Kumbu-Kumbu Safari: Cape Town to Dar es Salaam in a Disco TD5

In Swahili, the lingua franca of East and Central Africa, ‘kumbu’ means memory. Kumbu-kumbu, as you may have guessed, means memories.

‘Safari’ is also a Swahili word, meaning ‘journey’, as opposed to the common assumption, a holiday to the game parks of Africa.

To a certain extent our journey is a drive down memory lane. I worked and travelled in this region forty years ago. Now my wife, Annie, and I are both retired and have the time to spare, I would like to show her and share with her some of the places that have stayed prominent in my mind, despite the passage of time, our marriage, twin boys and a time consuming business here in Blighty.

We lived together in Kenya for four years in the early 1990’s, when I was working for AMREF, the public health charity based near Wilson Airport, Nairobi, who also run the Flying Doctor Service. Our connection with East Africa was finally severed in 2006 when we handed over the knitting project Annie had started and developed for disadvantaged women in Nairobi.

Our journey begins in Johannesburg, South Africa at the end of November; when we fly down to collect the Land Rover Discovery TD5 I bought there after a brief trip to Cape Town and Jo’burg last July. Since then it has been in the capable hands of Peter Street, who runs Landyworx, an independent Land Rover service agency and who prepares ‘Landys’ for overland trips such as ours. Using Whatsapp, the free messaging, photo sharing and voice calling app, we have managed to deal with all the issues arising on a thirteen year old vehicle and have agreed the extras necessary to make the trip reasonably bearable and safe for a couple of old codgers like us!

We have also bought - and Peter is preparing for us - an off-road camping trailer, built locally by Camptech. It unfolds to provide an easily accessible double bed, raised off the ground, but not as high as a roof top tent, the sleeping arrangement preferred by most overlanders. Frankly we don’t fancy the climb up the steep ladder that comes with this arrangement (or the climb down it in the middle of the night for the toilet) and the difference, security wise, is minimal. We will be carrying a two berth safari tent, as well, for guests we expect to travel with us along some sections of the journey.

Our Kumbu-Kumbu Safari will take us approximately three months and will include passage through Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi and Tanzania. Our end point will be Dar es Salaam, where our son Tom lives and works with his wife, Gemma.

I've designed a website for the trip, where I'll be posting regular journal entries - views from the road - and updating the home page photos and video link.

www.kumbu-safari.com

I would appreciate any advice or comments you have for us, especially recommendations of where to stay if you have been that way yourself. No doubt I will have some questions, for you, about using the Disco 2 and observations on that, which I will post to the forum.

Your photos look great. Looking forward to some updates. I can give you some recommendations once you get to Malawi

Thanks for yours. I'd welcome any advice you can give on Malawi, especially campsite recommends. At the moment we plan to cross Mozambique from Zimbabwe, through Tete, and work our way up to the lake from there.

VERY envious of your trip... I will follow your progress.... I spent nearly 10 years working on farms in Zambia and Malawi... don't rule out Zambia especially North and South Luangwa... I also spent a very adventurous week in the far north of Zambia touring various waterfalls, ending up snorkelling in Mpulungu amongst aquarium fish in Lake Tanganyka. Heading north through Malawi, Nkhata Bay - Mayoka Village was a well set up camping with basic rooms, but that was back in 2005!
I did an overland trip with Drifters, a South African company based in Jo'berg... they have a good network of campsites and lodges throughout your route, if you get fed up with camping.

I'll definitely contact Drifters, when we're in Joburg next week picking up the Disco. I've chosen the route through Zimbawe, in preference to Zambia, because I still have vivid memories of Zim (Rhodesia), from the 1970's when I taught at a school near Gweru and travelled widely. I'm looking forward to sharing some of the most memorable locations there with my wife, Annie. However, the economic situation there seems to fluctuate from difficult to dreadful and back and we may have to rethink our route North if fuel and food shortages and increasing harassment at roadblocks and checkpoints makes this part of the journey impossible. Drifters may have some advice to offer and I'm checking the expedition section of the South African 4x4 Community Forum regularly for updates.

You may ask, ‘Why a Land Rover?’ I should explain my choice of vehicle for our safari. When I first started planning the trip five years ago I was thinking of buying and preparing a car in the UK, shipping it to South Africa and starting our journey from Cape Town.

I read up on 4 x 4 forums and overland travellers’ blogs. The consensus favoured a Toyota Land Cruiser or HiLux pick up, though the hard core vote was pro Land Rover Defender. Other Japanese 4x4’s were mentioned, but Toyota was the favoured brand, no question. German built ‘Allrads’ flitted, briefly, across my consciousness but I knew they would be eye wateringly expensive.

At one point I was keen on importing a Toyota Hilux Surf direct from Japan. But just as I honed in on some tasty examples online - cheap, rust free and low mileage - other factors came into play, including the declining exchange rate of the Pound to the Yen. So, instead, I budgeted to buy and build in the UK followed by shipping of the finished car to Cape Town in a 20’ sea container. Then I remembered I’d have to pay clearing charges at the port in South Africa and, as the car would be on UK plates, I’d need to arrange a carnet too. The end figure I arrived at put me right off. A re-think was needed.

There’s long been a vigorous 4 x 4 and over landing scene in South Africa. They are keen on Toyota, too, but prefer double cab Hilux pick ups, with a rear canopy to secure the load space. For those with a more generous budget, the Troop Carrier or ‘Troopy’ is the one. However, like the scene here, there is a strong following for Land Rover; Defender and Discovery. As with second-hand Japanese vehicles imported here, rust is not a common problem with cars that have spent their working lives on the African High Veldt. With renewed enthusiasm I went back to the 4 x 4 forums and got a good vibe for the older Discovery with the low tech 200 or 300 TDI engine, though it was hard to find one in the UK that hadn’t suffered serious or terminal rust damage.

Now contemplating a Land Rover, a couple of reasons edged me towards the Discovery and away from the usual overlanders’ choice, the Defender. My wife and I are reasonably fit just-retirees, but like the rest of our generation aches and pains and other weaknesses are taking hold and requiring a more circumspect choice of sitting/driving and sleeping arrangements! The bench seats of the Defender, the noisy cab and the overlanders’ de rigueur roof top tent are not for us. They’re just too ‘hair shirt’. Despite its faults the Discovery is a more comfortable and civilised ride than the Defender. Few would argue with that.

Our experience of nearly 30 years working in Africa influenced my choice too. We’d always made a point of keeping a low profile, living and showing ourselves as unostentatiously as possible. Similarly with our choice of car. In West Africa we opted for a Peugeot 504 saloon rather than the Mercedes limousine we were offered by the company I worked for. In East Africa we had a Peugeot 505 estate, at a time when the ubiquitous Toyota Corolla had begun to rule the pot-holed highways of the region. NGO’s, including the one I worked for, had an insatiable appetite for new, white, Land Cruisers with the big diesel engine. Way over the top for me, I’m afraid. Why not paint a target on my back and be done with it!

Consciously maintaining a low profile we never had any trouble at home or out and about; from petty thieves or the car-jackers who were reputed to roam the dimly lit streets of Lagos and Nairobi and every other city on the continent. Occasionally we met expats and locals who had been car-jacked, but they’d invariably been driving newish Mercedes saloons or big Japanese 4 x 4’s when they were ripped off, usually at gun point.

So, a Land Rover Discovery, bought and prepped in South Africa, registered and insured on a local plate, it was to be. With plenty of rust-free, second hand examples to choose from it would be suitably low profile and probably cheaper. No self respecting car-jacker worth his salt would jeopardise his street cred by stealing an old Disco. Come on!

hi
you might want to have a llok at our blog - we spent quite a lot of time in malawi - you hould have no problems with camping but i would suggest that with a TD5 take a good diagnostic tool with you, outside of SA i think you will find they dont exist and local knowledge does not go past tdis. We were staying in N malawi and an english freind also working there imported a TD5 everytime he had an issue it was a trip of several hundred miles to Blantyre in the south then back - a day each way. I am pretty sure you will have the same issue in other countries propbably with the exception of Kenya
http://mikerutter.co.uk/africa/

Mike,
Thanks for your suggestion. Peter Street the owner of Landyworx mentioned he would provide us with a diagnostic tool. I'll make a note to remind myself to ask him for it when we pass through Jo'burg on the way to Botswana and points North, including Malawi. Meanwhile I'll check out your blog.

We are currently in Cape Town after an easy run down from Randburg via old Karoo towns last week.

I was in Zimbabwi (Rhodesia) in the early 70s when it was safe and self sufficient and even exporting food to Zambia even thougt there were sanctions against it.
I had driven from the UK in a series 2A across countries now that would be dangerous to go into.Things would have changed by now and I would like to do the trip again but I dont think its going to happen as the carnets would be a headache to get as the RAC seems to have stopped issuing them and would hsve to get them elsewhere so i think ill stick to Russia and Asia for my trips.

I was in Rhodesia from 1974-76, teaching at Gunea Fowl School, Gwelo. Like you I was amazed at how self sufficient they had managed to become under international sanctions and despite the encroaching 'Chimurenga' war.
Sadly, soon after I left, the school was forced to close because of the increasing activities of 'terrorists' in the Midlands area.

What did you do with your Landy? Did you sell it there?

My Discovery TD5 is registered in South Africa and I plan to get a Temporary Import Permit at each border crossing north of here on the road to Dar Es Salaam, thus avoiding the hassle and expense of the anachronistic Carnet system.

We plan to cross into Zimbabwe at the Francistown / Plumtree border post. Then we will suck it and see, as far as the general situation there goes, re fuel availability, food and police roadblocks. Contacts here in SA say we will need to carry a sackful of dollar bills to pay the petty tolls/bribes at the numerous roadblocks we will meet en route. We will prepare ourselves accordingly but if travelling there turns out to be just too much hassle we will turn back and head up through Northern Botswana and the Kazangula ferry to Zambia.

December 17, 2016
The Karoo


Occasional views from the road 1....................

The Karoo is a semi-desert of low scrubland, barely supporting sheep, cattle and ostrich ranching across a wide swath of South Africa. Whirlwinds, ‘dust devils’ as they are known, track across the parched ground either side of a mesmericaly straight road, which rises and falls through a series of low hills – ‘kopjes’ as they are called here. The occasional group – hardly a herd – of small antelope reminds us of a past when there would have been plentiful game and not a few predators; the presence of the Kopjes suggesting it would have been mainly leopard. Some of the ostriches we see appear to be burying their heads in the sand. Actually it’s the females turning eggs they’ve laid in shallow ‘nests’ dug in the sandy soil. Their eggs are almost the size of an American football and make a great omelette, so we are told, although neither Annie nor I fancy such a protein feast.

The Karoo Country Inn, Middleburg, was built in 1853 a year after the town had been established on the banks of the Klein Brak River. Designed in the Cape Victorian style, on a grand scale, matched only by the Dutch Reformed Church down the road – ‘double storey’ as they say here – it has a wide balcony with an elaborate balustrade running the length of the two street-front sides. Its grandeur is in stark contrast to the meagre single storey houses and trading stores along the wide main street. Old sepia prints in the hotel dining room show ladies in Victorian tailored full suit dresses, with crinoline petticoats, clutching umbrellas, resplendent in their broad sun hats; and gentlemen with wide rimmed bush hats and drooping moustaches gathered on the dirt road outside for a celebration or visiting dignitary. Perhaps Cecil John Rhodes himself.

Taken over in the recent past by a South African hotel management chain, with all the usual accompanying corporate advertising spoiling the ambience outside and inside, and with little apparent investment having been made to maintain the structure, it looks sad and shabby. An early morning photo I take catches an ‘old timer’ Afrikaner walking his dog past the hotel. He looks more of a prospector than a sheep farmer, with his long, grey, unkempt beard filling the space between his heavily stained bush hat and threadbare shirt. He greets me with a grin, his moustache and beard streaked with nicotine. They are a perfect match, the hotel and he; faded characters together.

Annie and I had dinner there last night. It’s a short walk down the main street from the small travellers’ lodge we are staying in. The Herberg Lodge is more of a road side motel, in the simple Karoo style, neatly crafted from a series of outbuildings attached to an old house, built around an original cobbled courtyard. The owner, a pleasant chap, chatted with me on our arrival but being a devout Christian couldn’t resist guiding the subject away from our discussion on the state of the nation and the devastating drought affecting the region, despite a huge aquifer just below our feet , known about but not yet exploited by the government, to whom he referred, euphemistically, as ‘the’ management’, into a sermon on how he had been ‘saved’ and hadn’t I?

Huge trucks rumble by, day and night, on their way to and from the industrial and port cities of Johannesburg, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Durban, slowed by ‘sleeping policemen’ humps across the road, dangerously disguised by long faded markings. The main street is wide; wide enough they say to turn a span of six oxen drawing a wagon, the traditional mode of Afrikaner transport.

Our dinner at the Country Lodge is a memorable experience. Waited on by eager but not cowed African staff, we sit in a grand dining room, soaked in history or, more accurately, lacquered with a century and a half of nicotine deposits. It gives the elaborately decorated plaster ceiling panels and walls a not unpleasant warm patina, the smell of tobacco having long since worn off. On the wall opposite are two large sepia prints of the hotel in its heyday, crowds gathering in front of the impressive facade. On the wall alongside us, rather incongruously, is an even larger sepia print of a native Sangoma, standing on a Victorian photographer’s posing stage, apparently in rags, but on closer inspection in a collection of significant ‘Muti’ garments and an elaborate fur and feather headdress, the uniform of his traditional healing trade.

Four chandeliers hang precariously from sagging ceiling fixtures, none with a full set of working bulbs. These are dimmed as dinner is served, the ensuing sepia tinted gloom relieved partially by oil lamps delivered to each occupied table, including ours. We are served our ‘dish of the day’. The menu describes it as ‘breast of chicken, stuffed with…..’ The sheer size of it bemuses Annie and I; perhaps it is a Capon? It’s not an ostrich because their meat is red, like beef. Whatever breed of poultry it’s very tasty, although we can’t make out the contents of the mushy filling with any certainty in the lamp lit gloom. A couple of bottles of cold Windhoek draught lager help to refresh our palates and numb our senses.

Our dinner companions are a rare breed too. Opposite us sit a couple who look frozen in time. She with her grey hair drawn into an unkempt bun, which Annie says is called ‘a cottage loaf’, and a wistful stare reminds me of Katharine Hepburn, in The African Queen, the movie she starred in with Humphrey Bogart. He with a faded ‘blue-blood’ look, lost in his own thoughts, perhaps an inheritance squandered. Neither speaks to the other as they attack a cheesy dish with gusto, lifting strands of melted cheese into their mouths with their forks. A farmer, his wife and young son sit at the table next to us. He’s wearing ludicrously skimpy shorts and a baggy short sleeved shirt, his bare legs and arms deeply tanned. His neck and the bottom half of his head is similarly sunburnt, but this fades to almost white on his bald pate, where his bush hat has shielded him from the searing ultraviolet rays of the Karoo sun. They too attack their dinner with unfettered enthusiasm, father finishing his large steak with a blistering pace even I couldn’t match. On the other side of the room an elderly couple are getting quietly sozzled as one bottle after another of Cape red wine is delivered to their table, to be consumed as their dinner is picked over. Or should that be pickled? Their dress and her hair style is mid Western America, circa 1960. We pay our modest bill and walk back carefully to our hotel, mindful of the trucks passing close by and the touts lurking in the shadows.

Hi Nick and Annie,
What a fantastic journey! I would love to do something similar, but doubt I ever will. I think your prior, extensive experience of the country is very important. I don't think I would have the bottle to do it, unless I had the 'knowledge' you and your wife have.
Looking forward to your next post on your blog/website or on here. There must be one due
On another note, I hope you have someone house sitting for you. You have given a lot of personal information away on here and on your website, including the fact that you are away for months. As well as people, robots scan forums like this, feeding back just such information to their operators. Just a thought! I'm sure you have considered this
Have a safe trip. I look forward to following your adventure.

After spending Christmas with us our son, Harry, who is house sitting for us whilst we are away, flew back to Dar from Cape Town, via Addis, on 28/12 and then back to the UK the next day, via Amsterdam. His return flight from Schipol to Bristol was cancelled due to problems caused by fog. He accepted KLM's offer of an alternative flight to Leeds Bradford, then had to catch a bus followed by a train and a bus back to Bristol to collect his car, before a foggy drive home. Oh, the joys of air travel in winter!

Our journey up the East coast of South Africa has been rather spoiled by wet weather since we left Port Elizabeth, five days ago. The country has been suffering a serious drought so no one here is complaining. We've decided to cut this part of the trip short and are heading back to Jo'burg today.

We've been using Airbnb for this leg of the journey. Not surprisingly we've had a mixed bag, some really superb and others only just acceptable and poor value. The one we're in here in Durban is one of the better ones: a luxurious wooden chalet built on stilts on a steep hillside, in a Durban North suburb, amongst the tropical trees and shrubs with ' peeps of the ocean', to paraphrase UK estate agent's speak, and masses of exotic and very vocal bird life!

We timed our departure from Cape Town badly too. Christmas and New Year are bang in the middle of the long school holidays here. Hence all the pretty towns along the Garden Route were heaving with Grockles (I"m sure they don't call them that down here but you know who I mean). Oh, and the whale watching season had long gone, so no big beasties to look out for from the headlands and bays enroute.

Talking of big beasties, shortly after leaving Gordon's Bay we had an interesting chat with a shark watcher. His job is to stand on a headland viewing point watching for big sharks closing in on the surfers and swimmers in the bay below. The former, of whom there were maybe a dozen in the water, all dressed just like seals in black wet suits, I thought, are supposed to keep an eye on the watcher's station, 100-150 metres above them, and his flag pole, on which he flies (wind allowing) a red flag if a Great White or other man eater is spotted. How did he manage to spot them, I asked, noticing he had no binoculars. He said that when the water is clear (it wasn't) he could see the shape of them, in silhouette, under the surface as they approached the surfers below.

As we stood there chatting with him, a black flag, signifying all clear, hung limply in the still morning air from a short flagpole by his wooden shelter. Set in the verge, nearby, was a memorial stone, inscribed with the name of a young Japanese surfer who had been taken by a Great White in the bay below. We left him to his lonely vigil agreeing that there's is a safety procedure in urgent need of review!