I do Africa - The Plan

by Dorette Marais on 23 November 2011

As I write this, Our 125 cc delivery bike is almost ready. Guillaume has built a backpack rack on it, tested the distance we can go before refuelling, found petrol stations all the way to Dar es Salaam and made sure we won't go unnoticed by adding the alarm from our security system as our hooter.

We have tested it

We travelled a couple of kilometres (at 80km/h) with a lot of luggage strapped on - and it worked!

By now we also know which visas to get before we leave and which we can get on the borders or neighbouring countries. January will be "the month of persuasion" (and standing in cues at embassies)... it turns out getting a visa without proof of residence or exit from a country can be tricky sometimes.

Most importantly, we have a budget. (Made up of all our savings, the money saved from having a very small wedding, our combined pensions and anything else we could scrape together).

Let me just state now that the aim is Morocco, and vessel the bike but the deciding factor will be the budget. We travel until we have nothing left, be that Zimbabwe or Egypt or Ghana.

If the bike breaks for good or we get to a point where we feel like leaving it behind, we will do just that and hop on trains, mutatu's en tuk-tuks.

But for the first part of our journey we will test this 125cc's abilities and our own patience (but we will cheat a bit).

Our own GPS on the bike.

Here is how we'll tackle it

I leave you now with the first, and easier part, of the journey:

We will make our way from Johannesburg to Francistown (Botswana) then Bulawayo then Livingstone to see the Victoria Falls. From here we will travel to Lake Kariba, then Lusaka and then Kapiri Mposhi. Here we will hop on a train (with the bike) which will take us to Dar es Salaam where we will also visit lovely Zanzibar.

We are now working on the best way to go from Dar es Salaam to Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and then Ethiopia.