Africa: Truck Life
Seeing Africa by overland safari offers a unique perspective on a vast and varied continent. People have been making the trip for over a century, some starting as far north as Cairo or Marrakech and ending in Cape Town. Our trip is 73 days overland from Nairobi to Cape Town, a trip of over 6,000 kilometers (especially the way we’re going). And when you have 25 people going all that way together, you have to get yourself sorted. So this is THE post for those of you interested in logistics.
Truck life starts with the truck. And it is a truck, never a “bus,” and if you call it a bus, you will be mocked. Our truck is a big yellow Scania 93 series. It seats 28, plus 2 in the cab (our driver and our guide). We have lockers under our seats for day-to-day essentials. We swap seats daily, so everyone gets a chance to be bounced to pieces in the back, and nobody is stuck riding backwards for 2.5 months. There’s a small fridge for the stuff that absolutely has to stay cold (chicken for dinner, breakfast yogurt, etc). We’ve also crammed every spare centimeter with other supplies. Sleeping bags go in the floor hatch. 5L water jugs are stashed between seats and pillows stuffed on top. Our charging station is at the front, where we rotate our iPads, phones, camera batteries, etc. The person sitting next to it is the charging czar, and rotates things in and out - with great power comes great responsibility. We’ve also got a stereo system. Music rules are slowly coming into effect - we can play Toto’s “Africa” once a day at most, for example. I can’t wait until it’s my turn and I make everyone listen to a 2-hour podcast about how barbed wire was developed. I’m definitely going to be the most popular person on the truck after that.
Lockers underneath store our supplies. Cooking gear, group groceries, washing supplies, tents, camp stools and sleeping mats are provided by the company. The rest of the space is for our bags - mostly large duffles or backpacks. Soft-sided bags are essential, as a lot of shifting and squeezing is needed to get everyone’s everything in there.
The windows are plastic and canvas, and get rolled up or down depending on wind, rain and dust. The dust is astonishing, actually. After the ride to Masai Mara, I had dust that penetrated 3 layers of clothing. Eye protection (sunglasses) and airway protection (a scarf or a buff) is essential.
We’ve broken our group into 5 teams to split up the chores on a 5-day rotation. Everyone puts up their own tents - 2 people fit very comfortably in a 3-person tent. Then we have a cooking team (basically they make dinner, as we do our own lunches and our guide usually starts breakfast for us), a cleaning team (washing the cook pots - everyone does their own personal dishes), a security team (making sure the truck is closed and locked at night, and if we stop anywhere during the day), the truckees (sweep and mop the truck at the end of the day), and the group with a “day off.” A few people have been designated the loading/unloading team. They pull the tents off at night and load them and the bags up again in the morning.
Our driver and guide ride in the cab, so we have a buzzer system. One buzz means stop for a bathroom break (usually, a not-too-crowded highway stretch with a few bushes for cover) and 2 buzzes for “roll the windows up or down” purposes. Another buzz restarts the journey.
We stop at shopping centers every few days to resupply ourselves. Lunch food, snacks, drinking water and those crucial items you forgot/lost/broke are actually quite easy to come by. I’ve really enjoyed poking around Kenyan grocery stores. I thought Asia was at the top of the “novelty potato chip flavor” heap (I’m looking at you, Hot Pacific Squid), but Africa is a strong contender.
Our campsites have been good-to-excellent so far. We’ve had WiFi at most of them, hot water showers at almost all, and (crucially) a bar at every single one. I don’t expect this pattern to hold true for all the countries we travel through, but I’m soaking it up while I can.
A majority of my pack is not actually for Africa, so the system I’ve developed so far is to keep my camera bag with me on the truck (never know when that perfect photo opportunity will arrive). I keep snacks, extra clothing layers and charging supplies in my locker. I have a “day bag” with toiletries, towel and clean clothes that I take off the truck and keep in my tent when we stop. I do my best to leave my big bag on the truck and only dig around in it once a week or so.
If you go: Do plenty of research! Overlanding is big business in Africa and there are a million companies offering a million itineraries. If seeing Africa the slow way sounds interesting to you, you can absolutely find something to suit you. Time of year makes a big difference too - I’m traveling at high season in hopes of catching some of the great migration (we missed it in the Masai Mara - the wildebeest usually leave in October, but we were there mid September and the vast herds had already vacated - we’re hoping to catch them in the Serengeti), which means very full trucks for almost all companies. Some companies specialize in different age groups, specific regions or offer higher levels of luxury.
Watch this space for more “on the road” posts - I’m sure I’ll have updates as we progress.
