“To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise, you are doomed to a routine traverse…” – Sterling Hayden, Wanderer

Perhaps foolishly, we’ve both left secure employment for the unknown. The goal is to spend more time traveling Africa, and to have more time to dedicate to family, friends, and health.

That is all well and good, but what are we actually doing and how are we doing it? I write now from Kommetjie, South Africa, a beach suburb on Cape Town’s southern peninsula. We are here welcoming a new addition to the family, a Land Cruiser 78 Troop Carrier, aka a “Troopy”, so called because they are often used by the military or police to carry troops. Sadly, this means we’ll have to sell the Honey Badger, our long-serving 79 series Cruiser.

The Honey Badger has been a loyal companion for 120,000 kilometers through Africa, but we have learned over time that for long term travel, we’d benefit from the ability to retreat inside once in a while. Jenny and I have forgone dinner to sit in the cab reading books while wind and sand whip around the car in the desert, or have eaten a meal of cheese and crackers in our roof top tent while waiting out torrential rains.

The Troopy

A Troopy will also give us some modicum of privacy if we’re camping in more densely populated areas, or, if it’s been raining, the chance to get out of wet clothes before climbing into bed – a luxury not afforded by a roof top tent that you enter from a ladder on the outside.

To the uninitiated, a Troopy is a 78 series Land Cruiser, while the double cab pickup is a 79. This means that otherwise, the vehicles are pretty much the same. For those that hark for simpler times and vehicles that aren’t like rolling computers, this is the vehicle for you. Remarkably, this model year 2022 Troopy has features that are cutting edge. In 1990. Such as:

• Solid axles front and rear. The axle housings are the diameter of trees.
• No factory radio at all – just a plastic blanking plate.
• The 1HZ engine is naturally aspirated with a mechanical fuel pump.
• “Four on the floor” – a low-range gearbox with that second stubby lever down low, not a push button on the dash.
• Factory front and rear differential locks.
• Ash tray included.
• One cup holder. Clearly, this is a work vehicle and not designed for couples.
• No armrests.
• Some luxuries have been added; it has air conditioning! Power Locks!
• No audible beep when you don’t buckle your seatbelt, open the door with the keys in the ignition. We told a friend about this, and he looked at us in disbelief – “That is freedom,” he said with longing. He drives a Tesla.

There are a thousand vehicles more refined and more comfortable, but this simple workhorse is unfussy about fuel quality, road quality or pretty much anything else. Because of these traits, there are thousands of 70 series Land Cruisers throughout Africa, used by the safari industry, police, military, rebel forces and NGOs alike. A 70 series Cruiser is a bit like lingerie; you pay more to get less.

How are we doing this?

Enough of all that. How does one cast off the yoke of employment and jaunt around Africa in an expensive yet archaic vehicle for the heck of it? Family money? No. Stock options from high powered jobs in tech? No. Just the usual way, the boring way. We spent less than we earned and saved a lot of money. We were both fortunate to work in niche fields and had good jobs, and by buying less house than we could afford, we were able to keep our old condo and rent it out. While we’re over here, we have rental income, savings, and will also do some part-time/contract work for our old jobs. That’s the secret recipe. Let’s hope it works.

What is the plan

When we bought the 79 series Cruiser in 2017, we bought it used from a rental company, and it came all set up to travel and camp from day one.

In that car, we spent one night in a guesthouse and then drove away and camped for the next three weeks. This time around, the Troopy is a blank canvas. With only 25,000 km on it, basically a new car and more or less stock. The only modifications it has are a bull bar, rock sliders, and off road tires – BFG KM3s, 235/85/R16s. Not 285s, we’re not animals.

To buy it, I found the car online and had an agent check it out. They test drove it, had a 3rd-party inspection done, and made a final recommendation. We made the purchase via Wise (more or less a wire transfer, but with a better exchange rate. Referral link here), and our buyer handled the registration.

Last September I flew into Joburg, picked up the car and drove it straight to Cape Town to Alu-Cab to have the roof chopped off and a roof conversion installed. If you’re unfamiliar with these – think a Westfalia type camper van pop-top, as opposed to the roof top tent that just bolts to the top of the car. This is the critical feature that allows us to transform the Troopy from a utilitarian bush taxi to a small off-road camper.

South Africa is perhaps the best place in the world to get this sort of work on a vehicle done. Workshop rates are inexpensive, and some of the best 4×4 products are made here.

Arriving in Cape Town in late January, you’d hope that we had a whole plan in place to get the car converted to bush-ready ASAP. We didn’t. We have a good idea of what we want done, but this is a sizable project, and the vendors that do this sort of work here are not big on email and remote customers.

Walk through their door, and they’re great. But try to plan an overland vehicle build remotely – near impossible (we tried). A cottage industry of 4×4 vehicle consultants is borne out of this inefficiency, and you can pay a sort of 4×4 general contractor to manage this for you. This service is expensive and doesn’t always go according to plan, so we’re doing this ourselves.

Tales of vehicle builds gone wrong are many. We heard of people who dropped their car off at a reputable shop in April and it was still not done in October. Another went to a famous 4×4 outfitter and has had their vehicle there since October, and it is still not done in February, and what has been done has been sub-standard. Dangerous electrical installations are common, we know of one person who’s vehicle caught fire and burned completely, a total loss, due to an uninsulated wire installed without a fuse. Patronizing shop owners telling us what we want are many, and delays are near certain.

Not all adventures in Africa are elephants and river crossings. Instead, we’ll be navigating the scrum of traffic in Cape Town, haggling over build details, prices and schedule in the industrial part of the city and running a million errands.

Our daily lives look a lot different here than they do on our usual trips in the bush. We’re staying in a lovely cottage near the beach, courtesy of Jenny’s good friend Sarah. For the time being, we are house and dog sitting while Sarah is away. The two terrors that run our lives are Stan and Steve, two Jack Russells full of personality.

Kommetjie, our little beach suburb, started long ago as a small fishing village and spot for weekenders to visit from Cape Town. Now there’s no commercial fishing and it’s pretty much a surf and beach spot, primarily for South Africans, though some international tourists also find their way here. Here in the Cape’s “Deep South”, as it is known, there is a boho vibe behind the lentil curtain. It is a part of Africa very different from most of the country and the Africa we’re familiar with further north. Oat milk lattes and vegan menus abound. The Mediterranean climate is lovely, though the Cape’s famous blustery wind is common.

To get to Cape Town, where most of the 4×4 outfitters and vehicle shops are, it means a trip “over the mountain” via Oukaapseweg, a winding pass over a saddle in the Steenberg mountains. Going over the mountain is something of a commitment to leaving the bubble of the Deep South and diving into the grittier side of Cape Town. Instead of the haunts of pretty people and tourists at Sea Point and Camps Bay our stomping grounds have become Ottery, Brakenfell and Stikland, where suppliers, workshops and warehouses abound.

We landed on January 21st. We hope to be camping in a mostly converted vehicle by the end of March. Is it possible? Stay tuned to find out.

708km, 10hrs 15min total transit time, all tar via Mafikeng border crossing into Botswana

We started on rural roads, “R” roads in South Africa on the map, and made our way north.  The R roads, in our limited experience, are great, as there is minimal traffic and the roads are of reasonable condition.  There are less trucks to get stuck behind, as the trucks can only drive 80 kph, but the speed limit is often 120 kph.  However, there is no shoulder, and the roads are narrow, so overtaking or meeting large trucks can be somewhat harrowing.

Eventually we passed through Kimberly, famous for it’s diamond mining history, and onto Vryburg where we managed to fill our cooking gas bottles and grab some snacks, and also importantly stock up on biltong, the South African version of beef jerky.

Biltong is a big deal in South Africa (religion?) and comes in many different forms, a sort of Oberto style meat stick, sort of flat beef jerky type, chili, spiced, beef, kudu, and also finely shredded, for putting on breakfast cereal, among other things.  There are many other forms, resulting in the need for specialty biltong stores, found at nearly every shopping complex.  We’re partial to chili biltong ourselves.

The day before leaving Hendrick was concerned about the security situation at our chosen border crossing.  Mafikeng (actually Ramatlabama is the border, but Mafikeng is the town before the border) was the most direct, and it is not a main border crossing and thus we hoped would be less busy.  However, Mafikeng had experienced rioting very recently, and the border had been closed.

Wisely Hendrick made some calls and got ahold of a security company that had experience in the area.  For now they said it is quiet and the coast was clear.  He gave us the phone number to call and verify all was well once we were closer, but we were advised that it would probably be obvious if there was trouble, as there would be police, roadblocks and the like.  We had an alternate border crossing that wasn’t too much of a diversion picked out if need be.

As we made our way further north South Africa became a little more like the Africa some at home might picture in their minds.  The shopping malls and car dealers and chain restaurants thinned out and the small towns started looking a little scrappier.  Occasionally we’d see a donkey cart along side the road, and the traffic through towns became less organized.  But all was very civil, and the long drive proceeded smoothly.

Approaching Mafikeng we started to see odd piles of wire by the side of the road, and then we passed by a petrol station and garage that had obviously been the site of rioting and looting.  Smashed out windows, bare shelves inside, damage to the building, debris everywhere.

This sort of snuck up on us, as we thought we had a little further to go before reaching town.

After that we put together that the strange piles of wire by the side of the road were the remnants of burning tires, with just the steel reinforcement left after all the rubber had burned.  We were on high alert, but the few police we saw seemed at ease and we sailed through town without trouble.

The best part of town was when we saw a butcher with a huge sign advertising “WE ARE LISTERIOSIS FREE!”, but as business usually don’t need to clarify to their customers which diseases they aren’t at risk for when shopping at your establishment, it was a little unconvincing.

We arrived at the border.  African border crossings conjure up all kinds of images.  The chaos of delays, bribes, pushy border officials claiming you have the wrong paperwork, unanticipated fees, touts and fixers promising a smooth transit across, prostitutes and hawkers and lines of trucks waiting for who knows what.

However we will disappoint you.  Even in our uncertainty of the exact procedures, and that we didn’t have the right currency for the one very modest fee, we were across, complete with bathroom stop, in 30 minutes.  I’ve had to wait longer at customs to get back into the United States.

All the border officials were courteous and patient, and really I got the impression that maybe we weren’t fast enough for them, opposite of the usual complaint one reads about border crossings.

The last hour to Mokolodi was a pretty easy drive, but it had been a long day on the road and we were ready to be done.  If we had been more prepared (with lunch, not needing to hunt around to fill gas bottles) we could have shaved an hour or two from the journey.  Regardless, in the final stretch we got stuck behind a long string of cars all patiently driving 60 kph on a 120 kph road behind one solitary car taking its time, with 20+ cars behind it.

We have found this is a peculiarity of driving in South Africa and Botswana, that a car that looks to be relatively new will proceed at serene and gentle pace down the road, resulting in a long line of cars performing daring overtaking maneuvers trying to get around it, threatening the safety of all.  But patience usually wins out and you can find an easy stretch to pass on to continue on your way.

We arrived at the Mokolodi Nature Reserve just south of Gaborone at about 1800, sundown.  Late, as usual.  After checking in and a minor mix up at the reservations counter we were off into the park to camp for our first night properly on our journey.  After such a long day on the road I was tired and ready to get out of the car, so the first sip of beer around the fire was spectacular, we had made it.

Logistical Notes:

Border crossing procedure for Mafikeng

1. Park on the left.
2. Building on the right, make any declarations to South African customs, such as electronics.  I had read about this, that one should bring a typed list of all electronics and corresponding serial numbers for customs to stamp, but I had not taken it seriously when running out of time to prepare for the trip.  Turns out this is a thing!  The customs officer patiently typed up a list on their computer using their form, with me reading off serial numbers.  I confess that in our haste (we were late) we did not declare every last item, so hopefully this will not come back to bite us.
3. Stamp out of SA customs.  All in the same building.
4. Get waved through final check point.
5. Drive no mans land, maybe 1km?  I don’t remember
6. Park on the left.
7. Enter Botswana customs and immigration building, fill out the form provided, get stamped in.  Proceed to the next window to show vehicle paperwork (which they didn’t really look at, just to see that we had some).  The fee was just over 150 pula (152, 156? Something like that).  We went to the exchange booth around the corner and got a terrible exchange rate, so we only changed a little more than we needed.
8. Use the near spotless bathrooms if need be.
9. Drive through the last checkpoint, with a short “where are you headed” and we were done.  Easy.

We are on the road north, to Botswana.  We left the farm this morning after four days of working on the vehicle, watching the farm in action and spending time with our friends.

It feels like we’ve had many departures on this trip already, first our last days at work, then departing California, and now we’ve left the farm.  Now that we are on the road north I suppose it seems like this is the real thing.

Though the purpose of the journey is to go “Into Africa”, as the South African’s say (as if we weren’t already here), I’d like to note the farm is just as fascinating and impressive as I’m sure many of the other sites we are about to see.

On Farming

My first visit to the farm was in 2004 when my friend Hendrick’s father, Herman, ran the farm.  Then I spent six weeks on the farm, working, as Herman, Hendrick and his brother Dannie patiently turned me from seafarer to mediocre farm worker.  In my experience farmers make excellent mariners, but I’m not sure it’s so consistent the other way around.  My visit is a story in itself, but for now I will say I was humbled by the experience and am grateful for the hospitality I was given.  Herman is now semi retired and his eldest son Hendrick, my old shipmate from years ago, runs the operation.

The farm stretches thousands of hectares and has many thousands of sheep, not to mention feed crops, some cattle, horses workers ride to heard the sheep with, and piles of machinery, most working but some not, to manage the crops.  There are irrigation pivots, feed silos, workshops, mechanics, foremen and staff.

When talking to Hendrick and Drien I start to grasp a just how little I know about where wool and lamb comes from, and food generally, and what it takes to make it to market.  They explained many details of the farm.

We watched grading of freshly shorn wool, where graders with keen eyes sort wool into different bins based on it’s quality, which to us all looks pretty much the same.  It has been a particularly wet rainy season and the grass of the veld is high early so the lambs wool is full of grass seeds.  This reduces the value of the wool, however lambs wool can fetch a higher price for it’s superior softness, but conversely a lower price when they are shorn early and the wool fibers have not grown as long.  A farmer must weigh these factors (and much more) and finely judge when the right time to shear is, not only for value but also for the health of the flock.  Shear them too late and with no protection cold weather in winter could kill them.  Without protection of their fleece the flock is vulnerable, as happened to one local farmer nearby who lost his entire flock to a hail storm.

This is of course a tiny fraction of what a farmer and his staff must know to run a successful  operation.  Every time I visit I leave impressed with their resourcefulness and not only deep knowledge of the subtleties of the land, but also the nature of their animals, the economics of the wool and textile trade, employment issues, water management and the list goes on.  And this brings us food and clothing, there is no other way, so thank a farmer!

Land Cruiser Love

In addition to learning about the sheep farm we’ve also been up to yet more preparation for our upcoming journey.  We drove the hour and a half into Bloemfontein to run errands all day and have a few last minute creature comforts installed on the Land Cruiser.

We’ve found that keeping the vehicle organized and at least tidy if not clean is key to happy camping.  On this theme we had a 4×4 shop install door pockets to hold maps and other things, a visor shelf to store binoculars, field guides and whatever else will fit up there and lastly, and somewhat guiltily, a fridge between the seats for cool drinks on the road.

We do already have a 40 liter fridge/freezer in the back, but of course this is not accessible from the cab.  With careful temperature management of the big fridge we hope to have things in the bottom frozen and things in the top refrigerated, all in the same compartment.  The cooler in the cab will give us a little more latitude for keeping everything at the right temperature.

Also in Bloem we made a run to the hardware store to pick up some last minute tools, pharmacy for more first aid kit items, travel clinic for my cholera vaccine.  Jenny already got hers in Cape Town.  We are low risk for cholera, but apparently this vaccine also protects against travelers diarrhea for up to two years, which seems great.  However it does so, as we understand it, by making the inner wall of your digestive system “slick” so that cholera and other nasty bugs cannot take hold.  One does wonder what negative side effects this might have on general gut flora, but I guess we’ll find out.

Back at the farm the Land Cruiser needed some attention.  Mysteriously the driver’s side window had quit working and also the ventilation is stuck in defrost mode.

For the window, thinking it was a bad switch in the door, we took the door switch apart.  It comes out pretty easily, and when it’s unplugged from the vehicle electrical system you can flip it over and disassemble the whole thing, at which point it explodes in a million pieces.  We always try to do this sort of thing with the both of us, so that hopefully between the two of us we can see how it goes back together without missing something important. We managed to collect all the parts and get it mostly back together.

It did look like there were some dirty contacts in there, so we cleaned them up and reassembled it, minus two tiny springs that we couldn’t figure out were they came from.  Yes, I know, it’s not normal to have parts left over when working on your car, and once reassembled the casualty seemed to be the window lock switch wouldn’t stay down, which we can live without.

Sadly the switch surgery didn’t fix it.  So we took it apart again, cleaned it some more, put it back together again, and it didn’t work again.  Of course we knew that it might be something else, burned out motor, shorted wiring, etc, but the switch seemed much more attainable.  Moving on with some trepidation, we took the whole door apart and lo, we found a suspicious electrical connector disconnected.  Snapped it together, put the door switch back in for a test and it worked!  Cheers to small victories, and now we’re a little bit more comfortable with working on the Cruiser.

For a while we thought, well whatever, we can live without one of the power windows, but it turns out that the driver’s window is pretty useful, for paying tolls, talking to police or customs at road blocks, etc, so we’re glad we got it sorted out.

Given that we went out of our way to get a simple a vehicle as possible I’m sure some will be surprised that it has power windows at all, and we were also a little disappointed.  It seems that in South Africa if you want the newer model (from 2007 or 08 onwards) with features like airbags, then one must also have power windows.  Very little of the rest of the vehicle has been changed from the previous model, but that is one of the “improvements”.  Hopefully it isn’t a sign of things to come, because it has power locks too.

The rest of the time at the farm was packing and organizing and agonizing over last minute details, and I began to understand the traction that takes hold and tries to derail a big trip, just needing “one more thing” sorted before we go.  We understood that of course we are as prepared as we’ll ever be, and it was time to set forth.

I have more photos to post, but there is a weak internet connection here at the Khama Rhino Sanctuary in Botswana, so those will have to wait. Check out the next post here.