VISAS
For Australians, visas for countries in southern and east Africa are generally available at the border.
Ethiopian visas are now virtually impossible to get if you are coming from the south. You will almost certainly need to post your passports home to get them. See the Tanzania Diary for an explanation. If you are coming from the north, there is an additional letter required to enter Ethiopia. See the relevant diary pages.
Sudanese visas are available via a next-day service at their embassy in Nairobi. See the Sudan Diary for details.
See here for our pre-trip visa summary.
Useful sites include Visa HQ (www.visahq.com/visas.php) and Visa Link (www.visalink.com.au/) On a slightly different tack, Embassy World is a useful resource for finding embassies and consulates: www.embassyworld.com
CARNET DE PASSAGES EN DOUANE
A Carnet is an internationally recognised Customs document entitling the holder to temporarily import a vehicle into foreign countries. In simple terms, its a passport for the vehicle and indicates to Customs that the vehicle will only be in the country temporarily.
The Carnet is a set of vouchers containing all the relevant information that includes the vehicle's make, model, colour, number of seats and vehicle identification chassis number. Every time the vehicle enters and leaves a country, customs remove one of these vouchers. With the Carnet comes an Export Declaration that must be signed and stamped by Australian Customs when the vehicle leaves and re-enters Australia.
There is a cost for the Carnet as well as an indemnity deposit which needs to be posted. The indemnity deposit is to assure the country which issues the Carnet that the vehicle will in fact be returned to that country. The size of the indemnity deposit is affected by a number of factors. For where we may be going, normally you are required to lodge 400% of the value of the car (yes, four times the value of the car, and its much more if you are English). Our carnet is from the Australian Automobile Association (via the NRMA) and we were able to obtain a special indemnity insurance policy from the AAA to cover that security deposit. Thus, we have paid a premium based on 2% of the value of the vehicle, rather than a security deposit of over 20 grand.
Here is the starting point with the AAA: www.aaa.asn.au/touring/overseas.htm
LICENCES
International Driving Permits are available to Australian citizens who are over the age of 18 years and hold a valid Australian drivers licence. IDP's are valid for twelve months from the date of issue providing your licence is valid for that period. IDPs are issued through State and Territory Motoring Clubs (in NSW, that means the NRMA). All you need to do is take a copy of your current drivers licence into your local club with a passport size photo and fill out an application form.
INSURANCE
Most countries in Southern and East Africa will have a third party insurance office at the border. In South Africa, it is included in the price of fuel. We purchased Comesa Yellow Card Insurance, which covers you for most of the countries on the Southern/Eastern circuit, and wish we did it earlier. Comprehensive insurance is so expensive (and so limited) that it's probably not worthwhile. A good insurance resource is www.alessie.com. See also www.lockton.com.
For travel insurance, we certainly needed pretty good cover including unlimited medical cover and medical evacuation cover. See our insurance cover comparison (which we don't guarantee is accurate).
SHIPPING
We used General Cargo Forwarders (www.generalcargo.com.au), largely because we found them slightly more responsive than Cargo On-Line (www.cargoonline.com.au). That said, they were pretty woeful, and there is money to be made by opening a shipping agency with some understanding of the shipping process, and decent customer service! Unfortunately, we constantly had to stay on General Cargo's case. We shipped home from Damietta near Port Said at the mouth of the Suez Canal. Dealing with Egyptian shipping agents, officials and infrastructure is an interesting experience.
MAPS
You'd be crazy to use GPS maps other than those collated from the real GPS data of travellers, for travellers, under the Tracks 4 Africa project (www.tracks4africa.com). We will be running the T4A maps on our Garmin Nuvi 1450T. We will be carrying Michelin paper maps for Southern, Eastern, and Northern Africa.
For Australians, visas for countries in southern and east Africa are generally available at the border.
Ethiopian visas are now virtually impossible to get if you are coming from the south. You will almost certainly need to post your passports home to get them. See the Tanzania Diary for an explanation. If you are coming from the north, there is an additional letter required to enter Ethiopia. See the relevant diary pages.
Sudanese visas are available via a next-day service at their embassy in Nairobi. See the Sudan Diary for details.
See here for our pre-trip visa summary.
Useful sites include Visa HQ (www.visahq.com/visas.php) and Visa Link (www.visalink.com.au/) On a slightly different tack, Embassy World is a useful resource for finding embassies and consulates: www.embassyworld.com
CARNET DE PASSAGES EN DOUANE
A Carnet is an internationally recognised Customs document entitling the holder to temporarily import a vehicle into foreign countries. In simple terms, its a passport for the vehicle and indicates to Customs that the vehicle will only be in the country temporarily.
The Carnet is a set of vouchers containing all the relevant information that includes the vehicle's make, model, colour, number of seats and vehicle identification chassis number. Every time the vehicle enters and leaves a country, customs remove one of these vouchers. With the Carnet comes an Export Declaration that must be signed and stamped by Australian Customs when the vehicle leaves and re-enters Australia.
There is a cost for the Carnet as well as an indemnity deposit which needs to be posted. The indemnity deposit is to assure the country which issues the Carnet that the vehicle will in fact be returned to that country. The size of the indemnity deposit is affected by a number of factors. For where we may be going, normally you are required to lodge 400% of the value of the car (yes, four times the value of the car, and its much more if you are English). Our carnet is from the Australian Automobile Association (via the NRMA) and we were able to obtain a special indemnity insurance policy from the AAA to cover that security deposit. Thus, we have paid a premium based on 2% of the value of the vehicle, rather than a security deposit of over 20 grand.
Here is the starting point with the AAA: www.aaa.asn.au/touring/overseas.htm
LICENCES
International Driving Permits are available to Australian citizens who are over the age of 18 years and hold a valid Australian drivers licence. IDP's are valid for twelve months from the date of issue providing your licence is valid for that period. IDPs are issued through State and Territory Motoring Clubs (in NSW, that means the NRMA). All you need to do is take a copy of your current drivers licence into your local club with a passport size photo and fill out an application form.
INSURANCE
Most countries in Southern and East Africa will have a third party insurance office at the border. In South Africa, it is included in the price of fuel. We purchased Comesa Yellow Card Insurance, which covers you for most of the countries on the Southern/Eastern circuit, and wish we did it earlier. Comprehensive insurance is so expensive (and so limited) that it's probably not worthwhile. A good insurance resource is www.alessie.com. See also www.lockton.com.
For travel insurance, we certainly needed pretty good cover including unlimited medical cover and medical evacuation cover. See our insurance cover comparison (which we don't guarantee is accurate).
SHIPPING
We used General Cargo Forwarders (www.generalcargo.com.au), largely because we found them slightly more responsive than Cargo On-Line (www.cargoonline.com.au). That said, they were pretty woeful, and there is money to be made by opening a shipping agency with some understanding of the shipping process, and decent customer service! Unfortunately, we constantly had to stay on General Cargo's case. We shipped home from Damietta near Port Said at the mouth of the Suez Canal. Dealing with Egyptian shipping agents, officials and infrastructure is an interesting experience.
MAPS
You'd be crazy to use GPS maps other than those collated from the real GPS data of travellers, for travellers, under the Tracks 4 Africa project (www.tracks4africa.com). We will be running the T4A maps on our Garmin Nuvi 1450T. We will be carrying Michelin paper maps for Southern, Eastern, and Northern Africa.
FELLOW TRAVELLERS
There is no better starting point and general resource for anyone interested in a trip like this than the Africa Overland Network: www.africa-overland.net. If there is one site you should see, it's this one!
The South African based Overland Forum also has good general advice and detailed offroad trip reports: www.overland.co.za
Here are the websites of just some of the friends we made along the way:
Glenn & Corrin: Blog
Lachlan, Lucie, Bow Wow: The Vagabond Adventures.
Dawie & Catt: Picture Africa
Kevin: Cape 2 Cairo by Bicycle
Finally, Ron & Viv Moon - the perennial Aussie 4WD travellers, with Australia, Africa, Asia and now South America under their belt(s): www.guidebooks.com.au
Our fellow mechanized gypsies are a surprisingly tech-savvy lot. There are so many inspirational and informative websites out there run by overlanders - start at the Africa Overland Network and get reading. But be warned: it can become an obsession.
CLIMATE
See our climate analysis spreadsheet.
SECURITY
Probably the three biggest known security problems we face are shiftas (bandits) in Northern Kenya, urban crime in Kenya, and urban crime in South Africa.
BUYING A 4WD
Buyers need to price up those modifications that the prospective vehicle needs, but does not have, when looking for vehicles. This was our modification assessment list.
Good resources for Australians:
Carsales: www.carsales.com.au
Auto trader: www.autotrader.com.au
Drive: www.drive.com.au
4WD Action: www.4wdaction.com.au/classifieds/
GENERAL 4WD SITES
4WD Action: www.4wdaction.com.au
Overlander Magazine: www.overlander.com.au
The Landcruiser Club: www.tlcc.com.au
Landcruiser Owners Online: www.lcool.org
IH8MUD: www.ih8mud.com
SA 4x4: www.sa4x4.co.za
HUBB: http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hubb/
Explore Oz: http://www.exploroz.com/
OTHER USEFUL SITES
BBC News - Africa
Lonely Planet
Satellite Phone Store
Satellite Phone Service Providers
South Africa Automobile Association
Weather Underground
Word Travels
BOOKS
See our reading list, in no particular order.
ASSORTED WISDOMS
Use Google Earth. Lots. Apart from being generally awesome, it also has a Tracks 4 Africa layer, so you can view the tracks, notes and photos of other travellers. It's pretty amazing that we can read, on the one hand, an article about the different options for ascending Kili, while tracing those various trails via satellite imagery, and seeing actual photos geotagged to within several metres of the actual vantage point from which they were taken.
The Google Earth map of our actual route (although not our campsites etc) is available via the link on the main page.
Panoramio is another website that allows you to see photos that have been mapped to the location they were taken. Flickr has similar facilities.
WADI HALFA FERRY
The ferry from Wadi Halfa (Sudan) to Aswan in Egypt is a renowned circus. The paperwork (in Arabic), payoffs, and relative timing of the ferry/barge effectively mean that you must use a fixer to get through. We used the fantastically helpful and genuinely lovely Mr Magdi Boshara at the Wadi Halfa end; he even put us up in his home. See the Sudan diary for his details, and more details on the ferry generally. We didn't think much of our fixer at the Egyptian end, Kamal (nor did friends of our who used his services 2 months after us.)
There is no better starting point and general resource for anyone interested in a trip like this than the Africa Overland Network: www.africa-overland.net. If there is one site you should see, it's this one!
The South African based Overland Forum also has good general advice and detailed offroad trip reports: www.overland.co.za
Here are the websites of just some of the friends we made along the way:
Glenn & Corrin: Blog
Lachlan, Lucie, Bow Wow: The Vagabond Adventures.
Dawie & Catt: Picture Africa
Kevin: Cape 2 Cairo by Bicycle
Finally, Ron & Viv Moon - the perennial Aussie 4WD travellers, with Australia, Africa, Asia and now South America under their belt(s): www.guidebooks.com.au
Our fellow mechanized gypsies are a surprisingly tech-savvy lot. There are so many inspirational and informative websites out there run by overlanders - start at the Africa Overland Network and get reading. But be warned: it can become an obsession.
CLIMATE
See our climate analysis spreadsheet.
SECURITY
Probably the three biggest known security problems we face are shiftas (bandits) in Northern Kenya, urban crime in Kenya, and urban crime in South Africa.
BUYING A 4WD
Buyers need to price up those modifications that the prospective vehicle needs, but does not have, when looking for vehicles. This was our modification assessment list.
Good resources for Australians:
Carsales: www.carsales.com.au
Auto trader: www.autotrader.com.au
Drive: www.drive.com.au
4WD Action: www.4wdaction.com.au/classifieds/
GENERAL 4WD SITES
4WD Action: www.4wdaction.com.au
Overlander Magazine: www.overlander.com.au
The Landcruiser Club: www.tlcc.com.au
Landcruiser Owners Online: www.lcool.org
IH8MUD: www.ih8mud.com
SA 4x4: www.sa4x4.co.za
HUBB: http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hubb/
Explore Oz: http://www.exploroz.com/
OTHER USEFUL SITES
BBC News - Africa
Lonely Planet
Satellite Phone Store
Satellite Phone Service Providers
South Africa Automobile Association
Weather Underground
Word Travels
BOOKS
See our reading list, in no particular order.
ASSORTED WISDOMS
Use Google Earth. Lots. Apart from being generally awesome, it also has a Tracks 4 Africa layer, so you can view the tracks, notes and photos of other travellers. It's pretty amazing that we can read, on the one hand, an article about the different options for ascending Kili, while tracing those various trails via satellite imagery, and seeing actual photos geotagged to within several metres of the actual vantage point from which they were taken.
The Google Earth map of our actual route (although not our campsites etc) is available via the link on the main page.
Panoramio is another website that allows you to see photos that have been mapped to the location they were taken. Flickr has similar facilities.
WADI HALFA FERRY
The ferry from Wadi Halfa (Sudan) to Aswan in Egypt is a renowned circus. The paperwork (in Arabic), payoffs, and relative timing of the ferry/barge effectively mean that you must use a fixer to get through. We used the fantastically helpful and genuinely lovely Mr Magdi Boshara at the Wadi Halfa end; he even put us up in his home. See the Sudan diary for his details, and more details on the ferry generally. We didn't think much of our fixer at the Egyptian end, Kamal (nor did friends of our who used his services 2 months after us.)
We support
and are proudly supported by
