It’s Time! An Update for 2021

One year later, almost exactly to the date, we are heading back to Africa to resume where we left off. I thought I might give everyone a little update on what we have in store for 2021 — 7 months of travel!

On March 27, 2020 we were on one of the last planes out of Africa after a novel coronavirus started wreaking havoc on the world. Our trip of a lifetime came crashing to a halt. As a nurse, I went back to work at my local hospital and worked almost exclusively with COVID patients on a “Respiratory Support Unit,” as my hospital liked to have it called. But to us nurses, it was always “The COVID Unit,” and in the early days it was not a pretty place to be. It was brutally hard and exhausting, both physically and mentally. Instead of looking at lions and sleeping in a rooftop tent, I was helping people manage their O2 sats and when all else failed, say goodbye to their loved ones.

One year later, we have a better stronghold on this virus and have learned how to manage a masked and socially distanced world. Things are not back to normal yet, but they are getting there. We have developed vaccines and we know how to keep ourselves safe. With that in mind, Ross and I have decided to resume our overlanding Africa trip right where we left off. We ended our trip in Tanzania, leaving our beloved truck behind. Since then our truck went on a “road trip” to Malawi, and then onward to South Africa and ever since has been stored with our good friends, The Lindie’s.

Ross flies to Africa on March 29, 2021. (I wasn’t kidding when I said it was a year, almost to the exact day.) Ross will pick up our truck in South Africa and drive directly up to Tanzania. Ten days later, I will meet him there.

We plan to spend the next six months in Africa, picking up exactly where we left off. Over the course of the next six months we hope to visit Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Botswana, Zambia, Namibia, and Angola. We have a plan in place, but if 2020 taught us nothing else, it is that flexibility is key. Some countries are completely open, others are not. And the regulations are constantly changing. Following closely with the guidelines in place is the only way we will be able to make our trip work. We will adjust our itinerary as needed and go from there. While it was always a dream to break the Africa big year record, I’m not sure it’s possible given we will not be re-visiting a lot of the sites we’ve already gone to. In the end, it’s more about exploring new lands. But perhaps it is still within the realm of possibility despite us only going for 6 months? Only time will tell!

Oh, but I said we were travelling for 7 months, didn’t I? Well, initially South Africa wasn’t open when we wanted to start our trip, so we adjusted and thought “hey, lets go to Central America,” a part of the world we had never been to before. A last-minute trip to Guatemala and Mexico was planned and we opted to spend an entire month there. Then it’s a whole 4 days at home before Ross turns around to fly to South Africa. We have birds to see, and only one life to live so we are going to live it to the fullest.

As the famous Pokemon handler, Ash Ketchum once put it, “gotta catch ‘em all!” And there’s no time like the present to do just that. Africa, here we come!