Getting ready to leave.

We'll be leaving Nairobi Friday April 30th. Will is busy selling off most of our household stuff, and Rebecca is finishing Sudanese work from Nairobi.

Saturday we will be busy. We're having a yard sale in the morning and a farewell BBQ in the evening. There may also be a softball game or two for Will but that has to be negotiated. BBQ moved to Sunday. Softball and yard sale Saturday

We've had many calls about the yard sale, Will thinks it's due to his brilliant advert. Kenyan's seem to love yard sales. Many have insisted on seeing the items before the sale. We've sold at least half the stuff before the sale. They even buy stuff that's broken. We've sold two broken folding chairs and a broken step ladder (for good prices, things can be fixed cheaply).

Frankie (the Rangie) still needs some work. The air conditioning system isn't holding gas.  The engine is overheating when pushed hard on long uphills. We're adding an oil cooler and have removed the thermostat and changed the water pump to increase water flow. We haven't been using coolant so that may help too. Will thinks we should be fine the way it is but would like to have it fixed if possible.  We're also putting the finishing touches on the interior. We removed the back seat,  put in tie downs for our refrigerator and other stuff, and installed a safe.

Test Drive

The Range Rover is finally almost finished. I did a test drive with it a week ago. It went well. There were no mechanical problems and I got to practice driving off road. I did hit the differential so we bought a diff guard. It really wouldn’t be good if I cracked the diff in the middle of bumf*ck egypt, or tanzania for that matter. More photos of the test drive can be seen on Will's flickr page.

Nairobi-Capetown-Nairobi—The Route

View Our Travels in Africa in a larger map

We'll be heading off by car from Nairobi to South Africa and back to Nairobi starting May 1st. It should be a great trip. We won't have a set itinerary but the general idea is to travel south-west to Namibia west then south to Cape Town and back up to Mozambique. We hope to drive up the coast of Mozambique to Tanzania then back to Kenya. Everyone I speak to here in Kenya seems to have their favorite places that we have to see. Malawi and Zimbabwe have been mentioned a few times. Originally I was thinking of going from Tanzania to Zambia without going into Malawi and Zimbabwe my idea was less border crossings is better. Rebecca is worried about Zimbabwe. I'll have to be sure it's ok if we go there.

-Will Hoffman