Budget for 4x4 travel in Africa
 

Hi,

What sort of a budget would be prudent for an 4x4 overland trip from Ireland to Capetown? Something like a 110 or landcruizer, 2 people, no big hurry (probably 9 months or so). probably camping 6 nights a week, 1 night regular b&b / hotel just for novelty. mainly self-cooking, few meals out for novelty.

I'm seeing people talking about living off $30 per day per person, but I dont know does that allow for cooking yourself and camping, or what?

Any words from the folks that have done this type of thing will be way more useful than my surfing and preparing excel spreadsheets with loads of head-scratching....

Thanks!
Merv.

If you're camping and cooking yourselves etc, I reckon £10,000 should do it...

Not including carnet, ferries and luxuries like visiting game parks, booze etc etc.

It cost me about £7000 for six months on a 400cc trail bike so your fuel bill is going to be much higher but you should save money on food, accommodation etc.

Hi Ted,

Thanks!

Are you figuring on 1 person or 2? (I know the only difference is food and water but.....)

Merv.

Well that was for me travelling alone on a motorcycle.. I went the long way around lake Victoria and all the south through Mozambique and back west through South Africa. I spent a lot of cash in South Africa because there is just so much to do there and after going without a lot of stuff on the way down, I went mad on the booze, food, facilities etc etc....

You're fuel cost is easily going to be double mine in a 4x4 but if there are two of you then the cost is halfed.

At a guestimate, I reckon £10,000 EACH is still realistic if you don't want to be real scrooges. Just because you take the money, doesn't mean you have to spend it...

PM closer to your leave date and I'll hook you up with some good places to stay and some contacts etc...

Hi Merv,

I'm after the same info as you a realistic budget for 2 people, same as yourself keeping it cheap as possible but with the odd night in a decent hotel and some trips like the gorillas rafting etc along the way.

I'm actually Irish as well but i've been living in Australia for 9yrs or so, we are looking at going next yr, we want to ship our car from Australia to South Africa and drive north to Ireland. We originally planned on driving from Vladivistok to Ireland but changed to Africa.

i tried to pm you but i cant as i only have one post, but if you can pm me your email address i'll get onto you.

we are going in a swb patrol (td42), people say swb too small but nearly everyone here goes on a bike so plenty room.

sorry for rambling on but basically i'm after the same as you an all in realistic budget. what route you planning on??

thanks

We spent about AU$ 100 per day incl diesel and all other costs (visas, ferry, the lot). This was in a Landruiser. We took about 9 months. We camped all the way, but in paid campsites and some 'wild camping'.

Me and the missus just finished the trip from Birmingham to Capetown in an old diesel Range Rover which was pretty good on fuel (30mpg) and we spent over ten grand each (thats in pounds - bought this laptop in Kenya and it doesn't have a pound sign!) - a 12 month trip, and we covered 60,000Km virtually all camping, wild camping whenever we could and cooking for ourselves and living fairly modestly.
Fuel is relatively expensive in much of Africa now and this was probably the biggest expense. I only did a bit of accounting towards the end of the trip and was suprised how much I had spent on fuel - if I do it again, I'll spend more time planning a slightly more sensible route rather than zig-zagging my way down the continent.
Visas and other associated costs on the borders totted up to quite a bit as well.
Hotels aren't all that expensive really, and the occasional few nights here and there won't be the thing that dents your budget. I think we spent more money on camping in South Africa than all the hotels we used put together - can be very pricey down there.
National parks will also empty your wallet very quickly - usually costs between $100-$200 a day
Oh - the beer bill was pretty huge when I totted that up as well, but whachagonnado.

Still the best 20 grand I ever spent! :thumbup1:

K947, I'm only new too, so no PM for me :-(

Thanks everyone - it seems about $100us a day is there or thereabouts the figure.

As to my plans, I'm starting with the budget, to see how long I can afford to go for, and to see what kind of 4x4 transport to use.

on one hand, I really like the idea of an overland truck, with sitting / cooking area inside, and full height walk about and a pass through from the driving area to the back. I like the idea for 2 main reasons - I've been in africa enough to know you get wet days, and I love wildlife watching, so it would be good to be able to park up somewhere, and stay all day without getting out. The second reason is that in Ireland, Campers must have pass throughs from the drivers cabin, and be full height. if they are campers, it's €88 per year to tax it, and no test required. The downside is the extra fuel, plus not being able to fit in a container if you decided to ship it somewhere.

On the other hand, I like regular 4x4's (I drive a 110 as my regular daily vehicle), and i'm used to camping with a rooftent. but, setting up camp in the rain is a pain in the ass. on the plus side, you can container ship it, it uses less fuel than a big truck, and is probably quicker where the roads are quick and boring.

As to a route and destination - either a spell in southern Africa to explore in more detail than we've done on some 3-week trips over the last 5 years, or a spell in South America, where we've never been. South America would require shipping, but Africa I would concider driving down.


but, as I say, I'm still just pre-planning :-)

Merv.

The slower you go, the less it costs ;-)

Africa can be quite cheap or very expensive, it depends on if you are doing the West Coast or East Coast, how fast you go, how much comfort you want, what you drive, what passport you have, how good your vehicle is before you leave, how many expensive East African game parks you go to etc etc

People spend varying sums depending on their travel style. Some people seem to drink at least half of their money(!). Fuel is now expensive - average 1 euro per litre almost?

£500 per month is reasonable for one person, add on up to another £200 for a second person. That is to get through with visas, fuel, food - the expected expenses. Then add on the unexpected expenses like a new tyre (I paid 300 Euros for one for example).

One good tip - avoid almost all of the expensive game parks in East Africa and instead do all your game viewing in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. Much cheaper (eg: Etosha 9 Euros per day per 1 person with a vehicle, Chobe about 18 Euros for the same, South Africa has the excellent Wildcard system: about 160 Euros for a years worth of park entries!!).

Though sadly privatisation is sweeping through Africa and many of the park campsites charge 20-40 Euros for camping inside the parks now (usually 5-10 outside) or in the case of Zimbabwe they are just greedy: $180 for 24 hours inside Mana Pools including camping for one person.

All that aside, a friend of mine did 9 months from Spain to Namibia down the west coast on a 250cc Kawasaki on just over 1,000 Euros.

Hi,

Its easy to calculate: The Visa will costs about $100 per country (Ägypt including arabic numberplates more then 300 euro...malawi, namibia and southafrica free).

Petrol/diesel will be round 1 Euro per Liter (0,30 in Sudan and 1,60 in Mauretania) so just calculate the usage of your vehicle per day depending on how fast you travel.

Food is dead cheap so no need to calculate. Wild camping as well. Insurance documents you can design by your selfe:

Transafrika - Riding on a motorbike through africa part 1

Travel save, Tobi

Wow Tobi, That's a great blog!

Thanks everyone for the comments, it really helps!

If anyone is at the HUBB meeting in Ireland this weekend, Say hello to the guy with the black landrover... it's me.
Merv.

2 adults one child - 1 Zim pp, 2 Brit - for thumb suck costing I use 0.5USD/km - that includes carnet, visas, spares, fuel etc etc.

Interesting - at the RGS weekend Peter Crichton (chasing rainbows) came up with the cost of overlanding is based on distance not time which is a theory I've had for a while and Enzo seems to confirm this

Shorter trips (say a 3 week run to morocco will probabily not follow this as it will be heavily loaded by ferry and getting there costs but for a long term overland that cost is watered down i guess)

Did he put a figure to the cost/mile?

Dan

Budget for London to Cape Town 4x4 and 2 people
 

Merv

We have just completed 1 year UK to Cape Town via West / Central Africa - a full and comprehensive budget breakdown can be found on our website (prep page). for 2 people and 1x 4x4 you need to be thinking £45-£50 per day ALL IN - our download covers everything you need to factor into your plan.

Hope you find it useful

Cheers

Nick

I've just been thinking about costs after someone asked me a question about how much to budget for a Cape Town to Europe trip. The first thing I replied was that it cost us however many dollars per day.

As others have said though, this figure isn't that useful. I did some sums and the numbers are wildly different depending on how long you take, and a per km figure is much more useful. I was too lazy to keep detailed records so can't give an acurate per km cost, but as diesel is probably the biggest single cost I worked this out and suprised myself a bit.

For example if you travel 30,000kms and use 12litres of diesel per 100kms at 1$ per litre your daily fuel cost for a 6 month trip is just under $20. But if you take 12 months to do the same trip your daily fuel cost will be under $10.

So yes, the slower you go the less it costs. And sorry to everyone who works in miles / gallons / pounds but I'm also too lazy to convert all the numbers. :biggrin3:

So I'm a huge nerd and have built budgeting models for this sort of thing.

I budgeted a trip from UK to Mongolia overland in 2009 and had a 3% variance in budget vs. actuals for the trip so I am utilizing the same method for my UK - Cape Town 2012 trip.

As far as visas, that is a known amount, so that is easy to calculate. Most major ferries can be found ...Aqaba - Egypt, UK-France, Aswan-Wadi Halfa...so that is known.

The 3 major variables to deal with are gas, food, and lodging. FOr fuel, I look at the mileage I am driving in each country and then utilize data on average gas prices and create a weight average cost per gallon based on the mileage...and then apply that to my miles/gallon on the vehicle. I had less than 1% variance using that method in 2009. I was quite pleased.

Food and lodging is based more on preference. I have done a set amount per night. if I assume $5 USD per night for 30 nights, then I am essentially assuming heavy camping and maybe a hostel here or there. That proved to be about right as well on my 09 trip. Food was harder as we had the intention of doing our own cooking, but as we got to more affordable countries, it was hard justify cooking when you could get a meal for $1-2. Again, I looked at a per day budget.

When it came to maintenence on the vehicle...we looked at mileage and calculated oil changes, and stuff like that. We also factored in some money for break downs and other issues. For our purposes we used $500, but will probably go higher for Africa.

Incidentals like souvenirs, entrance to parks can be quite difficult, but do research on where you are going and what you are doing and you can probably nail it down pretty closely. I'm new to this site, but send me a private message if you'd like more info on how i built out the models.

Myself and my fiancee are also looking at uk to cape town and back around 2013 if that fits in with your plans. Got a lwb series landie and a fair bit of mechanical knowledge if it's any help. Planning to take a year out and need to organise everything so any help out there or companions is very welcome. Not of course intending to hijack your thred mate!

Hi Folks, Awesome collection of responses.

Since I started this thread, we've changed plans a little. Ok, a Lot.

we are on our way to Morocco, where we will spend Feb,March and April, then a few stops in Europe on our way to Le Harve where we sail to Buenos Aires from. We will then spend over a year in South America.

we're going to be in a Mog camper, Moglander, and traveling at a gentle pace.

Mongman - If your going to be in Morocco early next year, happy to meet up for a few days, but I think our pace will be a bit slow if your heading for capetown!

Merv.

Sorry been so long answering mate. The wee beastie won't be on the road until summer this year. Gonna take in the billing show and a week in the wilds of somerset this year. Next year we'll be deffo up for a trip to strange lands early 2013 for anyone willing to toddle along with us. And don't worry about speed, i have a 28 year old land rover. Speed don't exist.

Just to give something back:

We're travelling in a Mog, which gulps almost 30 litres per 1000km. We eat well - but cook ourselves. We use bicycles to explore areas once we are parked.

Our cost per day is working out between €40 and €50 per day, based on 2.5 months in morocco. We do an average of between 50 and 100km per day, up to 250km on long days. That figure does not include any insurance cost or ferries, or getting to Morocco.

We could do it cheaper by driving less, and cycling more, and maybe that will come.

Hope this helps others!

Merv.

Hey Merv, nice blog, I enjoy reading it.
One thing. Are You sure its 30 litres per 1000km?? Or should it be 300 liters per 1000km (or 30/100)?? Just seems that mog is THE most fuel efficient vehicle on the planet that way :)

Ah! Typo. 30 litres per 100km. Thanks!

And thanks for reading the blog. Sometimes it feels like we're talking into a black hole and not even hearing an echo back as we don't know if folks like it, or even if they are reading it.... So thanks for that comment too!

I like reading travel blogs. Currently prepping (well, more like rebuilding) my landy 101 for overlanding so reading other people stories helps me with making some decisions regarding setting up the car.
And I learned something new - never heard of the weather stone before. Is it a typical Irish thing? I lived in Lake District UK for a while and I could have used one there.:D

I know that feeling. You blog is great. I am really interested in the vehicle build.

Just a quick update on the costs and such. We've now got 16,000km under our belts, and have slowed down a lot - i.e. we dont drive so fast any more. And the fuel consumption is now at 24L per 100km, MUCH better. When I analysed it first, we were spending a lot of time at speed, and in mountains. When we spent more time on the flat, and going slower (usually drive at about 65kph) we get way better fuel economy.