Is driving to South Africa possible?

[Osthagen]

I don't think it's anything I'll ever be doing.

As I said, if I do go to SA, I'll most likely be flying there.

[6637]

Looking at a map, this route seems to be the most sensible to me:

Ferry from Turkey to Egypt
drive down the roads parallel to the Nile to Sudan
to Ethiopia
to Kenya (avoiding the regions affected by Al-Shabaab)
to Tanzania
to Zambia
to Botswana (by ferry)
to South Africa.

I think it avoids the dangerous regions.

It's mostly the same as Trans-African Highway 4 (map), but my route avoids Zimbabwe (because of potential trouble there when Mugabe dies).

[Vierwielen]

In the 1970's I shared a house with a couple who drove from the UK to South Africa. Their route was south via Algeria, Niger, Chad, Congo (Libreville), Congo (Brazzaville), Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, either Botswana or Rhodesia and South Africa.

One of technicalities that they related was the carnet de passage - a booklet that had sets of three counterfoils that guaranteed the import tax on your vehicle if it was not removed from the country in question. On entry to any country, customs officials would take one of the counterfoils and stamp the third counterfoil. On exiting, they would take the second counterfoil and again stamp the third. You kept the third. When they were in Kenya, another traveller wrote their Land Rover off and they went around the camp site exchanging good parts of their Land Rover (tyres etc) for other traveller's worn parts (plus some cash). They then surrendered their crashed Land Rover to the local authorities in lieu of import tax.

Of course, the best route varies from month to month - it just depends where the latest coup has been. When I travelled from Ghana to Tunisia on a commerical trip by Land Rover, we left Ghana a few days before a coup.

[Vierwielen]

In the 1970's I shared a house with a couple who drove from the UK to South Africa. Their route was south via Algeria, Niger, Chad, Congo (Brazzaville), Congo (Kinshasa), Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, either Botswana or Rhodesia and South Africa.

One of technicalities that they related was the carnet de passage - a booklet that had sets of three counterfoils that guaranteed the import tax on your vehicle if it was not removed from the country in question. On entry to any country, customs officials would take one of the counterfoils and stamp the third counterfoil. On exiting, they would take the second counterfoil and again stamp the third. You kept the third. When they were in Kenya, another traveller wrote their Land Rover off and they went around the camp site exchanging good parts of their Land Rover (tyres etc) for other traveller's worn parts (plus some cash). They then surrendered their crashed Land Rover to the local authorities in lieu of import tax.

Of course, the best route varies from month to month - it just depends where the latest coup has been. When I travelled from Ghana to Tunisia on a commerical trip by Land Rover, we left Ghana a few days before a coup.

[IJP1]

I know someone in South Africa who did it by motorbike too, but I seem to recall he started further east (the aforementioned Egypt option, if memory serves). The one warning he gave was that you have to fill up your tank every opportunity you get, even if it's about 10km after the last one.

[Vierwielen]

I know someone in South Africa who did it by motorbike too, but I seem to recall he started further east (the aforementioned Egypt option, if memory serves). The one warning he gave was that you have to fill up your tank every opportunity you get, even if it's about 10km after the last one.

On the trip that I did. it was 1200 km from Gao (Mali) to Adra (Algeria), most of it across sand piste (which chews up the fuel).

[RobinClay]

As I type this ... a young woman called Laura Morrison is in Botswana on her way to Capetown, having driven her 1958 Morris Minor up New Zealand, then (starting in June) down from Aberdeen in Scotland to Gibraltar, from where she and the car went by sea to Egypt, and thence she drove. Mostly by herself. She has been posting frequently on FaceBook, https://www.facebook.com/morri2africa/

And this is her WebSite
http://www.morri2africa.com/

She is following in the "tyre marks" of another trip, from Liverpool to Capetown, in 1933 - in a Morris 8.

And the record is 10 days !
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/10 ... ecord.html

[jimboLL]

The French used to export cars to West Africa by driving the car there, then staying a couple of weeks in Grand Bassam or similar, before flying home. Particularly prized were Peugeot 504/505 and similar.

But this has recently been banned
https://afrique.tv5monde.com/informatio ... te-divoire

[Euan]

As I type this ... a young woman called Laura Morrison is in Botswana on her way to Capetown, having driven her 1958 Morris Minor up New Zealand, then (starting in June) down from Aberdeen in Scotland to Gibraltar, from where she and the car went by sea to Egypt, and thence she drove. Mostly by herself. She has been posting frequently on FaceBook, https://www.facebook.com/morri2africa/

And this is her WebSite
http://www.morri2africa.com/

She is following in the "tyre marks" of another trip, from Liverpool to Capetown, in 1933 - in a Morris 8.

And the record is 10 days !
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/10 ... ecord.html

My guess would be that she would have been able to clear the Aberdeen to Gibraltar leg of the route within a few days with the journey becoming slower upon reaching Egypt. Did she start in New Zealand in June or was she in Scotland in June? Either way she must have faced quite a lot of off-road terrain while passing through the African continent.

[KeithW]

The French used to export cars to West Africa by driving the car there, then staying a couple of weeks in Grand Bassam or similar, before flying home. Particularly prized were Peugeot 504/505 and similar.

But this has recently been banned
https://afrique.tv5monde.com/informatio ... te-divoire

It used to be quite common, there was an article in a motoring mag probably 20 years ago about convoys of cars and vans setting off from Europe and heading to West Africa via Algeria and Mali. Ghana was a common destination and now has its own domestic manufacturer which sells locally assembled cars from kits put together in China.

[woodlea1]

Yes, It is possible and its been done before - and in an MGA!. Dries Oosterveen drove 12000 miles from Nyasaland to Holland in his MGA 1600 which he had bought new. He averaged over 300 miles per day! The story is told in The "MGA & TWIN CAM Gold Portfolio" published by Brookland Books, which is a compilation of original road tests and articles of the 1950s.The route was up the east side of Africa via Uganda,Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, Cyprus, Damascus, Turkey, Bulgaria Austria etc to Holland. An epic trip.
I've had my copy of the book since the 1990s but I see its still available from Amazon
David

[ROAD ROVER]

Try this route:

https://m.facebook.com/BritishMotorMuse ... 8052854795

The book is a good read.

[Euan]

Crashing into the ravine in Norway must have seriously set back expectations for the long journey ahead. Google currently estimates a constant journey time of 211 hours between Nordkapp and Cape Town, but this route uses a ferry between Spain and Morocco. The route via Egypt which is likely to have been the route taken by Pape is 237 hours of constant travelling, so in reality it would probably take around 6-8 weeks to complete the journey now. Given that in 1955 the journey was completed in just over twice this time is impressive, especially since we didn't have Google Maps or anything like that at the time.

[Vierwielen]

Crashing into the ravine in Norway must have seriously set back expectations for the long journey ahead. Google currently estimates a constant journey time of 211 hours between Nordkapp and Cape Town, but this route uses a ferry between Spain and Morocco. The route via Egypt which is likely to have been the route taken by Pape is 237 hours of constant travelling, so in reality it would probably take around 6-8 weeks to complete the journey now. Given that in 1955 the journey was completed in just over twice this time is impressive, especially since we didn't have Google Maps or anything like that at the time.

I travelled (as a paying passenger) by Land Rover from Accra to Tunis by Land Rover in 1980/1. The Michelin maps were invaluable.

[Berk]

How much of the route was off-road?? I imagine Africa to be rather like Australia, with a vast network of unsealed roads.

[Vierwielen]

How much of the route was off-road?? I imagine Africa to be rather like Australia, with a vast network of unsealed roads.

I assume that you were asking about my trans-Sahara trip in 1980/1.

From what I can recall, the section through Ghana was on tarmac, but in the southern section, the tarmac was full of potholes. While I was travelling through Ghana, I noticed a sign that said "Ghana goes metric on 1 September 197x" (I am not sure about the exact date). The bit of the sign that contained the year had fallen off. That told me a lot about the Ghanaian economy where the black market currency exchange market rate was about 80 times the official rate.

The section through Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso was tarmaced up to Ouagadougou, and from there up to the Mali border was an "all-purpose" gravel road. The gravel road continued to Mopti (in Mali) with the Upper Volta and Mali border posts about 100 km apart! A tarmac road, often on an embankment above the flood plain ran from Mopti to Segou. I often wondered how Mali maintained such a good road, but at the back of my mind was the possibility that the French paid for it so that, in the event of an insurection, they could support whichever side they deemed neccessary. From Segou, we travelled around the northern side of the Niger swamp area and the road deteriorated from tarmac to all-purpose to a track through the bush. This track led on to Timbuctou and thence to Gao. From Goa, we turned northwards along an all-purpose road towards the Algerian border (See picture here)

Once over the boder in Algeria, we hit the desert proper. The "road", or "piste" as it was referred to, was a track accross the desert marked by two 200 litre oil drums every 500 metres. About 30 km north of the border we crossed a wadi (dried up river bed) and saw a few shrubs that were trying to survive. For the next 620 km (the Tanezrouft which is the Arabic for "the desert within the desert") , I did not see a plant of any description whatsoever. We did however see a few rally cars coming southwards on the Paris-Dakar rally. (more about that later). Once we got to Adrar, the piste gave way to a good tarmac road (although we were still 1000 km from the Med). The route took us north-eastwards from Adrar across into Tunisia and on to Tunis.

At the Tunis airport, some other passengers told us "About a week ago, your prime minister's son went missing on the Paris-Daka Rally, but they have found him!"