Where & what infographic of our time in Rwanda

Inspired by the way Jeff & Kerryn-lee (Pass the Map) documented their 2012 expedition through Southern Africa with infographics, we were inspired to do the same. So each Tuesday we will be posting a summary infographic, in the order of our route, and today's one is for Rwanda! Check out the others here. Our time in Rwanda was way too short but in those few days we packed an amazing amount of experiences, met people who will be friends for life and more than anything were in awe of this country's rise from the ashes. We can't wait to go back!

Posted by Tracy Angus-Hammond (@T2T_Trace)

A simple (but effective) approach to encouraging tourism

The potential contribution of tourism to a country’s economy has been recognised across the globe and with this has come an ever increasing number of campaigns, initiatives and promotions to encourage both international and domestic tourism. While we were in Nairobi (Kenya) we had the opportunity to meet two inspiring individuals who, interested in promoting domestic tourism, started an organisation that has had massive success in achieving just this. What I like best about their approach is its simplicity: They wanted people to travel and so just organised this travel, offering it to anyone interested at cost price. And it’s worked! In 2009 Road Trip (KE) organised 4 trips a year and had an attendance of around 10 people per trip, fast forward to 2014 and they’re organising 10 trips a year with 50 people per trip – and more would attend if logistics allowed!

Evans Muriu and Stephen Musyoka are incredibly busy guys, not only with their hands in several successful business but they are also founders of other community projects such as the Wanadamu initiative, a database for willing blood donors, and raising funds to buy sanitary towels for girls from poor communities. Despite this they manage to find the time to organise these trips, and do so in terms of every detail: the transport, accommodation, meals and even itinerary and entertainment. And they do all of this organising without making a cent for themselves. They simply negotiate the best group rate possible, hire the transport and then pass on these costs as is to their ever-growing number of members. Best of all they allow members to pay for their trips in instalments and make this process quick and easy by having an M-PESA account. Pretty cool huh?

Road Trip (KE) has travelled all over Kenya from Mombasa to Nakuru and even neighbouring country Tanzania. Sometimes they stay in hotels, other times they camp and all in all they showcase every aspect that travel in Kenya has to offer. They have even organised trips to the Rugby 7s tournaments to support the very successful national team. The members have become more than travel mates but firm friends too and after spending just a few hours with these wonderful folks it’s easy to see why the organisation keeps growing. They have so much fun together! Evans and Stephen have managed to find the perfect balance between organisation and fun, ensuring no trip is simply a party but that the party itself is always worth attending regardless.

If you live in Kenya check out their next trip which will be an overland adventure to the Rhino Charge this weekend (31 May to 2 June).  The Rhino charge is Kenya’s premier off-road motor sport competition which takes place in 100km² of rough terrain, over 10 hours and has no set route. The winner is the 4x4 that reaches the most checkpoints in the shortest distance. By joining the Road Trip (KE) crew you’ll get to enjoy this thrilling event with none of the hassle and double the fun!  Best of all you’ll get to meet Evans and Stephen, two intriguing characters setting an example to us all.

Posted by Tracy Angus-Hammond (@T2T_Trace)

15 Practical Tips for Camping, Road-tripping and Exploring

So far we’ve driven from Johannesburg to Cape Town in South Africa through Namibia, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda to Kenya and then back to Uganda again. Along the 13000km of this journey we’ve learnt a couple of things that we wish we known before we’d started…

If you’re driving:

• Stick your mandatory country identification sticker on your actual car and not the back windscreen otherwise if you lose your window you lose your sticker too! This happened to us in Namibia and we ended up having to pick pieces of broken glass off the back of our sticker and then super glue it to the car

•  Get several tyre repair kits and a mini compressor. The ability to fix a puncture on your own and then inflate the tyre regardless of where you are could save you hours and hours of time and frustration

• Carry a bar of Sunlight soap with you at all times (the green bar). It can be used not only to wash you, your clothes, dishes and car but can also plug a hole in your petrol tank, radiator and exhaust pipe! Sure the soap  will wear off after a few weeks but then you simply plug the hole with some more of this magical bar

• Don’t forget to get 4 jack points installed on your car if you purchase a hi-lift jack. Not all cars come standard with these and yet sellers of hi-lift jacks conveniently forget to mention this when selling them

• Windscreens and windows can shatter in severe heat – as already mentioned we lost our bank windscreen to the 45°C temperatures of the Namibian desert even though our car was parked in the shade. To avoid the build-up of pressure that causes this always leave at least one window open a little at all times (day or night) whenever the temperature exceeds 38°C. If something does go wrong think outside the box to solve the issue quickly and for as little money as possible. For instance when our back windscreen shattered we could find an original replacement but it would have taken 10 days to arrive and cost $2000. So instead we found a bush mechanic who created us a new one out of flat shatterproof glass, polystyrene and foam in one day for only $120!
  

• Don’t forget you have a great set of spot lights on your car: the headlights. It may seem obvious but you’d be amazed how easily when in a stressful situation in the dark you forget this

Gear – what’s worth getting and what not?

• Take a proper towel and not one of those ridiculously expensive ‘quick dry micro towels’. They are truly horrendous, don’t dry you at all and seem little more than a really expensive chamois. Take a normal towel – even a hand sized one will serve you better but if space really is that much of an issue then go to the hardware store and buy yourself a chamois, at least that way you’ll save yourself some cash

• Get yourself a sleeping bag liner. The silk ones are really tiny and won’t take up too much of your precious luggage space. They are expensive  but well worth the price since they can make your sleeping bag warmer which is occasionally necessary but not often enough to be cost – efficient or practical to get a warmer sleeping bag. They can also be slept in on their own when it’s very hot and of course perfect for protecting yourself if you’re forced to sleep in a particularly suspect or unclean spot

• Pack a bread board. They make camp cooking infinitely easier and also act as the perfect camping desk for when you’re recording all your adventures

• Between WD40, cable ties and duct tape there is nothing on your car, tent, pack or anything you can’t fix – at least temporarily until you can get somewhere to perform a more permanent fix

• In terms of refrigeration there are 3 options available: full on mobile fridge and freezer; electric coolers and the good old fashioned cooler box. Either go the whole hog and get a full on mobile fridge or just get a cooler box. The middle option is nothing more than a cooler box anyway, costs a lot more, takes up much more space and gives many more problems

• ‘Outdoor’ gear doesn’t need to come from an outdoor store, quite often you’ll find other items that do the job of much more expensive equipment just as well. For example a beach mat is a much cheaper alternative to a ground sheet and designed to do exactly the same thing! Soaking ordinary matches in turpentine for 5 minutes will turn them into water proof matches. You can even make your own natural tick deterrent by mixing 1 part tea tree oil with 2 parts water. Thinking outside of the box will make for much more affordable kit. 

• No set of pants can be too comfortable – whether you’ll be driving all day or trekking through the bush. Screw fashion and find a pair of paints comfortable enough to sleep in, that's our new measure of pants suitability!

• If in South Africa, avoid 4x4 Megaworld when buying gear. This franchised company essentially just orders from a catalogue and one they don’t even know very well. Worst of all when they order you equipment (in our case tents and stretcher beds ) that don’t do what they said (in our case fit into each other – the tents were way smaller than the salesman said) they are uninterested in correcting the problem ‘because we are a franchise and so our branches are completely independent’

• When temperatures exceed 40°C devices such as cameras, GPS systems and mobile phones need to be kept cool (we kept ours in a mini mobile fridge) or they will stop working – sometimes permanently.

Hope you find these tips useful and happy travels!

Posted by Tracy Angus-Hammond (@T2T_Trace)

'The roads we've traveled (so far)' in pictures