Preparing for Nine Weeks in Africa

I’m the car with brother-in-law Mike driving Julie and me from Keuka to Rochester airport. Julie’s trip is three weeks long, mine is 9 weeks.

Gear for Africa

Travel buddy Ken and I started planning for this trip almost immediately after returning from our last trip in 2024. My planning involvement was mainly raising my hand and saying “yes I would like to return for as long as possible.” Ken carries the bulk of the planning burden.

The big desire for this trip was more overlanding and self-guiding. Plus Ken had a list of countries and parks to visit based on his extensive prior travel there and guide training. We will land in Johannesburg Sunday evening, Monday morning we pick up two Land Cruisers from Bushlore then head to Kruger National Park.

I won’t go into the full itinerary here; instead I’ll direct you to a site I built (with help) that we are using for route planning, accommodation documentation, birding target lists, etc. The adventure has three phases: three weeks with seven of us (three couples plus Karen), another 10 days with Ken, Karen, and me, then a month with just Ken and me.

We will mostly be in tents on top of the vehicles, but have some periodic stays in lodges. The big highlight will be a return to Baobob Hill House in Pafuri after driving a 4x4 trail the length of Kruger from south to north.

Spraying our clothes

Julie and I did the usual round of vaccines, started our malaria pills today, and sprayed our clothes with permethrin. The equipment list is more extensive this time - redundant Starlink Minis, a solar array, and “real” photography gear. Last time I had a nearly worthless Canon Powershot. Looking forward to higher quality photo output. Karen went a parallel path with a nice Fuji setup, optimized for in-camera jpg production. I also have my newly created PhotoLoupe app for library management, species identification, and post processing.