Camping in Africa
 

I am planning my RTW and working out a route down through Africa.

Whats the form on camping in Africa. Is it safe (robberies, wildlife !! etc)or am I better off planning to use other accomodation. Is there any ? Help please !
Cheers Dave

Camping is fine in africa. We went trans africa down through West Africa, Central Africa, East Africa down to Cape Town. We camped right the way down. We used aussie style swags for nearly all of it. Through north africa and most of central africa was dry so didn't need a tent. Assess safety on a day to day basis. However two key points - one - your often safer bush camping out in the wilds than you are in the middle of a settlement. 2) even when we were in towns / cities, we tended to sleep next to the vehile as there was more risk to it being broken into by sleeping elsewhere. Bush camping is great, its one of the joys of remote travel and definitely worth doing.

But be careful about camping under trees - which are food for some animals and home for others. I have two tails to tell....

Camping at Ngwethla Pan in Hwange, Zimbabwe, we put the tent up under a tree - assured by a guard that it was "not liked by Elephants" - only to be woken in the night by a full grown Ellie Bull stretching up above us. We legged it and hid behind a concrete table. Amazingly, the tent was left untouched but there were foot prints all around it.

At the new camp in Chobe, Botswana, my in-laws put their roof tent under one of the big riverside trees. All was OK until sundown, when a large troop of baboons decided to take up residence above. They stopped barking at about midnight, with the occassional terrifying noise thereafter. The residence of the tent were awoken in the morning by what sounded and felt like warm summer rain dropping upon them - and this was in the winter!