Report 2 – Planning
As requested, I will give you a quick overview of the trip preparation:
Couchsurfing:
It was incredibly easy to find people willing to host me (the worse was selecting just one) in every capital. In small towns, like Nakuru in Kenya, Arusha and Moshi in Tanzania, Livingstone in Zambia and Maun in Botswana, there were just one or two registered couchsurfers. Fortunately, we were lucky and everyone of them can host us. One or two did not confirm but they should be available. And if they aren’t, we have cheap hostels as plan B.
Logistics:
This was the hard part of the planning… Quickly, it can be summarized as:
Matatu from Nairobi to Nakuru (Matatu’s are typical vans/small buses, the ones you usually see in the pictures with people on the roof).
Bus from Nairobi to Arusha and from Arusha (Tanzania) to Dar Es Salaam (Tanzania Capital)
National train from Dar es Salaam to Lusaka – This is the funny one. Since it’s the raining season in Zambia in February, usually some roads are flooded and there is no bus service. The only land option is taking this train, which takes about 40 hours to get there, has to stop several times during the journey to repair the brakes (!) and has no food or drinks inside. Besides, when it crosses the border, immigration staff burst into the 6-bed cabins, to ask for the passport. It seems like they only accept Zambian currency to pay for the Visa so We have to change money in the station, before departure, with local people at not very favorable rates. But that’s life. And it sounds really exciting 
From Lusaka to Livingstone and from Livingstone to Maun in Botswana, we are using public transports, mainly buses.
From Maun to Windhoek, unless we can find any other thing, the only option is to hire a private company that charges almost 100 euros per person for the trip!
In Namibia, we will rent a car, so there will be no problem
As for the complete itinerary and schedule, we have some ideas but we know things will change a lot so it’s not worth to post it. Just stay tuned for the updates
Cya =)
Hi,
This is the first of a series of reports I intend to write during my trip to Africa. They will be written in English due to the existence of non-portuguese people in the readers.
Tomorrow, I will leave to Lisbon, since my first flight is very early in the morning of Saturday. Egypt Airways will take me from Lisbon to Nairobi in Kenya, making a transfer of 7 hours in Cairo. I didn’t renew my Egyptian Visa so I can’t even leave the airport. Boring time ahead. That will be the beginning of this journey, from the Indian Ocean coast of Kenya to the Atlantic coast of Namibia. According to Google Earth (see print screen in attachment) if I would go in a direct line between the main cities I am going to visit, it would count for about 7000 kilometers. But we all know that direct lines don’t exist in Europe, Rest alone in Africa, and of course, the itinerary may change at any time.
Our itinerary will let us go through Lake Nakuru (remember Out of Africa movie and the 1 million pink flamingos? it’s here) in Kenya, Serengetti and Ngorongoro Crater Safaris (best concentration of Wild Life in Africa), the Kilimanjaro (Tallest free-standing mountain in the world) and the paradisiac beaches of the Zambizar Island in Tanzania, the Victoria Falls (Biggest Waterfalls of the world) in Zambia, the Okavango Delta (considered one of the most beautiful places in the world) in Botswana, the Skeleton Coast (feared by the sailors in the discoveries age), cape cross (with a colony of thousands of seals and horrible smell), sossuvlei desert (oldest desert in the world and with the biggest dunes) and FishRiver Canyon (Biggest Canyon in the world after the Grand Canyon in the United States).
I will be staying with couch surfers every night, except while in safari or in the Okavango Delta, since I will be camping by that time. Hope the lions can’t find our tent During the preparation of this trip, besides all the logistic of moving from place to place, finding somewhere to stay, know what to see and do, etc, I have taken a bunch of vaccines and medicines: Hepatitis A, Typhoid, Cholera, Yellow Fever and pills for Malaria Profilaxy. The latter is a bit aggressive and I’ve been noting minor side effects.
I’m sending pictures of some of my expectations of Africa. Let’s hope the trip lives up for the expectations.
And that’s it for my first report. Stay tuned for updates!
Cheers, Regards and Kisses for everyone, will miss you all.
Joao Oliveira
P.S. Take well care of the cold, as of Saturday I will only be expecting temperatures of over 30 degrees
