We crossed the border from northern Malawi into south western Tanzania near Mbeya. The first thing we noticed was how fast the buses drive, one after another would blast past us on our way to Dar es Salaam. From Dar we caught the ferry over to Zanzibar. We left the Landy parked up in a church car park which seemed well guarded and crossed our fingers that all would be well and the Landy still there in one piece when we returned. We spent three nights on Zanziba...

Before crossing the border to fuel stricken Malawi, we filled up the tank and both jerry cans in Mozambique, giving us fuel for about 1000 miles. The reason for the shortage took some time to get to the bottom of. It seems to boil down to a lack of foreign exchange resulting from the withdrawal of aid by a number of western governments, most notably Britain due to our ambassador being expelled. Rumours that he was kicked out for his homosexual practices appear to...

Having got some advice from an Italian couple on the South African side of the border, we took a cross country route to the coast to avoid going through Maputo. They confidently informed us there was an excellent new tarmac road we could take - either they were misinformed or the road building project has not yet started! We enjoyed some pretty rough terrain and stayed overnight in a small town outside the local police station. We were lucky enough to run into ...

We were excited to be crossing into a new country and the border procedures were straightforward enough, after the usual paperwork on both sides we were in the kingdom of Swaziland. Our plan was to drive across the south, up the eastern side then across the north to exit this small country in the north west. We followed some roads less travelled in the south camping on our first night in front of a small rural police station. The local residents seemed more than...

We had a couple of uneventful days hacking across the north west of South Africa on our way back to Donkey Valley farm, where we volunteered as WWOOFers at the beginning of the year. It was fabulous to go back to somewhere that is so special to us. While some things have changed since Jeanne & Hannes separated, many things have not. On arrival we were greeted by the larger than life Hannes, who promptly had to dash back into his dental laboratory to finish m...