AFRICA, MY FINAL FRONTIER
Africa, my final frontier. I have known for a while I that my travels were becoming more and more imbalanced, visiting places like Europe and Asia were either very convenient or my absolute preference.
WITH ONLY 2 COUNTRIES LEFT TO VISIT IN SOUTH EAST ASIA, WHERE DO YOU THINK MY FAVOURITE REGION IS?
The last thing I want to do is tick off several continents before even half exploring some others. So being majorly OCD I obviously enjoyed dividing the world into regions and seeing where most of my work is left to be done;
Europe – 4
Middle East – 3
Central Asia – 6
South East Asia – 2
Africa – 24
Caribbean – 5
Central America – 5
South America – 2
North America – 0
South Pacific & Oceania – 14
The 7 countries I visited during my recent trip in Africa barely scratched the surface and I still have 32 countries left! Comparing this with some of the other regions I knew I would be seeing a lot more of Africa over the next few years.
WHY SO MANY LEFT IN AFRICA?
I completed most of my travelling during my 2 year trip when I was mostly based around the Americas and Asia, it was convenient at the time and visas in these regions were generally not a problem, not to mention visiting every country wasn’t part of the goal.
In hindsight, with large parts of Africa being rather unpredictable it would have made more sense to travel there when I could afford the time. Take my failed attempts with getting to Chad and missing my flight to Angola for example, all down to African logistics. Now with a full time job the last thing I want to be doing is being delayed at a border or waiting several days for a visa.
Orange = visited. Africa my final frontier
RELATED READ: DRONE ISSUES AND AFRICA’S BIGGEST URBAN SLUM
SHORT TERM PLAN
So to balance the numbers I have made it a mission to focus on Africa over the next 12-18 months. But don’t expect me to forget other regions, I have plans to visit Central Asia next autumn along with a couple of trips to Europe and South East Asia.
So I suppose in a way it signals the start of the end of my goal where I really focus on micro regions, making sure to tick all the countries which are grouped together before then making my way to the South Pacific Islands for another mammoth trip.
Safe zones in Africa. Africa my final frontier
AFRICA, THE MID WEST
So, come along as we head to West Africa, known to be the hardest region of them all. Here we will spend around 3 weeks overland, visiting a total of 7 new countries. We will be exploring everything from Diamond mines in Sierra Leone to the African Cup of Nations in Côte d’Ivoire! Gonna be a real challenge thats for sure!
