I don’t give up easily. If I decide I want to do something, I make it happen… and my brother-in-law, Chris van der Spuy, is the same. Thus, we refused to give up on our dream of travelling to Malawi, despite the fact that there was very little information available about this country as a tourist destination.
That said, the biggest conundrum was deciding which route to take. The war in Namibia and Angola was a thing of the past, but recently South Africans were again arrested in Zambia and as a result, we decided not to follow the Zambia route. The only other option was to go through Zimbabwe and the Tete Province of Mozambique, but this also presented challenges as firefights continued to break out sporadically between Renamo and Frelimo. However, we decided that was the route to go, even if it meant that we would have to drive through the Tete corridor in a military convoy.
We wanted to go during the April school holidays so that our kids could tag along. The tour would last a month and Koos and Wilmien – our eight-year-old twins – couldn’t miss school for that long. So, it was decided that my wife, Hettie, and the children would fly into Lilongwe after the schools closed and tour with us from there. They would then fly back earlier to be home when the schools reopened.
The plan was that my father-in-law, Kobus van der Spuy and I would travel in my 2.8
