Destination & Trails
With Covid 19 hitting the world by storm, I found myself alone at home this festive season as I could not get the leave I wanted. So with the wife and kids out for the holiday I had to make plans for New Year’s Eve. All I knew for sure was that I want to wake up in the bush 1 January 2021. I have always had a soft spot for De Wildt 4×4 trail and that had me thinking of booking a stand for the night and then on the 1st January I could go for a good 4×4
The idea to end 2020 on a good note came to me in July of 2020. I knew a few of my friends would like to accompany me in anything I could think of. The first two friends that came to mind were Daniel from Robertson and the other was a college friend of mine that immigrated to Canada 3 years ago (Dirk). I knew Dirk would like to visit South Africa, but we did not know if the border regulations because of Covid 19, would allow him to enter South Africa. None the less, I made a booking in
Towards the end of March 2020 we heard the surprising news about Covid-19 but didn’t actually realise the extent of the impact on Tourism and the local communities like Impalila Island. Locals living on Impalila had to take a local mokoro or taxi boats to Katima to source their weekly supplies but at a high cost too. ABOUT IMPALILA AND ITS FLOODPLAINS Impalila is an island at the far eastern tip of Namibia, bounded on the north by the waters of the Zambezi river and on the south by the Chobe River and home to 3000+ people spread between 25
I have been exploring the African continent for well over two years now, and have spent an immense amount of time pondering the major differences between the Western World and the rural Africa I’ve been immersed in. There are a host of obvious differences of course – roads, electricity and running water can be very spotty, military personnel armed to the teeth are an everyday sight, and the weather can be counted on to be extremely hot and humid, except when torrential downpours last months and rainfall is measured in centimetres instead of millimetres. These are the things we notice
This is a story of my husband, who previously loved staying in Hotels, B&B’s & Guesthouses. He appreciated the luxury these offered him. In 2019 we decided to plan a camping holiday in Namibia and purchased a 2nd hand Tentco rooftop tent to “test the waters” and if he didn’t enjoy it, we would book into other accommodation and sell the rooftop easily. After 31 continuous days of rooftop tenting through Namibia, we arrived back in Cape Town and immediately went searching for a trailer with a rooftop as he had enjoyed it so much we decided to upgrade immediately.
We are offering you an affordable opportunity to join one of our overland tours in collaboration with Out There Overland Travel to the stunning Elephant Coast, situated along the pristine eastern shores of South Africa. Witness one of the miracles of nature as the loggerhead and leatherback turtle hatchlings make their way to the surf, hours after taking their first breath of air. Watch in awe as the little hatchlings spend the first moments of their lives in a race for survival. After hatching from their eggs, laid in the sand dunes, they crawl as fast as their little flippers
A JOURNEY TO CHAD’S TIBESTI MOUNTAINS Much of Chad lies within the Sahara – a desert that covers one-third of Africa. A remote backwater, it rarely features on a traveller’s bucket list. But SA4x4 reader Grahame McLeod made it here with a bunch of like-minded Italian travellers on a tour with a trio of tough Land Cruisers. Once blacklisted due to war and conflict between rival tribal warlords, this part of the Sahara is now open to tourism. This month, the first part of a rough 1 500km journey to the Tibesti Mountains… The rugged Tibesti Mountains are as far
Four guys live the overland dream when they rebuild a 1969 Land Rover Forward Control and head north through Africa, taking the slow road to Rwanda. Mitchell Sohn picks up the second part of their story, just as the group leap into Zambia, having survived a road not driven in many years… Nobody said overlanding is for sissies, and our exit route from Angola was a stern test of this. It took three days to cover 160km of the worst road we had ever seen, as we plunged from one giant puddle to the next, each one threatening to tip
SA4x4 joins some of South Africa’s leading herpetologists on a mission in KZN’s Maputaland region to find rare species and teach the local rural residents how to react to snakes. With Opposite Lock on board, we’re all set to drive the region’s challenging-at-times gravel tracks… I was damn glad that tonight we were looking for frogs and aquatic stuff in a croaking and groaning swamp, rather than rare snakes! I knew my companions would go ape if they found a deadly twig snake or mamba, but for now, I was happy the hunt was on for other goggas. I had
Four guys live the overland dream when they rebuild a 1969 Land Rover Forward Control and head north through Africa, taking the slow road to Rwanda. This is the first part of their amazing journey, related by Mitchell Sohn. The idea of an Africa trip was born between four friends from Knysna sometime after high school. All four worked abroad for several years, saving enough funds before coming together to make the trip happen. Jon-Jon Abelheim worked as an English teacher in Vietnam, Harry Maarsingh as an engineer in Saudi-Arabia, Mitchell Sohn on the superyachts in the USA and Mediterranean,
