Current information

2021-05-16:  

I know and understand that many of our followers may be disappointed by the lack of updating of our blog. I apologize to them. Keeping a blog up-to-date is a very time-consuming task. Our priority is the writing of our personal travel diaries which already requires a lot of work and time and which are not intended for the general public but for close friends and family.

Although we will continue to work on the blog, we should not expect any improvement and the uploads of our reports and photos will continue to be very sporadic and delayed. Sorry for that.
You always have the option to follow us live on Polarsteps. A tracking application that works almost automatically and requires much less work for us. (link to be found under "contacts")

2021-01-29:

Small update tregarding the Corona situation.

Although the number of cases rose dramatically after Christmas and New Year celebration and summer vacations to over 20,000 cases on January 10, the president announced in his January 11 speech that the country remained at level 3 of lockdown until February 15.
This has been good news for us as it means that we can continue to move freely around the country and that tourist facilities remain open. It is also possible for us to leave the country (provided that the neighboring country accepts us) but not to come back (at least not by road). But this does not concern us yet since we intend to stay in South Africa until the end of March / beginning of April.
The situation has since ameliorated considerably. The figures are down to 7000 / day. If the trend continues we can even hope for a return to level 2 in mid February.
For the moment it is rather the weather that worries us. It has been raining for almost a week in the north and the predictions are bad for the whole of next week. We postpone our hiking trip in the Drakensberg until later and today head south and the Grand Karoo where the weather is much better!

 

2021-01-10:

That's it. We have been back in South Africa since January 6th. We found Gandalf with a completely discharged battery that we had to replace.
The Backpackers Connection team is happy to see us here again. We spend our days tinkering with the motorhome and cleaning up.
For the moment there are no restrictions on movement in South Africa yet, but the Corona situation remains very tense. A speech by President Ramaphosa is expected for Friday (January 15) evening. He must announce the new lockdown conditions. It seems that a "full.lockdown" is not being considered because the country's already weakened economy would not support it.
A risk of restricting interprovincial travel remains. We remain vigilant to be able to react as quickly as possible in the event of hardening. That is to say, do a PCR test and flee to Namibia.

 

2020-11-14:

Earlier this week, the South African president announced the removal of the travel red list. Everyone is now allowed to return to South Africa provided they present a negative PCR test on arrival. That's excellent news. Theoretically we could immediately pack our bags and jump on a plane to South Africa.
But we mentally prepared ourselves so much to spend Christmas and New Year with our family that we decided to wait until early January to come back. We hope not to have to regret it.
All in all, plane tickets are reserved for January 5th.

2020-10-22: 

South Africa reopened its international borders on October 1 for all African countries and a large number of other countries at moderate Corona risk. Only countries classified as high risk remain prohibited from entering. European countries in the middle of the second wave are, for the most part of them, unfortunately on the government's red list and are not allowed to enter South Africa. Germany is one of the few European countries (along with Sweden, Finland, Norway, Italy and Poland) not to be on this first list of October 1st. We should have packed our bags right away and jumped on a plane.

We did not do this for various reasons. This week (October 19) the South African government updated the list by adding, among others, Germany and Italy. So here we are stuck for a few more months in Europe.

Fortunately our small motorhome allows us not to suffer too much from this constraint ... for the moment.

Europe's internal borders remain open but restrictions are increasing: curfews in major French and english cities, more and more countries classified as high risk and requiring quarantine or presentation of a negative test on entry ...

We plan to go to Scandinavia for a few weeks in January/February to observe the Northern Lights ... if the borders remain open.

We take our troubles patiently and accept the situation as it is.

2020-06-13:

Our two weeks of auto-quarantine at home are over. We will finally be able to meet up with family and friends. Starting with a potjie with children and grandchildren.
Our new motorhome is almost ready to tour friends and family in Germany, France, Switzerland and elsewhere ....

2020-05-25:

That's it! It's confirmed, we take the plane next Saturday (May 30) and go home.
KLM confirmed our reservations yesterday morning. The flight will be long since a stop over is planned in La Réunion. Take off at 10:30 am from Johannesburg, landing the next day at 4 am in Amsterdam. Connection for Munich at 9.40 a.m., arrival at 11.00 a.m. Then with a rental car direction Illmensee.
Our plan is to return in mid-November if conditions improve by then.

President Ramaphosa announced yesterday that the entire country will move to containment level 3 on June 1. This means that the stores will again be able to sell almost everything, alcohol is again authorized for sale (only on certain days of the week and at certain times of the day) for consumption at home, tobacco remains prohibited for sale, physical activities (jogging, cycling) authorized all day, domestic flights for business will be authorized again. However, still no freedom to travel for pleasure. For us level 3 would not have changed much. Tourism will only really resume at level 1, that is to say not before October or November. Or maybe even later!

2020-05-22:

The flight of June 2 was fairly quickly canceled by Lufthansa. We were rebooked on a Türkish Airlines flight on June 3 which I never really believed. This flight was effectively canceled a few days later.
In fact, all the scheduled flights offered to us are doomed to failure as long as the South African government does not allow commercial passenger flights, which in theory should only be done at level 1 of the lockdown.
Our only real chance of being able to return to Europe is repatriation flights. Those are organized by embassies.
There are once or twice a week Qatar Airways repatriation flights to Doha at exorbitant prices (3000 € for a one-way flight in economy class).
At the moment two repatriation actions are organized by the United Kingdom with British Airways and by the Netherlands with KLM.
In the next two weeks there will be 7 BA flights to London from Cape Town and 3 from Joburg. Although these flights are reserved as a priority for British citizens, foreigners may be able to take advantage of them in case there is availability. We signed up, even if we don't really believe in it. if successful we will be notified 48 hours in advance. Otherwise we will be reimbursed within 14 days. Because registrations are only possible after purchasing tickets (around € 760 per person).
KLM organizes two flights to Amsterdam with connections to many European cities. A first from Cape Town on May 29 and a second from Johannesburg on May 30. We also registered with the connection for Stuttgart. We will have an answer Monday or Tuesday. With only one flight planned from Joburg, places will be difficult to obtain. We are still hopeful because we signed up among the first.

2020-05-07:

Yesterday we were informed that our flight of May 19 is canceled. We have rebooked for the next scheduled flight. It will be for June 2. But nothing is certain.
We are of course a little disappointed because we had gotten used to the idea of going back and spending the summer with family and friends, but we were not surprised and we even expected it a little.
Fortunately we feel good here at Backpackers Connection. There are worse environments for containment. We will continue to enjoy our daily sunbathing.
Morale is high and hope remains.

2020-05-01:

From today South Africa is easing containment measures from level 5 (full lockdown) to level 4. The reductions mainly concern the economy and employment and are relatively limited. For us the situation remains unchanged and will remain so for a long time. We do not count on a re-opening of international borders, parks and on a freedom of movement in the country before the months of October or November.
After 5 weeks of confinement at the "Backpackers Connection" near Johannesburg we therefore decided to return to Europe to spend the summer there. Lufthansa maintained a single flight from Johannesburg in May on the 19th. We will take it. In theory, no commercial passenger flight is authorized up to level 2, neither internationally nor domestically, but exceptions are made, particularly for repatriation flights.
Hopefully this flight will not be canceled at the last moment.
Our plan is to return in mid-November to continue our trip.

2020-04-16: 
We are finishing the 3rd week of containment in South Africa. For the moment everything is going well for us, even if we start to find the time long.
As expected, the president Cyril Ramaphosa extended the lockdown for two weeks until May 1 a few days ago. The opposite would have surprised us.
The containment measures taken in South Africa are among the most restrictive in the world. This makes the spread of the virus seem to be under control.
Even if from a health point of view it would be more reasonable to prolong the lockdown for a few more weeks, the government is unlikely to take the risk. The situation is already very tense in the townships and it could become explosive if the containment measures were extended beyond May 1. In any case, this is my personal opinion.
How is the government going to organize the exit from the lockdown and how quickly? Can we hit the road and continue our journey? if so, under what conditions and with what constraints? We don't know! We will decide on a possible return to Europe depending on the situation and the conditions of a possible freedom of movement. Probably early May.

As far as our blog is concerned, containment will have a positive effect. You have certainly noticed and probably claimed that it is not kept up to date. Well, thanks to the lockdown I finally find the time to post some new reports. Take the trouble to go back. I had stopped somewhere in Benin at the beginning of August 2019. For the past few days I have been adding one report per day and I fully intend to keep pace until the end of the lockdown.

2020-03-25:
In one week the situation has considerably deteriorated in South Africa. The number of cases is growing exponentially, as expected, and reached 700 yesterday.
Last Monday the president announced a country lock-down starting at midnight Thursday (today). The national parks were closed and we had to leave our superb campsite in the Royal Natal National Park in Drackensberg.
Of course there is no longer any question for us to continue our program as planned. We returned to Johannesburg where we found a nice site for containment.
The confinement was announced for a period of 21 days until April 16. It is more than certain that it will then be renewed.
During confinement, no international or domestic air link is authorized. Only cargo flights are allowed with some constraints.
We are prepared to stay confined where we are at the "Bacpackers Connection" near Johannesburg in the hope that the measures will not become even more draconian for foreign tourists.
We are also trying to regularize Gandalf's customs situation. The Carnet de Passage en Douane expires on August 25, which means that our motorhome must leave the South African Customs Union (SACU) by this date, which of course is absolutely impossible given the situation.
We therefore applied for a "substitution" of the Carnet at the South African automobile club. Once this request is approved, we can request a new Carnet from the ADAC. We must then present ourselves with the vehicle and the two carnets (the old and the new one) to customs which will post an exit stamp on the old and an entry stamp on the new Carnet without having to leave the SACU. With the new Carnet, we will be able to leave the vehicle for another year on the territory, which should be enough to wait for the end of the crisis.
But all this will take time: 4 to 5 weeks in normal times. How much in these times of crisis ???
Would be DHL able to deliver the new Carnet? Not sure!
And then it will still be necessary to obtain an authorization to move to customs, provided that it is still operational. So many question marks!
For now we only have one thing to do : wait and see ! and follow the lock-down regulation!

2020-03-18:
The situation is getting more and more complicated. The Covid-19 does not spare Africa and even if the cases are still very limited compared to other regions of the globe the measures taken by the various governments are becoming more and more restrictive for overlanders. Borders are closing one after the other, freedom of movement is becoming more and more restricted. South Africa has closed 3/4 of its border posts with neighboring countries and has declared a state of national disaster. We got out of eSwatini just in time. Lesotho has closed all of its borders. Namibia has declared a state of emergency, no longer or very restrictively issues visas at the border, and prohibits non-vital travel within the country. Botswana imposes a quarantine on arrival.
We can still move around freely in South Africa but some campsites and other accommodation establishments are temporarily closed.
We expect the government to take even more restrictive measures in the days or weeks to come.
Our visas (Entry Permits) are valid until May 19. We do not know what will happen next. It is unlikely that we can leave South Africa for a neighboring country and in this case we would have only one solution: to return to Europe. It would be reluctantly but we are mentally preparing for it because it seems inevitable.
We will first have to find a solution for Gandalf because the Carnet de Passages will expire on August 25 and it is unlikely that we will be able to come back by then.
For the moment we are in Durban and the program continues as planned until Cape Town in early April. It will then be time to make a decision depending of the evolution of the situation.

2020-02-20:
That's it! We are back in Africa. The first two days in Johannesburg are laborious days, dedicated to tidying up, restocking (the pantry and the fridge are empty!) and some repairs with spare parts and other devices brought back from Europe!
Tomorrow we will hit the road for 7 months of travel in Southern Africa before our next "home holiday" from mid-September.

2020-01-31:
We should have flown back to Johannesburg today. Unfortunately we have to postpone our return to February 18 due to death in the family.

2019-12-11:
After a little more than 15 months on the road and nearly 42,000 km traveled we have arrived in Johannesburg, the goal of the second stage of our journey around the world. We are spending the rest of the week preparing Gandalf for long-term storage before taking the plane on Sunday evening and spending the holiday season with the family.
The trip will resume on February 1st for the third step devoted to Southern Africa.

2019-11-18:
For those who are worried not to see us move for some time: everything is fine!
We are simply stranded in Luanda pending the extension of our visas.
After spending 10 days here waiting for the big revision / maintenance of Gandalf to be finished at Iveco we went for a tour to the east of the country.
We returned to Luanda after two weeks and since then we are waiting for our passports!
We are not really amused because we had a pretty busy program in Angola. The country is so beautiful and there is so much to see! What a waste of time!
We will not be able to visit everything and the idea is to return a fortnight in May next year from Namibia to finish visiting the south of Angola.
Luckily we are very well housed in a small apartment that our friends from Iveco put at our disposal in the company complex. Our only problem is the pins and needles that we have in the legs.

2019-10-17:
Here we are in Southern Africa. Passing the Congo River and the border between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola we leave not only West Africa and Central Africa but also the Francophonie. We let behind us the certainly most difficult part of our trip around the world but also, we are convinced, the most fascinating, the most rewarding, the most adventurous and the most intense.
From the savannah of Senegal and Mali to that of Angola, from the tropical forests of Gambia and Casamance to the dense equatorial forests of Gabon, from the beaches of Senegal to the mountains of Guinea, Nigeria and Cameroon, from the carnival of Bissau to the Evala festival of Kara in Togo, from Niger to Congo (I mean the rivers), from Dakar to Luanda via Bamako, Abidjan, Accra, Lomé, Cotonou, Yaounde, Libreville and Brazzaville, from the Bossou chimpanzees in Guinea to the Loango bush pigs in Gabon via the Mole elephants in Ghana, the drills of Afi Mountain in Nigeria and the gorillas of Mfou in Cameroon, from the Sahara sand in Mauritania to the mud tracks of Nigeria and Gabon, we had the opportunity to meet and to approach a little what is the extreme wealth of this region: the countless ethnic groups that populate as a gigantic patchwork the hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of West Africa.
Goodbye West Africa and hello "easy Africa" ​​that we give ourselves a year to discover.

2019-06-16:
After six very intense weeks in Germany and France, we have been back in Accra for the second major leg of our trip around the world. A stage that will take us from Ghana to South Africa in December 2019.
We expect some delicate passages, among others between Nigeria and Cameroon and between Gabon and Angola, before joining the "Easy Africa".

2019-04-30:
After 8 months on the roads of West Africa it is time to go back home. Six weeks of "vacation" at home with family and friends.
Gandalf will wait for us bravely in a safe place in Accra.
See you mid-June for the second part of our trip: Accra - Johannesburg.

2019-03-04:
We are in full Bissau carnival fever until Mardi Gras. We are also thinking about a possible extension of our stay in Guinea Bissau to spend 2 or 3 days on one of the islands of the archipelago. A little lazing on the beach might not be a bad idea!

2019-02-18:
The windshield was replaced in Dakar on February 8th. So we left Senegal after 2 months in the country and many things lived and to tell.
Even if the available time is very limited we still decided to spend a few days in Mali. We did not regret. 2 nights in Manantali after 120 km of very narrow track in forest covered in 10 hours. Swimming in the Bafing River. 2 nights in Bamako, a city that explodes with life.
We are now in Guinea for just over a month, with an interlude of one week scheduled for the Bissau carnival in Guinea Bissau in early March.

2019-02-06:
The windshield should be delivered tomorrow at 10:00 am to Iveco. We have been waiting for its clearance for 2 weeks already. It's boring but there is worse in life. It allowed us to spend 3 pleasant days in a nice camp at the edge of the ocean. Pure idleness! And today we take the opportunity to wash the car, replace the rim and make a nice 2 hours circuit in the Bandian Game Park.
Unfortunately, we will not have enough time to spend in Mali, our visa expiring on February 16th. We will then go directly to Guinea.

2019-01-26:
We are still in Senegal. We are waiting for the windshield to be replaced at Iveco in Dakar. It had been broken by a big stone fell from a truck at the end of November in Mauritania. We have ordered a new one by Iveco representative from Dakar. The windshield arrived Monday at the port and is being cleared. It should be available by the end of next week. We hope to continue to Mali in early February.

2018-12-20:
The computer is irreparable (motherboard burned). I had to buy a new one in Dakar. The setup and reinstallation took a while, as did the data recovery from the old hard drive.
Now everything seems to work. I have to catch up a lot of time in the blog and logbook. I hope to get it little by little.

2018-12-12:
Laptop doesn't work anymore. I try to update with the Kindle (tablet), this is not very comfortable. Another challenge!
Hope that laptop can be fixed next week in Dakar.


2018-12-05:
We are currently in Mauritania with very poor mobile internet.
4G is not available in the country. We found 3G only in both big cities Nouakchott and Nouadhibou. Elsewhere only 2G is available (and not everywhere), this is definetly not sufficient for Internet surfing and for blog updating.
So please be  patient I guess the situation will be better in Senegal where we intend to arrive on december 15th.