I recently completed 52 days on an Overland trip through Eastern and Southern Africa with Acacia Africa only to end the trip a few days early due to injury. I’ve mentioned Acacia in some of my previous post and want to single them out as a top notch tour operator. As a general review I give them an “A” in all categories. Acacia offers numerous types of tours. My particular experience was with the Overland tours they offer. My Tour was the Ultimate Africa Overlander which covers the South and Eastern Africa stretch of countries they tour. If you want to read what life is like and the types of things you’ll do while on tour you can start reading at my earlier post.
Overlanding is big in Africa and it’s a great way to see this part of the world at a very reasonable price. If you like adventure, the outdoors, or camping I highly recommend this type of travel throughout Africa. If you’re prissy and have to have the finer things in life, then this type of travel is not for you. It’s an amazing way to see the highlights in an economical and safe manner. At times you’ll see the up close and personal Africa and at others times from a distance. Each tour has an experienced crew and a specially designed, self-sufficient truck. Throughout the trip you’ll camp in designated campsites with wash facilities which vary from extremely basic with cold showers to extremely nice while enjoying the odd night bush camping in the wild. Overlanding was an absolute blast and I found it to be an amazing amount of fun.
Before I started my trip I had concerns about what the other people would be like. Would they all be 18yrs old and party animals or all romantic couples alienating me? I was traveling alone and the Acacia truck holds up to 24 people. The reality is it was a great mixed group from multiple countries some singles, some couples ranging in age from early twenties to sixty five. In the two months I spent living aboard I found everyone to be of a similar spirit and friendships where quickly bound. Heck we were all in Africa camping for Christ sake. Anybody willing to do that has got to be a good soul. If you like meeting new people, camping, and adventure then Overlanding is the only way to go. In general if you jump in and participate you’ll get as much out of it as you put in.
Another concern I had was food. What would I be eating? I figured I’d be roasting wieners on the fire, eating some bland tasteless food, or maybe worse eating cockroaches. It was quite different and we eat heartily. Most days breakfast was early in the morning before departing and consisted of cereal, toast, maybe eggs, coffee and juice. The majority of our lunches were roadside in transit typically consisting of cold cut sandwiches, juice, fruit, and some sort of salad. Evening dinners varied widely, sometimes we cooked stew in a Dutch oven over the camp fire, other times we roasted a pig on a spit, we even made lasagna on the open fire. The truck also has a camp stove which was used regularly for meals, pasta bologna’s anyone? Stir fry? Mexican? The list goes on. Pretty much anything you cook at home we were capable of producing on the truck. It was hearty, good, and plenty of it. Instead of losing weight like I thought, avoiding gaining weight is a bigger concern. I should note while I’m a meat eater there were 4 vegetarians on the truck and they were well accommodated. And, if you are into adventuresome eating there is ample time along the way to explore some of the odd local foods on your own and a couple times as a group.
I’m touting Acacia because in my 52 nights through Africa I saw a couple hundred other overlanding trucks from other companies at campsites throughout the trip. Africa Travel Company (ATC), Dragoman, Drifters, Gecko, Kumuka, Oasis, Intrepid, and a few others. All the companies provide basic camping supplies, ie tents, dishes, food stocks etc and I didn’t see much difference between any of the providers. However, where Acacia excelled above every other company is with their trucks. Each Acacia truck is equipped with individual lockers for each passenger where all the other companies’ trucks had none and passengers had to store their bags in a mutual locker under the truck. Other trucks would pull into camp and be pulling out bags covered in dust while my stuff was neatly packed away in a clean dry locker, which I could lock if I so choose. Acacia trucks are also equipped with a deep freeze for food storage and most of the other trucks only had ice chest. Thus, a big difference in the types of food we could stock. Electrical outlets for charging batteries and an ipod station were a couple other huge benefits the other trucks lacked. There are lots of long days on the road and everybody loved passing around the ipod creating a play-list of varied sorts by each passenger picking one song. We’d pull into camp batteries all charged and visiting the campsite bar there would be dozens of folks from other operators vying for the one or two electrical outlets to charge for the next day. Oh, one last thing. camping mats are provided a nice benefit over having to lug your own around.
If you’re dreaming of seeing Africa, I unequivocally recommend Acacia Africa. If you have any questions, please get in touch.
