GPS coverage in West Africa?

[hejhopp.com]

Hey!

Currently in the process of planning a trip through West Africa by bicycle, using the route from Morocco through Western Sahara, Mauretania, Senegal, Mali, Niger and Chad (those countries at the least), I'm interested to know if there are good and detailed maps available for these regions to use with GPS?

I don't have any GPS unit at the moment, so this question is for me to know if it's useful for me or not, to invest in it.

So –*has anyone here ever used GPS in the countries mentioned above?

Has anyone here ever used GPS when bicycling?

Regards and thanks for any help! /Peder

[Vaufi]

Hi there,

I've done a lot of cycle trips all over the world, but never through the sahara. There are people though that have done it. Try the following link:
http://www.tilmann.com/
He has lots of experience re cycling in Africa.

Regarding maps I can only offer links of German web sites, but they should offer their services in English as well.
Try www.daerr.de
or www.touratech.com

Hope this helps.
Hans

[Rafke]

Hello Peder,

Its quite a complicated matter, but to give you an idea:

1. Gps covers the whole world, but the vector maps inside a gps are a hit and miss. For a Garmin unit you have the world map, but it's none too accurate for Africa, in fact I find it quite useless. Gps enthousiasts are making maps for Garmin themselves but there's nothing interesting for your area yet as far as I know...
One option is to load raster maps on a pda with gps receiver but I wouldn't do it on a bicycle because those things are not strong enough. You'll be better off with good paper maps of the region, or printed digital maps with detailed grids to use in combination with your gps.

2. Use of a gps on a bicycle: take a solid outdoor model with long battery life which you mount on your handlebar. Personally I have a Garmin Etrex model which is just fine on a bicycle.

3. Is it useful? It's all in what you will be doing: if you stick to the tarmac or clear pistes, you won't need a gps. Personally I bought one after some minor navigation difficulties in Morocco, but afterwards in Egypt and Tunisia it just proved a nice toy to draw the tracks on my computer screen back home :-)

If you want to discuss further you can contact me via my website:
http://users.telenet.be/verbeelen

cheers
Raf

[hejhopp.com]

Hey folks!

Cheers for your replies and help! I guess unless I'd be able to find good maps for the region, and would be planning to go off-road, the reasons to use GPS is not much more than for the sake of it, and to use afterwards to digitalize the way I've biked. I wasn't aware that good GPS maps where so few for the region... I think I'll be satisfied with the printed maps then. Much less risky too –*no electronics to rely on; and less to carry (would have to bring printed ones as well anyway)!

Regards and thanks again! /Peder

[Barney]

Don t give up to easily. I can highly recomend the Garmin GPSmap60C. Ive been using it for the last 2 months through West Africa, and its behaved faultlessly.

No coverage problems anywhere, it comes with base map as standard showing some major roads, all major towns, and about every second or third village in Senegal and Mali(some are just a cluster of mud huts). Very accurate generally, but in a few rare cases it shows you travelling 10-20kms off to the side of the road. Nothing that a little dose of common sense can t correct.

Im powering it off a motorbike, but the AA batteries seem to last about the 40 hours they say in the manual.

Loads of memory as well.

Be carefull about buying a cheap one off ebay. It may come with the base map detail biased to the US.