NAirobi to Cape Town and back in 9 months.

[Alanymarce]

Here's a brief post on our trip last year: started in Nairobi, and drove to Victoria Falls in 6 days. We had to get to South Africa quickly to use the visa before it expired, similarly the Namibia and Botswana visas had expiry dates so we had to get through these three countries on a deadline. The Namibian HC was very helpful, the SA Consulate worked as promised, the Botswana Consulates were obstructive and bureaucratic.

So, having arrived on the Zambia side of the Falls, we spent a couple of days there, then a couple of days on the Zimbabwean side, and then:

- a week on Zimbabwe: Hwange NP, Bulawayo (back again after many years), Matobo, the Great Zimbabwe, and then south to...
- 5 weeks in South Africa: Mapungubwe NP, Limpopo Province, Kruger NP, the Rand, Kwazulu-Natal, Drakensberg, the Garden Route, Cape Town, then Augrabies NP and Richtersveld NP, before...
- a month in Namibia: Fish River Canyon, Lüderitz, the Namib and Sussusvlei, WIndhoek, then northwest to Epupa Falls, along the river eastwards, then to Etosha and Caprivi, then...
a month in Botswana (discovering that the immigration people were as unhelpful and bureaucratic as they had been in Washington DC, and we were not given a visa extension): Okavango "panhandle", Tsodilo, Ghanzi, Gaborone, Makgadikgadi/Nxai/Nata, the Central Kalahari NP, Maun, the Okavango Delta and Chobe, following which a long run to and back from Tuli in the last days of the visa, then...
a month in Zambia: after the Kazungula ferry (looked like the same ferry I had taken 40+ years ago) westwards along the Zambezi to Mongu, Liuwa Plains NP, Kafue NP, Kasanka NP, South Luangwa NP, and on to...
- Malawi: which was a beautiful surprise - Majete NP, Mulanje Mountain, Liwonde NP, Cape MacLear, Nkhotankota NP, Nyika Plateau, and Mushroom Farm, before returning to...
- 5 weeks in Tanzania: west to Lake Tanganyika, Mahale and Katavi NPs, Kigoma, Mwanza, then Serengeti/Ngorongoro/Lake Manyara/TArangire, the Usambara Mountains, Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar and Mafia (without the car), then back to Dar es Salaam for a four day run to...
- 3 weeks in Rwanda - another great & positive surprise: Akagera NP, Kigale, Huye, Nyungwe NP, Lake Kivu, Volcans NP, and on to...
- a month in Uganda: Bwindi NP, Queen Elizabeth NP, Fort Portal, Kibale NP, Murchison Falls NP, Kampala, Kidepo NP, Jinja and the "Source of the Nile", Sipi Falls/Mount Elgon, and (after some of the most challenging conditions so far) into...
- a month in Kenya: Kitale, Lake Turkana, Lake Baringo, Samburu/Shaba/Buffalo Springs, then Meru NP, and back to Nairobi.

45,000 Km on the road and a fantastic time.

If interested our blog for this trip is at Un “ocho” en Africa / An “eight” in Africa.