We are back to sub-Saharan Africa. Starting from Johannesburg towards Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique.
South Africa, Kruger park
July 12, 2025
How many elephants are there in Kruger Park? According to GPT, over 13 thousand… How many tigers and lions together? About two thousand. The area of the park is the size of the State of Israel and we were there twice, 4-5 hours each time.
So… we saw a lot of elephants! One even charged us, that is, ran towards the car with erect ears (his family had just crossed the road and he thought we were getting too close 
). By the way, who wins in a fight between a Land Cruiser and an elephant 
? We didn’t check…
In short, we saw a lot of elephants, a few giraffes, types of deer and antelope, zebras, hippos, birds… We didn’t see any big cats.
Zimbabwe – First impression
July 18, 2025
First impression of Zimbabwe. Have you noticed that the poorer the country, the more expensive it is to enter it? Toll and bridge tax, customs, purchase tax…
At some point, the country had inflation of 11 million percent per year (you read that right, 11,000,000% per year), so they switched to the US dollar and there is no longer any local currency.
Another interesting phenomenon is when you cross the border, you drive the wide two-lane road, well paved with designed roundabouts. After a few hundred meters, the road becomes a single lane, and the roundabouts disappear, after another kilometer, holes in the road begin that you should be careful of if you don’t want to find yourself on the other side of the world, and then the road turns into an intermittent gravel road. This is not the only country we have encountered this phenomenon (for example, Colombia or Honduras) as if the leaders of the country say, ‘there is nothing like a first impression’.
At the first supermarket we stopped to buy a local sim card. There is a large parking lot completely full of cars undergoing maintenance, a tire change, oil, body repair… A wonderful idea, a garage without a garage, maybe the mechanics are jealous of digital nomads from hi-tech.
The supermarket itself reminds me of a supermarket in Russia in the 70s (some of us were there), both in quantity and selection.
Most white people have left Zimbabwe in recent decades (a decrease from 4.5% to 0.2%), and yet in the places we walk around (guesthouses, garage, restaurants, shopping center…) there are about 50% whites, it feels like we’ve already met all the 0.2%.
If you want to see stars, this is the place! We are in a pretty big city and there are no streetlights or lights from the houses (which are surrounded by walls) so it feels like the middle of the desert. Luckily our vehicle is equipped with spotlights for a safari trip.
However, what’s most interesting are the people we met (and more on that in a separate post). Spoiler: they’re amazing.
Zimbabwe – People
July 20, 2025
We promised a post about people in Zimbabwe.
We’ve been here for a week and so far, every time we’ve needed help people have gone out of their way. Here are two representative examples:
We went into a garage that was recommended to us, and the garage owner (the amazing John) greeted us with a message that he was busy and couldn’t take care of us, but he checked the car, it turned out that the radiator needed to be replaced (a full day’s work). After realizing that we were a. from Israel and b. on the road, he decided to accept us. He took another customer’s car, that was already at work, off the lift, drove us to a shopping center so we wouldn’t just get bored in the garage, and took care of the car… The car is well 
.
Another story, the battery in the car key needed to be replaced. We went into a huge hardware store. We couldn’t open up the key and one of the salesmen took the initiative to help us (half an hour after the store closed) … But that’s not the story. When we left, it turned out that the car wouldn’t start, and the parking lot had to be closed. The salespeople got together and pushed the car out (and it is a very heavy car). Then I remembered that while dismantling the key, a small piece of plastic fell out, which was probably the immobilizer chip, but the store was closed and everyone had left. After a vigorous knock on the gate, one of the managers arrived and let me in. A joint search of the bins yielded no results. The manager, on his own initiative, started calling the employees until he found the employee who helped me with the key, who told me which bin the chip had been thrown into… The whole thing took about an hour and we didn’t even hear once that ‘you should come tomorrow’… The car is well .
When you’re in trouble, you discover the real people. There’s nothing like the Zimbabweans!
Matobo National Park - Zimbabwe
July 21, 2025
Near Bulawayo (a major city in Zimbabwe) there is a compact park called Matobo. We, graduates of Kruger (a park in South Africa the size of Israel), prefer them small. The park is in a valley surrounded by boulders, in unnatural forms (they are just about to fall… but don’t). The park has all kinds of animals, including white rhinos (which are like black swans but on a larger scale). We didn’t see any animals except for a few birds and lizards, and to be honest, we weren’t looking for any.
The highlight of the park is the grave of an important man, on top of a hill surrounded by boulders (a great place to live and not to die) with colorful lizards (probably from the LGTB community 
).
And most importantly, although the park is considered and recommended and although it is the season, there are more rangers in the park than visitors (the day before we visited the park there were only 10 vehicles registered). So, you feel like you are in a private park. If you are in the area… much recommended!
Mutare – Vumba, Zimbabwe
July 22, 2025
About a year ago we were in a nature reserve in Namibia and there was a special route in the reserve to see baobab trees. At the end of the route there were about three trees that of course we made a book on.
In Zimbabwe, baobab trees are more common than eucalyptus in Israel. There are roads along which there is a tree every few dozen meters, some are ancient with a trunk as thick as a truck and some are younger.
At the first tree we stop and take pictures from several angles, the second one too, at the third one we take pictures while moving, at the tenth one we point out that there is a tree, at the twentieth one we stop pointing at it, at thirty we stop noticing it…
But we must admit, they make great pictures.
Zimbabwe roads
July 24, 2025
Roads in Zimbabwe. The country is poor, and it is noticeable on the roads. In general, it can be said that the roads in the cities are one big hole, while outside the cities the roads are reasonable with surprising pit holes here and there.
Every twenty to thirty kilometers there will be a police checkpoint (since we have a South African number, we are usually not stopped for inspection).
Every 100 kilometers there will be a toll station. Since all the main roads are toll roads (and whoever imagines Western style highway, should stop imagining).
At every intersection there is a market. Sometimes small with 5-6 stalls and sometimes huge with many dozens.
Along the road, which is quite narrow (enough for 2 cars to pass), there are lots of pedestrians, (especially at the beginning and end of school day), and women carrying everything you can imagine on their heads, including trolleys with wheels.
Overall, the traffic is quite sparse, so it is quite pleasant to drive on the roads.
Score 8 on the Yoav’s scale.
Africa travel plans
July 30, 2025
People ask us how we plan our trips, and the short answer is – we don’t!
Since we spend about 8-9 months a year traveling (depending on the Hamas and Iran), this is a relevant question.
We usually stay in the country for about a month, on a rolling trip, meaning we sleep in a different place almost every day.
Before starting the trip, we will scan the Internet for places that interest us – exotic villages, mountain landscapes, nature reserves, lakes, markets, etc., with a preference for places without too many tourists. We will mark the points on the map. After completing the research, we will usually have a collection of points that will dictate the general route.
Every evening, we decide where we are going the next day (or whether we will stay here another day) and accordingly we will book the next hotel (we are excellent customers of Booking.com).
Every few days we will settle in a place that we like until the road calls us.
We usually don’t have an end date (the benefit of retirement), so when we get tired or the longing builds up, we go home.
Simple….
St James Zongoro High School – Watsomba, Zimbabwe
July 31, 2025
We visited a high school in Zimbabwe. We do this from time to time.
On a similar visit we made to Ethiopia, we were told that all classes are conducted in English, but our impression was that the students hardly spoke English. In Zimbabwe, the story is exactly the opposite, all the students spoke English very well and this probably explains why everyone speaks English in the country.
The classes are large (50 students per class), the walls are bare without a picture or a plaque, 3 students sit at each table. The uniform is a suit and tie (boys and girls) in bright burgundy and everyone looks well-groomed.
The principal was proud that last year 100 percent of the students passed their A levels. The school is government-run and not cheap.
We met with a class for about an hour and talked about Israel and the future of education in the world. Throughout the meeting, there was a sense of interest among the students, and they were not shy asking questions.
After the introductions, we opened the discussion. The topic that interested the most (the students and the teachers) was Israel (in its biblical sense) and especially Jerusalem. The students thought that Israel was in Africa (and maybe they are right ). To our surprise, none of the students had heard of chatGPT, even though smartphones are quite common here. The most enthusiasm was shown by the fact that I am 70 years old (the average life expectancy in Zimbabwe is 61 years for men – so to them I am a walking dead person 
).
Hotels in Zimbabwe
August 3, 2025
Let’s talk about hotels in Zimbabwe.
As you know, Zimbabwe is in Africa and is a poor country. You would therefore expect hotels to be cheap (say, like in South Africa) — but they are not.
More accurately, if there are cheap hotels, they are really not suitable for us.
Inside the reserves, hotels are very expensive (ranging from several hundred to thousands of dollars per night), and we even saw a tent for about $200 per night per person (yes, per person) — Eilat still has something to learn.
Outside the reserves, you can find reasonable hotels at high but tolerable prices.
Now, not to give the impression that we are in favor of colonialism, but we are definitely in favor of some of its products — specifically, hotels built for the comfort of white settlers more than 100 years ago. Usually in the mountains (so it’s cooler), close to the city (so we don’t have to make an effort), in a stunning landscape (of course), and reminiscent of the homeland (England) as much as possible.
We discovered several such places — some have seen better days, frayed at the edges, with hot water, electricity, or room heating only as an option.
Others have remained as well-kept as they were in the past — with indulgences, formalities, manicured gardens, a pub by the fireplace, and English food (not everything has to be perfect). In these hotels, you feel like you’re in a movie set in a British manor frozen in time. All we were missing were long white dresses, a parasol in hand, and a three-piece suit.
Most importantly, no matter which hotel — the staff is always cheerful, laughing all the time, eager to please, and really making an effort to make you comfortable (English is not a problem; everyone speaks it).
And most importantly, in all the hotels, parking is always secure — with cameras, electric gates, and a guard. We even saw a car inside a cage (see photos below).
Although we have a spacious tent on the roof of the car, so far, we have not been tempted to open it (in the photo below, the tent was opened just to check how it works and was immediately closed), in short, well done to us 
.
Lower Zambezi National Park - Zambia
August 6, 2025
The national parks… they’re pretty similar across Africa in concept. You pay an entrance fee, then drive along dirt roads—ranging from somewhat rough to very rough—hoping to spot animals.
Today we went to Lower Zambezi Park in Zambia.
To reach the water areas—where, naturally, most of the animals gather—we had to drive 70 km on a truly nightmarish off-road track (full of large rocks and potholes). It took us three hours, and yes, we did see elephants, antelopes, zebras… and a few birds. But we’ve already seen all these, and more, in other parks.
There was a fancy lodge there that kindly hosted us for coffee and didn’t even ask for payment.
We then drove the same nightmarish 70 km back, and just as we were exiting the park, we got a flat tire (the tire was a total loss…).
The park entrance fee was dozens of dollars, plus who knows how much the tire will cost…
So that was the most expensive free coffee I’ve ever had 
!
Zambia
August 9, 2025
Zambia.
To tell the truth, we didn’t find any significant differences between Zambia and Zimbabwe (just as many tourists don’t see much difference between Israel and Jordan). The people are all friendly and constantly smiling. The capital, Lusaka, looks quite decent (there are even traffic jams and traffic lights). The roads are full of potholes as usual, though there is noticeable investment in repairing them, and the sunsets… well, you only get those in Africa.
But there is one thing we haven’t seen anywhere else…
The phone company Airtel has SIM card sales booths that look like British red telephone boxes. Inside each booth there’s space for just one person who sells only SIM cards (and, if you insist, will also sell you data).
And why are we telling you this? Because in every village — even the most remote one — and at every junction, there is at least one such booth, and in most cases dozens of them in a row. It’s rare to see a customer, and since a SIM card here costs half a dollar and it’s all the same company, it’s puzzling why…
To us, it looks like a pyramid scheme that has gotten out of control.
And while we’re on the topic of junctions and stalls — you’ll also find dozens of stands selling vegetables. But almost all of them sell the exact same vegetable — sometimes tomatoes, sometimes onions, sometimes potatoes. And let’s say that at a certain junction they specialize in onions, but you’re craving a nice red tomato — you’ll have to drive several dozen kilometers, and there you’ll find only tomatoes.
From experience, within about 100 km you can complete your supermarket shopping. This phenomenon isn’t unique to Zambia; we’ve seen the same thing in India and in other African countries as well.
Africa – life on the road
August 13, 2025
Life on the road in Africa…
What is sold at every intersection, whether in a big city or a small village? Everything… banal things like vegetables, plastic bottles and various utensils, but also strawberries neatly arranged in a row on a tray, bunches of bananas, live chickens, fresh fish, a pair of shoes, huge boxes of coal, brooms and even a small puppy.
What is carried on the head? Also, everything… buckets full of water, huge tubs full of all sorts of goodies, tree branches, suitcases and trollies, coolers, egg cartons, pots loaded with food, textbooks. You can often see a woman with a huge package on her head, a child tied to her back and two large bags in her hands (it is not clear how this is done).
What is loaded on a bicycle? Also, everything, just like on the head, only in much, much larger quantities. Sometimes it reaches 4 times the height of the bicycle. You must be a circus performer to maintain balance like that.
South Luangwa Park – Zambia
August 15, 2025
When traveling in Africa, a significant portion of the time is spent wandering around nature reserves and chasing elephants (assuming they don’t chase you) or lions.
Now, after a few months in Africa (not consecutively), it’s time to write the abbreviated guide to safaris.
We have our own car and don’t like guides or groups in principle, so we wander around alone and probably don’t see the subtleties like the common South African Aardvark.
In any case, in our opinion, there are several parameters to gauge the quality of a safari:
1. The quality of the roads. When you’re traveling around for a whole day on unpaved roads, it’s best for them to be reasonable, the best roads are those with powder on top and the worst are those that look like a washboard (Namibia is the worst in that respect).
2. The amount of water in the park all year round (lakes, swamps, puddles…). Water attracts animals and there will be a lot of them near it.
3. The size of the park. We like compact, (Kruger is last place – although it is considered a good park, it is huge, and many hours can pass in a fixed landscape without much to see).
Now for the ranking – in first place is South Luangwa in Zambia. The park is not large but with lots of trails, so you don’t meet many tourists, built on swamps, so even now in the dry season there is plenty of water. There are animals in quantities we have not seen before, and most importantly there are not many lions so you can get out of the car and have a picnic, or lookout, or just take pictures.
This is it, now we think we will retire at the peak and skip the next parks.
Malawi
August 16, 2025
Malawi is probably the poorest country we’ve visited so far (we don’t have access to most of the poorer countries, like Yemen or Afghanistan).
How do you know it’s a poor country?
First, everything is in cash, and since money here isn’t worth much, a fairly large wad of cash won’t get you far. We feel like a Brinks car with bags of money.
Another issue is the infrastructure. The roads are partly unpaved, others are potholed, and those that are reasonably level were paved by the Chinese. Water outages and of course power outages, very frequent. Unstable communication, and most frustratingly, there’s no fuel (the government has run out of foreign currency these days, so there’s a severe shortage of fuel). There are queues of dozens to hundreds of vehicles near gas stations. Luckily, our car is diesel, and there’s no shortage of diesel, at the moment.
The most common means of transportation are bicycles (including bicycle taxis).
What is there in abundance? Police checkpoints, every few kilometers there is a checkpoint manned by several police officers, and, by the way, everyone is nice and smiling speaking a good English.
The supply in the stores is minimal and simple (say, in the vegetable section there are tomatoes, peppers and onions, in the fruit section there are only apples …).
After this long introduction, it is not clear why in this country in particular we have the best feeling on the trip so far (or as Ira says, there is good energy here).
Maybe because it is a lake country (most of the country is a huge freshwater lake with sandy beaches and pretty bays). Maybe because the country has been politically stable for many years, and most likely because the Malawians are great people (at least the ones we met).
Roads and detours - Malawi
August 20, 2025
We are not experts on roads… but…
Why is it that when paving a road, you start with a section of a kilometer or two, then take a break of a few kilometers and then a short section again and so on for hundreds of kilometers.
If it were only in Malawi, we would attribute it to their engineers only, but we saw the same phenomenon a month ago in Zambia and six months ago in India, and before that in Colombia. In all cases, it is road number one that leads to the capital, when trying to replace a rutted single-lane road with a multi-lane highway.
Yesterday we drove 200 km towards Lilongwe (the capital of Malawi), for a whole day… A third of the way is on detours on dirt roads; a third on a new road (only one side – the next lane will arrive in 2030) with the signs warning that there are no road markings (as if this is the last problem left); and another third of the old road, which is not sure that it is better than dirt roads. Since this is the main artery of the country, it is also packed with trucks, goats, cyclists, and the like. And we haven’t mentioned the roadblocks every few kilometers and the bumpers that prevent you, God forbid, from driving fast. A day full of pure pleasure .
We can’t help but wonder if the Tel Aviv city engineers took private lessons here when they came to pave the light rail? On second thought, the common denominator in all of these is the Chinese who pave everything, maybe we’re onto something here 
.
Lake Malawi
August 29, 2025
They took a lake and stuck a country onto it, and that’s how Malawi was created. Lake Malawi is one of the largest lakes in the world, with fresh and clear water, sandy beaches, and peaceful little bays. Add to that the fact that Malawians are awesome, nice, always smiling, and English-speaking. Throw in political stability and a sense of safety… and you’d expect the place to be flooded with tourists – but it isn’t.
Most of the time we were alone.
There are a few guesthouses along the coast and even fewer that are truly indulgent. But… we managed to find a few at a great level (almost all owned by South Africans, Dutch, or Russians).
Hotels are not separated from the local residents. You swim in the lake just 10 meters from the fishermen, from the women doing laundry in the lake, or the children playing in the water. We really loved that. What we didn’t love were the roads, most of which are simply hard to stomach.
So far, Malawi is the most worthwhile country in Africa.
Public transport - Mozambique
August 30, 2025
Public transportation… In Zambia there are few buses; most transport is done in minibuses, some of them dating back to the days of Henry Ford. In Malawi, by contrast, the main transport is in open pickup trucks, with passengers sitting on the edges as if the roads were bump-free. Another option with the pickups is to stand packed together in a way that recalls the Tokyo subway during rush hour. But in Mozambique there’s an “upgrade”: a minibus with a cart hitched behind it, onto which anything and everything can be loaded.
It seems that a person never just travels from point A to point B. He must carry with him giant packages, which will, as expected, be loaded onto the vehicle. And if there’s no space, they’ll be tied to the roof, to the sides, or hung off the back.
Here there is only one law in public transportation: if there is a passenger (male/female, singular/plural) they will be taken (even if the passengers are chickens or goats), regardless of how many people are already inside the vehicle. This includes standing outside the door, on the bumper, or on the roof—and we even saw people scrunched up inside the trunk. And when it seems no more passengers or cargo can possibly be squeezed in, it turns out there’s always room for one or two more. We didn’t experience this from the inside, but from the outside it looks like a miracle – a kind of magic.
Now there are two small problems. The first: what happens at a police checkpoint (and there are some every few kilometers)? Well… nothing. The police simply don’t see the number of passengers (or don’t know how to count).
The second problem: what happens when there’s a particularly vicious speed bump (and thank God, there are many of those). By the way, we noticed that the worse the road, the more speed bumps there are – as if the country’s leaders say to themselves, “Let’s scatter lots of bumps, maybe the public won’t notice the road is awful.” On second thought, maybe that’s what the leaders of Israel have been doing recently too – scattering bumps so we won’t notice. Back to the speed bumps and the vehicles that are so overloaded their chassis is too low to cross them. For that, we saw two methods: one, to cross diagonally; and two, when things get really bad, to stop before the bump, have the passengers get out, cross it, then get back in – and so they go.
Finally, if you see such a minibus, expect it to overtake you without regard to oncoming traffic, and if it enters a village or intersection it will slow down to snail’s pace in search of passengers.
We thank our jeep, which lets us watch it all from the outside.
Mozambique
September 5, 2025
Studies show that the last day of a vacation is the most miserable day. We discovered that homesickness increases significantly in the last ten percent of the trip, if it’s for a week – on the last day, and if the trip is for three months – in the last ten days. During this period, everything we see will be less… simply less. Mozambique fell precisely during this period, so all our impressions are with limited liability.
The villages in Mozambique look similar to those in the other countries we visited, in the big cities, on the other hand, the scent of Europe is noticeable and there are quite a few remnants of the Portuguese heritage.
About half of the main roads are pretty good, but the other half are really bad.
One of the significant advantages we found in the country is that there are no speed bumps, not before an intersection, not at the entrance to or exit from a village, and nowhere else. This seems like a minor advantage, but as for graduates of Africa’s roads, it’s a huge advantage.
Mozambique is located on the coast of the Indian Ocean, and this creates the potential for many amazing, charming corners.
But the main thing is the people.. and they are less friendly and nice as we are used to in this part of the world… We think it is because of the language barrier, almost no English is spoken here, the official language is Portuguese.
And that’s it. Almost home .
Summary
September 11, 2025
After almost six months (in two rounds) exploring the southern part of Africa – including South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique – it’s time to look back and draw some conclusions.
Namibia won our hearts with its breathtaking scenery. The only challenge is the vast distances and the many unpaved roads, which make traveling there slow and sometimes exhausting.
Botswana stood out for its wildlife. The absence of fences around the parks means animals are everywhere, blending naturally into the landscape. Surprisingly though, the very best park experience we had was in Zambia.
South Africa is by far the most advanced and predictable. After months in neighboring countries, suddenly you find yourself surrounded by cafés, ice cream shops, reasonable prices, and reliable Booking.com listings.
Malawi takes the crown here – though by a narrow margin, because friendliness seems to be universal. Everywhere we went, people were warm, welcoming, and always ready to help.
We admit, we travel in comfort: our own car, hotels, and restaurants. Even so, traveling in Africa is demanding (India, for comparison, is a close contender). The food generally isn’t remarkable – except in South Africa, where the meat is fantastic. Malaria is a constant concern. But the biggest challenge is the sheer unpredictability: fuel available… or not. Electricity on… or off. Travel times are uncertain. Booking.com rarely works. All these obstacles make planning nearly impossible. Another surprise: Africa isn’t cheap. In fact, it can be expensive. And the truly cheap options are often not suitable – except in South Africa, which is both very affordable and full of hidden gems.
Everywhere we went, without exception, the people were wonderful. No matter who we met or under what circumstances, there was laughter, kindness, and a genuine willingness to help. We never once felt threatened or cheated. Driving was calm and orderly – people follow the rules, don’t honk unnecessarily, and it doesn’t even seem to depend on the police presence (though it sometimes felt like there were two officers for every citizen!). One of the greatest pleasures was the language: except in Mozambique, nearly everyone we met spoke excellent English.
There’s a growing movement to redraw world maps so that Africa appears in its true proportions. Having driven through it, we can confirm: the distances are absolutely immense, and the roads often leave much to be desired.
Tomorrow – Tel Aviv.
HE 
