Planning the Route
January 21, 2010 by Thomas Tomczyk
There is one cardinal rule about travel in Africa: you have to be flexible. If you don’t you will be humbled and delayed, even stopped in your tracks. The continent offers numerous obstacles that can’t always be foreseen or surpassed: floods, political upheavals, banditry, even targeted tourist kidnappings in some countries. This unpredictability intensifies in Central and Sub-Saharan Africa: in countries that stretch from Uganda to Mauritania.
As I planned out the route from South Africa to Morocco, I knew I’d have to ready to change it as I found out details from the travelers I met along the way. BBC radio and Internet traveler forums also help me adjust the route based on road conditions (particularly during rainy season), my physical strength at the time and political situations in each country.
While from December to February is the hottest and wettest time of year in the eastern part of Southern Africa, the rainy season in countries like Uganda and Sudan begins in April. The idea is to make it into the desert countries of the Sub-Saharan Africa before April.
To get ready for the journey, I purchased the best, highest-detail maps of each country I could find. I had planned to save the GPS mapping for another time, but as I drove a rental car around Johannesburg while I was waiting for my KTM documentation to be processed, I became addicted to using the GPS device. It allowed me to efficiently find my way to appointments, gas stations and hotels, and it alerted me when I came close to a Johannesburg “crime intersection” with a skull and bones logo.
Within a couple days I was so reliant on the GPS that I decided to get one for the journey. I purchased a Garmin Nuvi 205 with maps of southern Africa preloaded, which is standard when you purchase a GPS here. For countries north of Zambia, I bought the Tracks4Africa map set that is available at camping stores in South Africa or can downloaded from the Internet.
After five weeks in Southern Africa, the Garmin’s cost easily repaid itself from the savings in time, frustration and gasoline that would have been expended while driving lost and on toll roads that my GPS filtered out.
From my previous forays into Africa I realized that marked “main highways” or “national roads” are not necessarily paved, or they can be riddled with potholes. A well-maintained gravel road during the dry season is a better option. Rain, dust storms and especially wind are also factors that are ignored at one’s own peril while traveling in Africa. The wind on South Africa’s southern coast can blow a motorcycle across a lane with ease.
Most African countries have a paved road network connecting their major cities. It is possible to stay mostly on paved roads when traveling from Cape Town to Cairo, but changing my final destination to Morocco placed on my path many Central African countries with minimal road infrastructure. As a given, I wanted to have an option to go off road, something that the KTM 640 Adventure was built for.
You can find additional details about my progress at www.AfricaHeartBeat.com.
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