in Murchison all of the Nile’s water pours through a crevasse only 24 feet wide and 80 feet deep forming the park’s namesake. 
All that water channeled into one tight spot – now that is a rock and a hard place. We imagine kayakers standing at the top (and you can stand right at the top of the drop) calculating which run to take. Haha. If the falls doesn’t kill you (and it will) the crocs at the bottom will find you numb and delicious. We traveled up the river by boat to experience another view of the falls: it is quite spectacular. If the Nile is running very high the falls become washed out but on our visit the water was showing the best drama. That will change. The rainy season is upon us.
Only the campsite locations detracted from thoroughly enjoying the whole of this Park. There is camping allowed in two places, both of them at the southern end of the park. Being Uganda’s largest park, it is problematic to game-drive it and make it back to camp before dark. We spent most of our visit near the Nile and did the far end of the park on our exit day. We encountered so many giraffe that morning, we nearly stayed another day just to play with them. Still, there is more to see in Uganda so on we went.
Rusumo border crossing is at the eastern end of Rwanda, calm and peaceful. We are approached by a fellow just as we arrive who wants to sell us insurance but we aren’t sure what we need so we say no thanks and proceed into the building. There are numbered windows (yes!) and even a bank where we pay our visa fee – this being quite the opposite of handing over $100USD to a guy who puts it in his pants pocket, as happened at Chirundu. From window to window we go, finishing up with a police inspection of the vehicle; opening all the doors and the back really impresses them although the truck is a mess. Thinking we are cleared we drive past a small building and a uniformed guard with a gun waves us down. Good to stop for these guys. He asks where is your insurance? Oh, 
now I get it – we must get some third party insurance. The guard says we can cross the border, just be sure to buy some soon, he says. How pleasant is that? Over in Rwanda, a few meters away, we find Jimmy the salesman and he says I told you so. Yes. Well, at any rate a few minutes later we are off to Akagera National Park and camping in Rwanda.
Akagera was originally formed in 1934 and is the oldest park in the country. In its prime it likely rivaled any park in Africa but as has been the case in so many 
countries, war devastated the park. Reference to the 1994 genocide is constant – it says “before the genocide” and “after the genocide” on many of the interpretive signs in the visitors center. People use the terms in conversation to explain how things are now and why – although “why” is too big a question for a simple conversation about wildlife in a park. A massive NGO has taken on the project of bringing the glory back to Akagera much like Greg Carr is attempting in Gorongosa, Mozambique, another war-torn park. It is a long slow process.
Mixed savanna, woodlands, highlands and lakes and wetlands make for varied scenery and the park is so green it almost hurts. The regulars are here though not in profusion. What the elephant lack in numbers they make up for in size – the bulls we saw were the biggest we have encountered. We were warned of one tusk-less male who is said to be twitchy – he was quite content when we came upon him and we gave him plenty of room. Another bull just roamed around us, showing off his (enormous) good sides. 
The bird life is terrific – two new birds in an hour, the Black-headed Gonolek and the Long-crested Eagle. A black heron showed off by “umbrella hunting” – spreading its wings over the water so it could see the fish more easily. Wonderful game driving.
The animal encounter of note was this Black Mamba. Jim knew right away what it was, there was no mistaking it. Ready for breakfast and coffee, we pulled into this picnic site that looked vacant. 
We weren’t expecting a snake, never mind a snake this big and this venomous. Even if the mamba wasn’t extra deadly, the size alone kept me in the truck. Mambas have a reputation for actually attacking people, not just biting when they are bothered. The mambo can rear its head up by half of its body length – and this one was about three meters long. That’s nine feet, in case you are wondering. Holy cow (or words to that affect). It slithered off to some grasses and we cautiously parked far away and had breakfast. We might drive around all day looking for cats and birds, but now I have seen the Black Mamba and don’t need to see another one. If I have too, though, I hope to see it before it sees me.
Retracing the route we took in 2008 when traveling my niece Renee, we stay at Wildlife Camp, just outside the South Luangwa entrance. We drive into the park on our own. The roads are good, the water level in the rivers is low and grasses have died off therefore game viewing should be excellent. But it isn’t. Now, we don’t expect to see the big cats on every drive, in fact as self-drivers we likely miss a lot. And we do spend two hours at a waterhole watching herd after herd of elephant come in to drink and socialize, a real treat. 
But the herds of zebra, antelope, buffalo; the hyenas and flocks of storks; the hippos, these populations are very low or non-existent at the moment. Other people we meet feel similarly, that Zambia’s game populations have shrunk. Moving on to Bengwelu Wetlands I am hopeful that at least the Black Lechwe and the birds will still be abundant.
Liuwa Plain is Zambia ironed smooth, a three-day size flood plain dotted with waterways and pans. Objects are distorted by the flatness. It is hard to tell if that dark spot is a wildebeest or a buffalo. Or just a big weed. To get into the park we cross a short ferry with the Beagle while the many locals use the mokuros, transporting everything from suitcases to jerry cans of fuel. 
We see only one other couple in three days, Jo and Robin Pope. Robin is a famous safari guide and birder here in Zambia and Jo is an illustrator (she likely does other things too, but we didn’t discuss it). They live in Lusaka and know this country well. I tell her that it appears things haven’t changed much since we visited Zambia almost a decade ago. She had a laugh and said it hasn’t changed at all in 30 years.
People still live an extremely simple life in the country. They worship at the holy church of charcoal. When you read about deforestation for charcoal, this is what they are talking about. Bag after bag, truck load after truck load, the forest is being cut down for the energy to cook porridge. There is an unimaginable amount of charcoal being sold by the side of the road. Is there an alternative? Yes, there have been many clever inventive ways to reduce or replace charcoal use. Will Zambia adjust and change? Change takes a monumental effort and at least three generations; as we have heard from knowledgeable people, Zambia hasn’t changed much in 30 years. So, no, change isn’t coming anytime soon. Churches and orphanages are still present in every town but in this country charcoal is the real king.
Pronounced “titties”, yes. We have landed here on the official first night of our long awaited two -year journey, bearing north from Cape Town. Tietiesbaii is on the western coast with a picturesque shore-line of rocks and sandy camping at the water’s edge. 
The land around the shore is blanketed with fynbos – thorny shrubs and stunted succulents and there is always something colorful.
Our route to Tietiesbaii goes through the West Coast National Park which is famous for its flowers during the season. Once again, SANS Park wows us with its interpretative signage – we learn White Pelicans, beautiful birds, have become a menace to nesting gulls, terns and others. Pelicans arrived at the Cape to eat the offal from large-format chicken processing plants. Those plants were closed down for public health reasons (imagine that) and the ever-adapting pelicans found another protein source in the eggs and chicks of nesting sea birds. People are now hired to keep the pelicans away from nests – job creation in the new world.
South Africans do love to camp. They have a t-shirt that says “Australians call it Survivor, in South African we call it camping.” And it is a Saturday afternoon so there is a battalion of people at one end of the long beach. On the distant end, we can’t hear anything from them except the occasional bottle rocket going off. We wander over after dinner to examine their vehicles. These are serious campers – the amount of gear and gadgets would impress a five-star general. Packed in tent to tent, kids running everywhere, men tending the braai. I’m thinking, these kids (and some adults) are barefoot – in a place where everything is armed with thorns. As kids, we would have been barefoot too. No problem, right? Until as dusk comes on and we are returning to the Beagle, we nearly step on a scorpion. It was huge. I reach for a stick to see if it would move off the road and Jim says, you aren’t going to poke him with that stick?! You gonna need one a lot longer! I abandon the attempt; the scorpion moves. . . a little bit. Ok, now every shadowy mound looks suspicious and Jim spots another ugly one under a branch. We remember to be careful shaking out the sand mat in the morning and not to leave our shoes out for a scorpion hotel. 
SANS Park interpretative signage warns that smaller claws and a larger tail means a more venomous bite from these primitive creatures. You’d be in trouble if bitten not to mention in considerable pain. People worry about lion and elephant and some friends and family asked us if we would be armed on this journey. I’m laughing, thinking of having a gun and shooting a scorpion . . . on my foot. That sounds about right. Thankfully, no, we have no weapons.
The last night with our friends here in the suburbs of Cape Town started with a fine South African braai – meats on the grill – not to be confused with a BarBQ. 
BBQs are for girly-men. This is a country where the milk is labeled full cream, chicken is a salad and no one orders a skinny latte. When in Rome. Dessert is real ice cream with caramel sauce topped with cracked sea salt. Adrian insists we take the uneaten ice cream with us – just what we need on safari – as he and Rentia eat healthy but make exceptions for company.
Adrian and Rentia are such an inspiration. We owe them a debt impossible to repay. They’ve opened their home, complete with kitties Bandit, Sylvester and Fraidy-cat. 
They turned their hard-won knowledge of bush camping into a business. Throughout our contemplation of this long journey they have encouraged us, shared information, and championed the cause.
We first them met at Third Bridge, that mythical camp in Moremi. Hippo had charged through the camp right at dinner time and Jim wandered over to their site to see how they fared. Chatted awhile, admired Rentia’s kitchen and Adrian’s map, then parted ways. It wasn’t until later that I thought, gees, what an idiot, I didn’t get any contact info from them. Days later we were bumping along a sand track and there they were, in the truck coming at us. Hey, I told Jim, there’s that couple – let’s stop and have a natter. We’ve since toured the Kalahari with them – lion everywhere – and Jim was their guest in Cape Town when he took possession of the Beagle. Third Bridge has led us on paths we may not have noticed and we are so grateful for it and for our friendship with Adrian and Rentia.
On Adrian’s suggestion, we took off for the south coast. The trial run of the Beagle led us to where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet at Cape Agulhus along a coastline lined with shipwrecks from as far back as the early 1700s and as current as 1960. It’s not quite the coast of “Skeletons on the Zahara” (an excellent non-fiction account of the survivors of a Dutch ship in the 1800s) but it has its share of drama. On this day, the sea is opal green and only tourists are about. Well, tourists and vicious biting ants. Stopping to photograph the scene is to be swarmed and bitten by these tiny monsters. The tiny will rule the earth.
Penguins rule at Betty’s Bay. The colony of African Penguins is one of two on the southern coast, the other being at Boulder Beach.
These elegant birds are so endangered that any colony is fiercely protected and one must be careful not to disturb them. South Africa does a nice job of combining tourism and protection in this area; one can walk among the birds on boardwalks and the interpretative signs are current, if not a bit depressing.
Moving inland we traveled through the De Hoop Reserve with its enormous white sand dunes and on into the Karoo, a scenic land reminiscent of the desert Southwest in America. The resemblance is only superficial. The American desert is a baby compared to the age of this African land.
About the time the very smallest creatures were forming, the land around us – the coastline and the inland Karoo region – was being contorted and punished by the breakup of Pangea, the super-continent of early earth. This place, the Karoo, is really really ancient. Fossils here date from the Permian Era, 100 million years before the dinosaurs came into being – 100 million years! The creatures fossilized here are bizarre as any to ever form. Looking at them, encased in stone and viewed at the excellent Fossil Walk in the Karoo National Park, I consider how long it took for these creatures to get the way they were – like big flat turtles with no shell sliding around in the muddy primordial ooze on short stubby limbs. And on and on life goes; these creatures petered out and reptiles formed. What a trip thinking about the time frame as we drove through the hot and dry Karoo.
We tackled Swartsberg Summit, a high rocky pass, to see how the Beagle would handle the 4×4 terrain.
I drove up, and I give it a pucker factor of 30 on a range of 1-10. Going down pinged the pucker factor even more – people do this for fun, you know! It was a blast; the Beagle is a rock-crushing machine (and a thirsty one) and she could eat that pass for breakfast. Turning her around is a project – for the many times we need to make u-turns. There are four or five navigation devices on board and we still wind up turning around for missed turns or wrong ways. Narrow streets in the townships are the most difficult to negotiate but people are nice, pointing out the way through.
Here we are in Cape Town, with a photo of the view from Adrian and Rentia’s lovely home. We’re attempting the task of legalizing the Beagle at the Vehicle Dept. The line stretches across eight rows of the world’s most uncomfortable chairs in a fan-cooled room filled with people who thought the process would be quick. Or at least not last 2.5 hours. People range from the resigned to the mildly annoyed, to the downright hostile person who doesn’t understand how Jim could move to the head of the line on the second day. Yes, the second day. He has a get-out-of-jail-free card, coming back after having to collect yet one more document. And then we were legal.
Back at Adrian and Rentia’s, the Beagle is getting a make-over. It could be driven off without taking the time, but having some things taken away and others added will make for smoother camping. The kitchen in particular needs help. Designed by great big Afrikaans men who likely don’t spend a lot of time in that section, and for whom chicken is just another vegetable, it was created to look good in the showroom. A man could convince his wife to overland by showing her how neatly the coffee cups were stored – and it did look neat. We trash it heavily anyway. We know what we want, up to a point, but the only way to be sure is to go camping in it. So off we go, after a week of outfitting, down the coast.
Camping without reservations or even an idea of where we will wind up in the evening, takes a bit of getting used to. Recommendations from expert guide and South African native Adrian are a great starting point. Like any good trip though, the plan dissolves and seat-of-pants navigation takes over. Looking at the paper map we ponder what might be a good stopping spot and we wing it when we get there. This is not a situation for the challenged marriage. Not only do you have to trust the navigator and the map, you have to trust each other. There is a commitment to overlanding that goes well beyond seeing Africa. And so far, so good.
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