Category: Africa 2025

As the title implies, yes, I am still hostage in Cape Town. I am told via a second party that my license disc (the registration document I need to legally drive here) is coming today or tomorrow, but that is according to a third party. Do I believe it? Not until it is in my hands. So, in the meantime………

Now, the sole purpose of this post is to follow-up on my “2 lies and 1 truth game” – and yes this is a real game, which a few of you will recall we played around the campfire on our “brothers plus” sea kayaking trip in Prince William Sound, Alaska.

First of all, I was shocked by how many of you thought I would actually cheat and give you three truths instead of only one. Would I really do that to you? Some of you thought I either did all three or should have. I deny the former and probably should have done the latter, as they all had strong merits. The honest truth is that I did option #3, the all-day mountain climb to Perdelop Peak off of Franschhoek Pass, and staged the other two. Specifically, after my hike, on the way back to my campsite I stopped off at a winery and had a glass of wine solely for the purpose of this game (well, not solely, but mostly), and as soon as I got back to camp I staged the first option (reclining chair with book and binos). I think Brenda knows me best as she was smack on with her conclusions (see her comment in the post if you like).

OK, shall we play again? No, let’s not. I will simply tell you the truth that I spent a second day doing another long hike, but this time up a mountain valley (off Bainskloof Pass) to several waterfalls, including one that was the perfect representation of what inspired my patio waterfall at home. Here are some pictures of my hikes. Enjoy! And I very much hope that my next post is from far down the road on the way to Namibia.

And let’s not forget that in Africa you have to share the roads with baboons at times:

New Species:

• White-throated canary
• Cape white-eye
• Yelloq bishop

What do you do when you are frustrated beyond belief and downright angry at the incompetent and ridiculously slow and antiquated system for processing vehicle license registration requests, and consequently, are kept hostage to the system and unable to go anywhere too far from Cape Town, and certainly not across an international border, for fear of getting stopped by the police and either given a hefty fine or thrown in jail? Such is my state of mind, as I am STILL in Cape Town waiting for my vehicle registration, which was promised to me more than a week ago, and then promised me again a few days later, and then again, and again. I want to scream at someone, but it wouldn’t do any good and probably would delay the process even more. So all I can do is work really hard on my patience and understanding – which can be very difficult for me at times – and wait for the “system” to eventually bear fruit.

SO, if you were in my state of mind and had time, days possibly, to kill in the vicinity of Cape Town, what would you do? I thought of three viable options:

First option: find a nice campsite, preferably next to a stream or river, nested in the mountains and surrounded by nature’s majesty, and just kick back on my reclining camp chair with binos by my side and let the birds come to me while I read “Cry of the Khalahari” for the third time. And let the story of the Khalahari and the birds bring peace to my mind.

Second option: visit half a dozen or so of the hundreds of wineries in the area and sample some of the incredible wines – and there are literally hundreds of wineries of all sizes and varieties to choose from, and they are usually situated in a beautifull setting with a lodge, restaurant or cafe, and wine tasting all to be had – and let the wine dissolve my troubles away, at least after the second or third glass.

Third option: go on a really strenuous mountain hike involving physical exertion and lots of sweat – and there are lots of private nature reserves in the mountains surrounding Cape Town with lots of hiking trails and peaks begging to be climbed – and let the mountain splendor melt away my troubles.

OK, these are the viable options that I thought of. Let’s do pros and cons:

Option 1: PROS: there is nothing so relaxing as lying back in the recliner listening to the birds sing, with the sound of running water and a light breeze blowing through the trees in the background, especially with the sun shining and warming the body to a comfortable temperature when the ambient temperature is around 60 degrees Fahrenheit. And sometimes the best birding is to sit still and let the birds come to you. And Cry of the Khalahari is an epic wildlife adventure story that resonates. CONS: the only exercise obtained from this activity is the arm bringing the mug of hot chocolat, or sweet apple juice once the ambient temperature rises enough, to the mouth every so often. And the pastries (i.e., homemade doughnuts and cinnamon rolls from the several visited local bakeries) eaten over the previous couple of days simply turn into fat deposits. And when there are breaks in the bird song, or the Khalahari story gets too familiar, the mind can wonder back to why you are so miserable being hostage to the system.

Option 2: PROS: There’s nothing like a good glass of red wine straight from the winery to remove stress, and after enough glasses the whole world looks beautiful and perfect and troubles simply float away to oblivion. And when you’re in outstanding wine country, it just makes sense to experience the local culture, doesn’t it – “when in Rome”. CONS: There’s nothing worse than drinking your troubles away by yourself; it’s one thing to do it with good company, but quite another to be that loner getting sloshed all by themself. And if money is a concern, it is a very expensive treatment for anger; indeed, it would be cheaper to pay for the therapy session.

Option 3: PROS: Physical exercize is a proven effective method for stress reduction, and it comes with the added benefit of being really good for you. And there’s no better way to ensure a good night sleep than to tire out the body from a good day of exercise. And pure untrammeled nature is the greatest thing that the world has to offer, so what better way to counter negativity than immersing ones self in nature. CONS: climbing mountains is damn hard and can be dangerous, especially when hiking alone. And there is always the chance of getting bitten by a poisonous snake – and there are plenty of them out there, most notably the Puff Adder, which is extremely aggressive and highly poisonous – and dying a slow, painful and agonizing death – all by yourself.

SO, there we have it: three plausible options for dealing with the frustation and building anger at being held hostage in Cape Town by “the system”. Let’s play the “2 lies and 1 truth” game to see how well you think you know me. Here are photos depicting me after choosing each option. Two are lies, one is the truth:

Now it is up to YOU to decide which one of the options above I actually chose. For those of you still reading this post and interested, send me your guess as a comment and I will compile the results and post the truth on my next post.

Good luck!

Here’s a quickie post to keep us all engaged while I remain hostage to the vehicle registration system for another couple of days. To kill a day, I decided to take a quick one day and night trip up the west coast to none other than the West Coast National Park, located roughy 200 km from Cape Town. But instead of heading inland to the Cederberg Mountains like last time, this time I headed over to the coast to a rather small Park that straddles a large shallow lagoon and supports one of only a handful of remaining patchs of coastal lowland fynbos vegetation. You might recall that last year I visit the De Hoop Nature Reserve in the Eastern Cape; this Park is a very similar landscape in terms of terrain, vegetation and wildlife, but located on the west coast.

This Park, as I said, straddles a large shallow lagoon, but it is connected to Saldanha Bay, a deep-water bay that has an important and storied history. Because the bay is protected from the storms on all sides, except for the narrow inlet, it provided a perfect safe harbor for boats partaking in the East India trade during the 16-18th centuries before passing around the Cape of Good Hope out on Cape Point near Cape Town, which was notoriously hazardous to ships under sail.

The Bay area was, of course, inhabited by natives (including the San) and early humans for more than 100,000 years before the Europeans arrived. Some of the earliest human archeological sites can be found in this area. But the European’s quest for trade with the East Indies brought the Portuguese, Dutch, French and Brittish to these shores, and they fought over possession of the Bay multiple times, with the Brittish ultimately winning out. There are all kinds of stories about ships from one country getting caught in the Bay by another and crews taken prisoner. There were even periods when pirates ruled the Bay. There are stories of starvation and disease among the sparse inhabitants because of the harse climate, scarcity of food sources and lack of fresh water, etc. They even had a colony site for people with small pox who were sent here to either die or recover. Anyways, lots of exciting things happened in this Bay years ago. Now, it’s mostly surrounded by upscale vacation communities, and the Park itself on one side.

I spent half a day in the Park, mainly visiting three different bird blinds and looking for wildlife – my first focused wildlife observations since returning to Africa this year! Saw Eland, Red Hartebeest and Bontebok antelope and lots of birds, including a few new species. The Park has no camping, so I found a campground just outside the Park on the bay shore in the town of Langebaan. Nothing too noteworthy, but I had it all to myself, so that’s a plus:

To close out this quickie, here are some pictures from the Park:

New Species:

• Levaillant’s cisticola
• Karoo scrub robin
• Angulate tortoise

It’s been 2 weeks since I posted my first entry for this year’s trip with a general overview of my plans for this year. Sorry it has taken me so long to post again – some of you have contacted me with concerns for my well-being given my total silence – but I spent the first full week in Cape Town getting some vehicle work done and making several upgrades to my vehicle accessories (e.g., new refrig, house battery, air compressor, etc.). Unfortunately, my business in Cape Town is still not finished, as I have yet to receive my updated, valid vehicle registration, which I need in order to leave the country and later return. SO, to kill some time, I just spent the last 5 days exploring the Cederberg Mountains, which are a rugged, mountainous area located in the Western Cape province of South Africa, roughly 200-300 km north of Cape Town.

The Cederberg mountains are part of the much larger greater Karoo semi-desert in southern Africa, which I introduced and described in the first leg of my journey in 2023. The Cederbergs are known for their dramatic sandstone formations, including the famous Maltese Cross and Wolfberg Arch, as well as for the numerous San rock paintings found within the area – all very reminiscent of the American southwest both in geological landform and ancient rock art (of the Anasazi or Ancient Puebloan People). The core of the Cederberg was designated as a wilderness area in 1973.

The mountains are home to the endangered Clanwilliam cedar tree, which is how the mountains got their name. This tree, once numerous in the Cederberg, was largely cut down for furniture and construction and now only survives at the highest elevations and most rugged locations. Although my hikes took me to some of the highest elevations and rugged places, I never saw this tree (or any other for that matter), so it must be extremely rare.

The vegetation of the Cederberg is dominated by high-altitude (or mountain) fynbos, which is predominantly low shrubland and heathland – again, very reminiscent of the arid American southwest in structure – and is found mostly along the coastal belt in southern and southwestern South Africa. Unlike the semi-desert of the America Southwest, however, the fynbos floristic biome is a major hotspot for plant diversity, with a large percentage of the plants being endemic (found nowhere else).

I camped my first nighs on the northern end of the Cederberg at a site called Kliphuis, which which situated along a stream in a small oasis of trees, and I had the place to myself.

I truly love South Africa this time of year because the Parks, campgrounds and trails are largely empty, and although the nights get quite cold and the mornings are a bit challenging to wake up to, the days are glorious with temperatures around 60 degree Fahrenheit – perfect hiking temperatures.

I did a wonderful half-day hike from Kliphuis, which was a perfect introduction to the Cederberg. Didn’t see much wildlife, except for a Klipspringer (dwarf antelope fond of rocky terrain), but the flowers and rocks were spectacular and I saw a really cool waterfall that cascaded down the cliff but flowed behind the rock in places and then emerged to fall over a ledge only to disappear again and then reemerge again below – very cool – it may not be too late to redesign my patio waterfall back home!

The following day was off-and-on rainy so I took advantage of the “bad” weather and took a long, mostly 4×4 trail over several passes along the eastern flank of the Cederberg and ended up down south at a campsite called Sanddrif, where I spent three nights. Along the way I stopped at an archeological site that feature some very cool San (Bushman) rock art dated to 5,000 years ago, along with some spectacular caves used by the San during that time, before they were extirpated by European colonists a couple hundred years ago.

From Sanddrif, I did an all-day hike that took me up about 3,000 feet to a spectacular rock formation called Wolfberg Crack and then on to Wolfberg Arch, a huge arch similar to those found in Utah’s Arches National Park. Traversing the “crack” was an adventure in rock scrambling and climbing. There were several hand-over-hand pull-ups on ropes to ascend boulders and walls, crawling on my belly through narrow rock tunnels, squeezing through extremely narrow clefts in the rock walls, and lots of climbing through slots in the rocks. It was an exhilarating experience that I wish I could have shared more with you, but I was mostly focused on surving the traverse that I took very few pictures – sorry!

The following day I drove a short distance to another “Nature Reserve” (more on this in a bit) called Kronriver and did another all-day hike up a mountain range and along the ridge past a couple of peaks in a big loop. Had the entire mountain range all to myself so far as I could tell. Again, as with my previous hikes and the entirety of the Cederberg, this area was a rock-lovers playground, with spectacular rock formations everywhere I looked. Got lots of inspiration for additional rock features at our home in Colorado.

I learned that the Cederberg has a core national Wildernes Reserve, but the bulk of the area is carved up into numerous private “Nature Reserves”. I put Nature Reserve in quotes, because what I observed was a series of working farms, mostly vineyards and fruit orchards (apples and pears I think), one located in each major valley bottom, each having a lodge and restaurant, cabins or chalets and a campground, and surrounded by tens of thousands of acres of wild, steep mountainous terrain with a few hiking trails and rock climbing features. You have to pay to access each “Nature Reserve” separately. These “farms”, of course, are all white-owned and run, and use cheap black labor to do all the farm labor. I am not quite sure if these “Nature Reserves” are truly motivated to conserve nature or simply labeled as such as a way to market themselves and attract paying tourists, or perhaps they get a tax break by designating themselves “Nature Reserves”. I visited 3 different “Nature Reserves” on my few hikes and paid separately for each hike.

OK, that’s all the rambling from me about my time in the Cederberg. Since I spent 4 full days hiking and driving in the Cederberg, I took a lot of pictures. Consequently, I put together a 7 minute slide show of my trip, depicting most of the things I described above. Enjoy!

The Cederberg slideshow

New Species:

• Karoo prinia
• Yellow canary
• African black duck
• Cape rockjumper
• Spotted eagle owl

To all my Africa overland blog-followers, welcome back to Africa 2025 and my not-so-conventional travel blog for my overland adventures in Africa! You may recall that this blog is very light on travel logistics (in contrast to your typical travel blog) and heavy on wildlife sightings and observations of stunning landscapes, with a smattering of observations on the human cultures encountered – but noting that photos and videos of the people encountered are rare owing to a sense of respect and sensitivity for their privacy.

First, a couple of business items pertaining to this blog. If you are subscribed to my blog then you are receiving email notifications of new blog posts. If you no longer want to receive these email notifications, then simply click on the “unsubscribe” link located at the bottom of the email notification (in very small print) and you will no longer receive these automated emails. Of course, you are still free to visit my blog site at “overlandwithkmcgee.com” at any time to view any posts whether you are subscribed or not. Also, as per last year, I love to hear from you by commenting on a post, but rather than replying to you in the post (which would require you to return to that post to see my reply), I will generally respond via email directly to you and only you. Now, on to my plans for this year’s journey.

As you may recall from, my stated plan for overlanding Africa was a three-stage, three-year journey through sub-Saharan Africa. In 2023, I traveled from Cape Town South Africa north through the inlands of South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, and Kenya, ending in Nairobi at brother Mark’s house. The trip took me a little over 4.5 months and I visited some 35 or so National Parks and Reserves. My focus was on traversing up the middle (or inlands) of south and east Africa, with a strong emphasis on seeing as much African wildlife as possible. I commented frequently on the landscapes and the people, but I devoted most of my commentary, pictures and videos to my incredible wildlife encounters. And you may recall that I traveled in my fully kitted out Toyota Land cruiser troopie, affectionately named the “green dragon”, camping along the way in the Parks and Reserves, and sometimes in very remote places well off the beaten track.

Last year, in 2024, I departed from Nairobi, Kenya with Nancy, Caitlin, Mark and Kirsten in tow and eventually returned south to Cape Town, South Africa, this time heading down the east coast of Africa, focusing on the Parks and Reserves located on or near the coast. Specifically, I toured parts of Kenya that I missed in 2023, the coastline of Tanzania, with a short excursion to Zanzibar, the safer parts of Mozambique (i.e., avoiding the northeast province), southern Malawi, Lesotho and the east coast of South Africa. My trip was a little shorter in 2024, lasting a little over 3.5 months, owing to a later start. In addition, this trip featured more landscapes and hiking, but with some wildlife parks thrown in to keep me motivated.

My journey this year begins back in Cape Town where the Green Dragon is resting comfortably in storage. After taking care of some vehicle modifications and the usual overland prep work, I will head up the west coast of South Africa through the Western Cape Province en route to Namibia, where I will be joined by Nancy for a few weeks touring northern Namibia before hooking up with our great friends Steve and Ki for 6 weeks of exploring more of Namibia, the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in northwestern South Africa and southwestern Botswana, and then back to Cape Town and a week on the coast before calling it end to another year’s journey. Visit the 2025 Route page on this website for more details on this year’s trip, including a map showing my intended and somewhat tortuous route.

Once again, on July 2nd of this year I will be heading back to Africa and what has become “my home away from home” – at least for the time being. As I am sure you are aware by now, not much gives me more pleasure than spending time observing wildlife in Africa, especially when sharing my passion with others – this year including Nancy, Steve and Ki in person, and all of you reading this blog virtually. So, if you love what you see here in Africa, remember that the clock is ticking, as the threats to Africa’s remaining wildlife populations are increasing every year.

See you on the trail!