GPS route for trans-african south to north. Anyone sharing?

[saliadarunavuelta]

Hey there,

So this is day 538 of my RTW trip. Currently in Brazil, and heading soon to Africa. Many people have done it, and I was wondering if someone has saved all the waypoints in a nice and usable GPS file that I could load on my GPS to, simply, drive north, from South Africa to Egypt, East coast. As you might imagine, at this point I am slightly tired of route planning and moon-like roads that take to nowhere, so I'd really thank anything that could possibly make my life easier in the new and complicated continent I am facing.

[roamingyak]

If you have a Garmin gps then do yourself a HUGE favour by getting a copy of Tracks4Africa. Over a hundred thousand points of interest and many many routes etc

Welcome to Tracks4Africa

[ta-rider]

Hi,

you can download my route around afrika here:

Riding the rough west coast through Africa part 3

LG, Tobi

[MarceloBRTW]

TracksForAfrica is by far the best GPS map for Africa w/ a lot of overlanders' waypoint including some helpful comments (ex. good food, bad hotels, customs, etc..)

But for the big cities in the north the T4A's map is very poor (ex.Addis Abeba, Khartoum, Cairo).

I'm currently using T4A to get the waypoints and the excellent OpenStreetMap (Free worldwide routable Garmin maps from OpenStreetMap) for the maps. It's for free and always updated.

Have a nice African journey.

Cheers,

Marcelo
Dream World Quest

[roamingyak]

Thanks Marcelo,

I had looked at the OpenStreetMap before but had not really gotten it to work well, but have now - they are very detailed!

Thanks! ;-)

[lbendel]

Finding your way through this wild continent is part of the fun - if you're tired of traveling you might look at shipping directly home and come back to Africa with full stamina - it requires it. Unless you absolutely need to write the "W" in "RTW".

Regarding T4A, I agree that they're excellent for southern Africa, but they're prettty much useless in center/west/east/north. And they're expensive: you're much better off downloading OSM maps for free.

Enjoy!

[CaBRita]

Hi,

Check London - Capetown waypoints here:
brighton2capetown

And here waypoints and tracks of almost world tour (with flight from Ghana to Namibia):
2ridetheworld.com

My experience with T4A in North and West Africa is good and now the map is routable, which can help at least when calculating distances.

[langebaan sunset]

Hi saliadarunavuelta

You can download our complete track and way points for Morocco to Cape Town via West & central Africa at Latest news / About us - Langebaan Sunset - Stonehenge UK to Cape Town SA - 2010/11 We were on the road for a year and pretty much logged most things of importance like embassies, fuel stops, shops, POIs, camping etc.....

I would recommend looking at a few other travel websites that have posted similar personal GPS files to get a feel for which routes people took and at what time of year. You can also find a lot of wild camp sites this way.

There is a camping gps database on the HUBB for Africa - we found that a lot of the points are out of date so beware - especially some of the ones located in cities.

Tracks for Africa is good for Southern Africa and has most of the main tracks for North, West & Central Africa but if you go off road you will find it lacks some detail in these areas but its improving all the time. Negative - You have to buy it. We used it a lot and was worth the investment if you plan to spend a long time in Africa.

The OSM is also available but has much less detail than T4A (when we looked at it) but is free and may have been updated since.

Hope that helps

Nick

[Walkabout_fr]

Hi saliadarunavuelta,

I don't have any route to share, but know that if you want a break in your RTW trip, you can stop at our place in Nairobi for as long as you want (Well, sort of... We might eventually kick you out after a few weeks ;-)

Anyway, the house is big, the water is hot, the bike will be safe and we'll be glad to meet a RTW traveler.

You can reach me at walkabout dot fr at gmail dot com

Good luck anyway !

Marc