The obvious place to start is the overland rig, right? The biggest upfront expense and the one most fraught with options. I dislike too many options. Narrow it down to three choices or be run ragged. So we started with a list of can’t-live-withouts (reliable, 4×4), must-haves (aircon) and would-be-nices (popup tent as opposed to RTT- rooftop tent). Simple enough.

The indispensable  Africa driving site, 4×4 Community Forum, is an excellent place to start, with its plethora of forums, topics and eclectic people out for a drive of some sort and happy to talk about it.  Gumtree is a good site as well, and this site while sparsely updated has interesting options – Africa 4×4 Cafe. The Hubb, Horizons Unlimited, is another worthy site, full of insights into traveling every continent.

After failed attempts at rig buying, obviously this isn’t such a simple project. Tripped up by the distance and the banking aspects we considered maybe we should just wait until we get there and start looking. Should we buy a truck here, outfit it and ship it? Shopping once we’ve arrived in South Africa wasn’t an attractive proposition – who knows how long that would take. Buying here in the US had its good points, we’d be able to customize it to our liking – and likely to the determent of all the other chores to do. We kept looking.