Importing your 4x4 into South Africa (Duty Free)

Hi folks, if you are reading this, you are either about to embark on an overland trip, taking part in one or just about to complete one. Either way, if you are a returning South African (like my wife) we want to share our experience of importing our 4x4 (Land Rover) duty free into SA after our London to Cape Town trip 2010/11 Latest news / About us - Langebaan Sunset - Stonehenge UK to Cape Town SA - 2010/11.  [This process is likely to be the same for a motorbike or truck traveling on a Carnet]


We offer the following summary / check list for any returning South African citizen that has a foreign registered vehicle and wishes to import it into SA free of duty. There are several things that you need to consider BEFORE you set out as there are some items that need to be addressed in your departing country before you set out on your journey if you want to avoid a lot of hassle when you get to South Africa. Even though there are various guidelines available on this process, things "on the ground" are often different and even our clearing agent in Cape Town had to jump through a few hoops.

The Adventure Travel Film Festival 2012 - Preview

Hosted by Austin Vince and Lois Pryce, the UK Adventure Travel Film Festival is a must for the 2012 diary.

The Adventure Travel Film Festival

Here's a sneak preview which the team have created to entice us to participate in the 2012 event:

Rough Guide to Richard Trillo

Richard Trillo - Author

Taking a good travel guide book with you on your overland journey is mandatory. A good travel guide book can remind you that there are often remote locations that are easily accessible with your own vehicle and worth the visit.

I recently stumbled across the author of The Rough Guide to West Africa and The Rough Guide to Kenya on the internet.  Richard Trillo, author of the two books mentioned above and author of First-Time Africa keeps various blogs and his twitter account active with various updates to his books, and interesting commentary via twitter.

Richard Trillo's Amazon Bio:

I first went to Africa in 1977, with a vague idea that I could hitchhike all the way to Timbuktu from my family home in the New Forest. I left with a friend, with $100 each and a copy of the Michelin map. No guidebooks, no mobile phones, not much sense. We got to the fabled city, and home again, largely by good luck and the kindness of others, having learned what a visa is (a hard lesson when you're already half way across the Sahara and the embassy is in Algiers) and what malaria feels like. Back in the UK I went to university, got a degree in sociology, and later went to London University's School of Oriental & African Studies to do a Master's Degree in East African Ethnography and Linguistics.

Africa Orbital

A fantastic photograph from the Africa Orbital team - Western Sahara (Nov 2010)

Back to Broke...

Oisin Hughes

Combining a travel blog, with good video is a tough job to do when travelling overland. Carrying the equipment on a BMW GS makes it even tougher.  For one Irish overlander, Oisin Hughes, his world trip offered a fantastic insight into motorcycle overland travel - his humour, his desire for remote locations and his personality made for a fab reading experience.  His video below sums up the experience.

Gosh, we are dirty...

Planning for your Trans-Africa overland adventure often focuses on the largest aspects of the trip, namely, the vehicle, the route options, the equipment, and so the list goes on.  Sometimes the attention to the daily detail is missed in the planning and you only start to realize it when you start your trip...

Take for example the daily roads majority of us prefer to travel on:  unpaved gravel and sand roads.  Fun to drive but they have a fundamental flaw - dust.

Africa Overland: What the Hell are we doing here?

What the hell are we doing here?  Might be a question you have asked yourself on your overland adventure...
Authors Murray Gough and Peter Travers turned there late 90's Trans-Africa adventure into a book and video titled "What the hell are we doing here".  It's a fun read highlighting one of the last routes from North across Central Africa and into East Africa prior to political turmoil that changed the route South.

The DVD can now be found on YouTube:

Ural Sidecar Overland

I spotted two Urals Motocycles on the Hume Highway heading from Sydney to Canberra today... prompted me to dig through a few of the archives to find the past and current Trans-Africa trips with an Ural.

The Ural Sidecar is an icon of motorcycles, especially the sidecars.  Fully equipped, with a reverse gear and a spare wheel mounted on the sidecar, it looks the part of any overland adventure.

I first encountered an Ural when a Dutch couple, Mullie and Nobile headed North from South Africa.

Book Review: Cape Town to Cairo in a Beach Buggy

Fancy a trip to the beach in a beach buggy?  How about an overland trip from Cape Town to Cairo?

In December 2010, Adriaan Rossouw headed North from Cape Town to his ambitious goal of Cairo, and Berlin.

His self-published book, Cape Town to Cairo in a Beach Buggy, was digitally published on March 2011.  I was looking forward to reading his story after his brief posting on the internet back in 2010.

I fully recognise that we all have dreams and plans and sometimes those plans don't fully work out.  This is just the case for the author and his beach buggy.  To title the book, Cape Town to Cairo, and then in the opening paragraph state the destination was not reached left a huge dent in my desire to read the book.

The book turned out to be no more than daily blog entries about his drive through Southern Africa.  There are no character references, no history about the land and no interesting stories retold in the book.  The author certainly had interesting times with the beach buggy but no elaboration other than the bare minimum.  Rather frustrating for the reader as this left me wanting to know more.

Recommendation:
If you are an overlander or a beach buggy fan, you will be left wanting more than this book can offer.  Credit does go to the author for publishing his ebook and hopefully this will lead to many other overlanders doing the same.

Links to the book:
Amazon UK kindle

Beach Buggies Overland
One of the first internet reported overland trips in a beach buggy took place a few years ago.  Tom drove South from Sweden to South Africa in his red beach buggy and documented the trip in his DVD "Adventuress Wanted".

A must read: Into Africa by Martin Dugard

"Dr Livingstone, I presume?"

Preparing for your overland trip takes on many forms... vehicle preparation, visa research, talking to other overlanders and of course, reading.

Personally, I spent hours reading overland guides, country travel guides, overland travel stories and the history of Africa.  Here is one recommendation that every overlander should read:

Into Africa by Martin Dugard is the epic adventures of Livingstone and Stanley.  The author writes in a gripping way that keeps you entranced about the lives of these two legionary explorers.

I was prompted to reread 'Into Africa' after the 1871 (140 years ago) diary of David Livingstone was republished.  This unique work used impressive technology to decrypt his writing due to faded ink and bad handwriting.   Read more on the UCLA website: Livingstone's 1971 Field Diary