Last day at work for Ian and requisite cake made, critiqued and consumed! 

No going back now and with less than a week to go the nerves are starting to set in, and discussing potential problems is not helping.

Just a few of the scenarios we have been considering:

•  You are driving through one of the National Parks in area of dense with animals and you get a puncture.  What do you do?  ....  "Get Jane to change the tyre!”
• You get to a campsite and find that you have run out of water.  How do you cope? ........ "This one’s obvious – you drink beer!”
• You are driving down a steep hill and suddenly there is a very loud bang and you realise that the brakes have failed. What do you do?  ......."We have practised this one before – keep your foot on the floor and hold on tight!”
• You go to the loo and find a snake curled up round the loo roll. Do you (a) get out of there as fast as possible and warn other campers or (b) go and find your camera to take a picture.   ......."Hopefully if this happens Jane will get this one right this time!”
•  Living in a Landrover with Jane for 24/7 for 4 months.  How do you cope?   ....... "Absolutely no idea!”

Sabbatical time is here

I can't really believe tomorrow is my last day at work for 5 months.  I have remembered why I don't make cakes but hopefully my "Watch out for the lions on the rocky road" cake for work will be edible

Route Planning

Just to quickly summarise the route we have planned.  We had originally aimed to drive from Nairobi to Cape Town but due to the continued instability in Kenya we decided that we would start our journey across the border in Tanzania.  We knew we wanted to end up in Cape Town for Christmas and to visit the Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, Victoria Falls, and Chobe as well as to re-visit a few places in Nambia, but apart from this we essentially had a blank sheet of paper and four months to do it in.  Working with Safari Drive, who we had travelled with in the past, we developed a skeleton plan.  Thus followed hours of reading and surfing the net before the route gradually took shape.  The route was planned to take us through six countries, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa.  The original plan was to spend more time in lodges interspersed with camping but in the end the budget dictated that we would spending over half of the trip sleeping in the tent on top of the Landrover but at least the more extreme camping would be at the start when we would still be enthusiastic about camping in the wilds.

Welcome

Welcome to our blog!  Considering that we started planning this trip 2 years ago, it is hard to believe that we now only have a few weeks before we go.  And despite the length of time we have had to prepare there are still things on the to do list that have been on there since the start, like how we are going to store all our photos!  Luckily I have 2 weeks to sort all the odds and ends out - I suspect Ian will be giving me a daily to do list whilst he heads off to work.