2010-11 Trans Africa (Landcruiser) 16 Months

Another remarkable journey to the black continent.  In February 2010 I meet with my now ex-girlfriend in Nairobi (Kenya), we headed for the coast where I knew a good camping spot from previous journeys.  From there we went further down the coast into Tanzania and explored a part of Tanzania I hadn't been before, we also visited the Usambara Mountains and finally climbed Mt. Meru.  We drove along Lake Tanganika which I had previously visited in 1996, we made our way into Zambia which welcomed us with the rainy season, for this reason we had to pass through Zambia very fast but not without visiting Victoria Falls.  Next was Namibia, in a few words: desert; wildlife; remoteness; Himba; Soussousvlei; Luederitz; fantastic!

From Namibia we flew for a break back to New Zealand, three months later we went back to Namibia and continued our journey which brought us to South Africa and also Lesotho, the third time for me.  A special country in southern Africa is Botswana, we found a little spot in the Okavango Delta that we named paradise because it was so peaceful there like a human had never set foot on earth and with a high density of wildlife.  We made our way back to Zambia which found us travelling close to the Angola and DRC borders, very pristine there!  We also visited a Chimpanzee sanctuary in this area which was very impressive to experience how human, in the positive sense, the Chimps are, or the other way arround :-).  We crossed into Malawi, visited lake Malawi and a few remote National Parks before we went into Mozambique which was new to me.  I liked the northern part and the Ilha de Mocambique, very nice Coastline.

We drove on very bad tracks north to theTanzanian border and suddenly a very new and modern bridge appeared out of nowhere, we had reached the border and on the other side was a new tarmac road.  We slowly drove on to Rwanda which is very densely populated and also sadly famous for it's genoside.

Next came Uganda with the aim of tracking Gorillas, for myself I had done this fifteen years before and decided not to spend the money, Claudia on the other hand got a last minute discount and successfully went Gorilla tracking.  We drove on to Kenya again and stayed in Nairobi while we got a few visas, we had to send our passports back to Germany to get the Ethiopian visa, travelling Africa overland still isn't easy!  After two weeks we left Nairobi and a week later Kenya, passing Lake Turkana on the eastern side.  In Ethiopia we visited the Mursi, famous for it's lip plates, Lake Tana was another nice spot to stay for a while before we went on to Khartoum the capital of Northern Sudan.  We luckily got a visa for Saudi Arabia there, much easier than years ago for me in Asmara.  We took the ferry to Jeddah and as we had only transit visa we drove within three days to Jordan, from there on to Syria only weeks before the Civil war in Syria started.  Turkey, Greece, Italy, Austria and finally to Germany.

Kenia to Namibia

Namibia to South Africa

South Africa to Malawi

Malawi to Sudan

Sudan to Europe