Preparation for Africa

Today I’ll be writing about what it was like to prepare for this trip, and about the many months of hard work that enabled me to be writing this blog at my breakfast table in Stratford-upon-Avon, readying myself for the long drive south.

The idea for this trip first occurred to me last spring, and I am almost embarrassed by how simplistic my thinking was. I had initially thought that preparing for a trans-Africa trip would be something like a larger scale version of my previous vacations, and that I would simply have to buy a car, throw my things into it, move out of my apartment, and off I would go. Actually, I never oversimplified things quite that much, but I really did think it would take less than a week to procure and outfit a vehicle, and buy all of the things needed for the trip. How wrong I was…

My first step in preparing for the trip was to consult good old reliable Lonely Planet, specifically Africa on a Shoestring. 1,000 or so pages later, I had begun to understand the diversity of the continent, as well as something of the scale of my project. But because Lonely Planet is not written for overland travelers, I still had a lot more research to do, and many surprises in front of me.

Next, I began to expand my research. I read Bradt’s Africa Overland and a bevy of small websites, many created by people who had successfully done their own independent trips across Africa. (It was quite surprising to learn that this trip is not at all unheard of in Europe, and in Britain there are several small businesses who are dedicated exclusively to preparing vehicles for trans-Africa trips.) In the midst of this process I stumbled upon the website africa-overland.net, which acts as a kind of nexus for other travelers sites. I took a chance and tried emailing the site for information, and a good fellow named Sam Watson responded and got me off on the right foot (although it was up to me to run the rest of the research marathon). He also recommended a mechanic named Matt Savage, who would figure prominently later in my preparations. (Incidentally, Sam is a member of the Royal Geographical Society, which is an incredible organization based in London.)

As an aside, doing research for a trip like this is not like planning a family trip to Orlando. There’s very little information out there, and when it is out there, it’s hard to find. And sometimes when you do find it, it turns out to be incorrect, or only partially true, or maybe it completely changes your understanding of something else you thought you were 100% sure about. So I won’t go into all of the research in this post, but suffice it to say that it’s exponentially more difficult than any research I have done before, for work, school, or my previous adventure trips. (For one thing, there’s no risk of breaking down in the middle of the Kalahari Desert if you misunderstand what a professor is trying to say about a novel’s hidden subtext.)

In the midst of all this research, I had a simple realization: this trip had the potential to require a lot of money. At first, I had naively assumed that one could buy a used vehicle, load it up with a little gear, and be on your way. And my early research had indicated that used vehicles weren’t that expensive, and of course I could resell it at the end of my trip. But then, over the course of weeks or months, the reality started to sink in. A used vehicle was relatively cheap, but one had to actually acquire one, which is no easy task when you’re not actually in the country you intend to buy the vehicle in. And once you do own a vehicle, you’ve only just begun. At a minimum, the vehicle needs to be inspected from bumper to bumper, any problems need to be fixed, and it is wise to address any potential problems as well. (There’s no “do over” button once you’re in Africa, all of the vehicles weak points need to be fixed in advance.) Next, you need to outfit the vehicle with gear, or “kit” as it is known in the UK. At a minimum, the vehicle’s suspension needs to be upgraded, but there are many other options that can be added to make life safer or more bearable as well. Moreover, this being the U.K., and “kit” being a very specialized area, all of the options are very expensive. (More on this later.) But the biggest surprise of all was the carnet de passage.

What is a carnet de passage, and why does it have such a funny name? I can’t answer the second question, but I can give the first a try. To understand the carnet, you first need to know just a little about import tariffs. Many countries charge an import duty on goods brought into the country. While this is usually a fairly small amount (or a small percentage, at least), countries seem particularly concerned about automobiles, and the import duties are often quite high. It is not at all uncommon for African countries to charge 50% or 100% of the value of a vehicle when it is imported. Now, imagine if one were to buy a relatively new SUV for say $20,000 (not a huge amount of money when one considers that a new Toyota Land Cruiser would cost over $80,000), and then travel through a dozen countries in Africa. The cost of the vehicle and import duties would easily top $150,000, and could exceed a quarter million dollars. Obviously, no normal mortal could afford this, so this is where the carnet comes in.

The carnet is basically a security which guarantees that if you do sell your vehicle in a country, the underwriting bank or agency will pay the import duties. With this assurance, countries can then allow you to temporarily import your vehicle without paying import duties. This is obviously a huge improvement over the $250,000 scenario from the previous paragraph, but it doesn’t remove the problem entirely, since the money for the guarantee has to come from somewhere, and of course that somewhere is me! I need to supply enough money to cover any potential import duties, and while I don’t lose this money (hooray for that!), that cash is tied up until the end of my trip. In my case, the highest import duties of the countries I am visiting are in Egypt, so I would need to supply funds equal to 180% of the value of the vehicle.

This small fact obviously has implications for the vehicle one selects. If I were to buy a $20,000 SUV and then add another $20,000 in “kit,” my now $40,000 vehicle would require another $72,000 for the carnet, for a total outlay of $112,000! (Note that most of this money is not lost, just tied up for the year.) Unfortunately, there is the small matter that I didn’t have $112,000 for a vehicle (or anything like that), so the implication was simple: I would have to buy old and cheap. I soon learned that this is the norm for trans-Africa trips, so I’d be proudly following in the footsteps of every Africa explorer before me.

There were other considerations when selecting a vehicle as well. Obviously, my life could potentially depend upon my vehicle (although smart choices greatly diminish the risk), so buying a 1980’s Chrysler K car was not an option. I needed a really reliable vehicle. Also, my vehicle would have to be a very capable four wheel drive machine, since more than 85% of the roads I’ll be travelling will be unpaved, and many could barely be considered roads at all. (“Trails” might be a better description.) And finally, the vehicle would have to be familiar to African mechanics so that knowledge and parts would be available if (when?) something on the vehicle breaks.

The last factor turns out to the most important. There are many fine 4x4’s in the world, but most of them are totally unknown in Africa. So with the Jeeps and Hummers of the world eliminated for this reason, and with most other SUV’s eliminated because they’ve evolved into little more than tall suburban grocery getters, there were actually only three choices: Land Rover (two vehicles), Toyota (two types of Land Cruiser), and the Nissan Patrol (a monster SUV not sold in the USA). It’s very hard not to go with Land Rover, as their trucks are almost synonymous with African exploration, and parts and knowledgeable mechanics are available everywhere. Unfortunately, Land Rovers routinely have the worst reliability scores of any vehicles in production, and since I’m not a mechanic, I decided that it made more sense to go with a more reliable Japanese vehicle.

In the end, I decided to go with the Land Cruiser (which in the U.K. is known as the “Land Cruiser Amazon” to differentiate it from the smaller “Land Cruiser Colorado” or “Prado,” a very capable 4x4 that is not sold in the U.S.). The key factors in my decision were reliability and resale value. It’s hard to top Toyota’s reliability, of course, and the “Amazon” from the 1990’s is still in high demand, so it would be easy for me to sell the vehicle at the end of my trip, which was an important consideration since the high cost of Britain means that I’ll want to spend as little time as possible selling my vehicle.

Unfortunately, I soon found out that there is a difference between deciding which vehicle I wanted and actually getting my hands on one. This might not have been the case with the “Colorado” or Patrol, but even an older “Amazon” is a highly prized vehicle. So for many weeks I called on classified ads only to have someone tell me some variation of, “Yes, it’s a great vehicle, but unfortunately I just sold it this morning. Sorry, mate. Cheers.” (The time difference, as well as me being on the other side of the world, were both big problems.) It was so difficult that I even turned to eBay, and three times participated in online auctions for vehicles I had never seen. I was ready to give up and go with one of the other options when a funny thing happened.

I was very interested in a 1997 Land Cruiser in very good condition for its age. It was on eBay, and I determined that at most I would pay a little over £6,000 for it. So I got up early one Saturday morning, and with about ten minutes left in the bid, the price had only risen to around £4,000. Then the price started to increase, gradually for about nine minutes, then in increments of several hundred pounds at a time. In the end, it went for almost £8,000, and I walked out of my bedroom depressed to get a cup of coffee.

When I returned to my computer, I compulsively checked eBay again, and to my surprise, another Land Cruiser had appeared. But much more surprising was the fact that it included a “buy it now” price, which meant that I could simply click a button and it would be mine, without the need to compete at auction. I hurriedly emailed the seller for a contact number, and a few minutes later I was talking with a woman in Worcester about the vehicle. She was on her mid-afternoon horse ride, and we concluded the deal then and there. I had my vehicle.

But I’m forgetting an important detail. Since I would not be preparing the vehicle myself, I had to find someone I could hire to do the job for me. There are several companies in the U.K. that do this, and while I was searching for them, I came across the website of an American couple who had worked with a gentleman named Matt Savage (the same fellow that Sam Watson had mentioned at the start of my research). So I talked to Matt, and he seemed like a good guy, the work on his website looked good, and his former customers had nothing but good things to say about him. So Matt was definitely in the running.

It wasn’t long until I was down to just two candidates, Matt and a U.K. company called Footloose 4x4’s run by a fellow named Paul Marsh who is something of a demigod amongst overlanders. He has literally driven his Land Rover around the world, and he has led expeditions with dozens of vehicles. Paul was also a really nice guy, professional, and obviously very knowledgeable. Unfortunately, all of that knowledge and experience doesn’t come cheap, and when Paul told me that it would cost me around $40,000 for a prepared vehicle, I had my man… Matt! (To be fair, all I was really learning is that Matt and Paul have very different market niches. Paul’s clientele is quite affluent, whereas Matt tends to work with poorer stiffs like me.)

If you’re interested, you can check out Matt’s website at www.mattsavage.com.

With my vehicle and mechanic in hand, I now had the somewhat arduous task of deciding how to outfit the vehicle. This would seem like a simple thing, but overland equipment is very expensive, and it also increases the vehicle’s value for purposes of that damn carnet, making is doubly pricey (or more accurately, 180% more pricey). It also proved difficult because this is my first (and probably only) overland trip through Africa, so I don’t really know what the chances are of colliding with a cape buffalo (for which you’d want to install bull bars on the front of the vehicle) or having to cross a four foot deep river (for which you would want a snorkel). So in the end, I made the best decisions I could, and I ended up with the following “kit”:

• Old Man Emu shocks and springs. These are an Australian product favored by overlanders. You simply have to improve your suspension to traverse Africa’s “roads,” so this one was easy.

• A snorkel for crossing deep water.

• A roof tent for sleeping, and for keeping me above the African food chain.

• A roof rack, to hold the tent and other gear.

• A couple of lockable storage boxes to keep my money and valuables safe. One is a rather large metal drawer that Matt installed in the back of the Land Cruiser, while the other replaces the central cubby between driver and passenger.

• A refrigerator. It uses a special type of motor so that it draws very little battery current.

• A water storage tank which contains an electric pump so I can also use it as a shower.

• A cargo barrier, which is sort of like one of those grates that keeps your dog from jumping out of the back of your Volvo station wagon and onto the twins, but is much heavier duty and is bolted to the vehicle. It’s basically there to stop my stuff from crushing me in the event of an accident. I like not being crushed.

• A hidden fuel cut off switch so that the vehicle can’t run when I don’t want it to. Very sneaksome.

• Six additional electrical sockets to power my stuff. (Matt, if you’re reading, I love these things! I can power my GPS, iPod, refrigerator, plasma screen, DVD player, surround sound system, and disco ball all at the same time! It’s like I never left America!)

This isn’t a complete list of all my kit, but I won’t bore you with the rest. In any case, Matt did a fine job of outfitting the Land Cruiser, and you can see how the work progressed (including the finished product) at the following address (which you can just copy and paste into your browser):

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/mattsavage4x4/AaronSLandcruiser#

Of course, I needed a lot more gear that wasn’t directly related to the vehicle as well. From clothing to camera gear, and from camp supplies to medicine and first aid, everything had to be painstakingly researched and considered. In the end, my pack list consisted of almost 250 items, so this was a pretty monumental undertaking. (Okay, I have to confess that about 20% of that was camera gear, but it’s still a lot of stuff.)

Also, even though I already owned some of the 250 items, I still had to purchase a lot of them. And since I needed to save money wherever possible, this meant that I had to look for sales, online discounters, but especially at eBay, Craigslist, and Amazon. At one point I was watching, bidding on, and buying so many things from so many different sources that I had to create an excel spreadsheet to keep track of it all. But in the end it was worth it, as I saved a lot of money with this approach.

My strategy for acquiring things for the trip also had one funny and totally unexpected consequence. About a month before I left for London, I received an email from eBay informing me that they wanted to send a team of people to my apartment to watch how I do eBay! I must have had so much activity that they figured I was worth watching! (I suppose it helps when you buy a Land Cruiser.) So they really did send a team of three people to watch me bid on a Swiss army knife and listen to all of my crazy eBay tricks. And then they paid me for my time. I think it was Goethe who said something about choices leading to outcomes that could not be foreseen when the choice was made…

All of this buying was not done without a detailed plan and budget for the trip, of course, and this was another huge undertaking. Quick, what’s the price of diesel fuel in Uganda? How much does it cost to get a VISA for the Sudan (and can one even get a Sudanese VISA)? And how much does car insurance cost? You get the idea; every line in the plan and budget represented ever more research, as I didn’t know the answer to any of these questions when I started. In fact, I didn’t even know what questions to ask. But in the end, I completed a comprehensive budget and trip plan, and so far, they’ve been fairly accurate. (I’m knocking on wood right now.)

There is a great deal more that went into the trip, but since this post is growing rather long, I’ll just cover a few of the bigger items with a few bullets:

• Putting your life on hold for an extended period of time takes a lot of planning.

• Figuring out how to stay healthy was another big thing to tackle. I had to research (and get) vaccinations, medicines, first aid training, etc.

• VISA’s. Most African countries require a VISA, but the specific requirements vary a lot. For most countries it’s quite straightforward, but for countries that don’t like America so much (i.e. Libya and Sudan), it’s anything but straightforward.

• Figuring out whether I should sell my car or store it, and then actually selling it.

• Moving out of my apartment and putting everything into storage.

• Wrapping up 14 years at MOL, dealing with my 401k, COBRA, etc.

• Putting together a money plan for the trip. Not a budget mind you, but a cash plan for a continent where every country has its own official currency, often an unofficial currency (usually dollars or Euros), spotty ATM availability, and often absurd surcharges for credit cards. This might not seem like a big thing until you realize how much cash Africa forces you to carry. (On the advice of my lawyers, I’ll decline to say just how much that is.)

• And finally, since I’ll probably only have one chance like this, it was important to try to dream as big as I could, and to try to make as many of those dreams happen as possible. So I spent a fair amount of time dreaming big, and we’ll see what comes of it. (Sadly, I only have a few days left in England and still haven’t heard from Iron Maiden, so I think that dream is not to be.)

There’s a ton more that won’t make it into this blog, but if you have made it this far, you deserve to be spared the rest. I trust this post gives some sense of how much goes into an overland expedition like this, and you can trust me not to drag my readers through this again! When next I post it will be describe the first week of my trip here in jolly old England.

Best wishes to you all,
Aaron