So the main draw card for visiting Tanzania was in fact not to go and laze about Zanzibar, rather it was to go and visit the Serengeti National Park and the Ngorongoro Crater, some of Africa's best known big game parks.

My arrival in Dar Es Salaam was pretty smooth and trouble free. I applied for my visa on arrival, along with probably 60% of the people on the flight. I was a bit slow filling out the forms and was probably one of the last people to hand in the paperwork, but it seemed like they used a LIFO queue (last in, first out) to process things so my name was soon called and I had to squeeze my way through the crowd of people waiting and get my passport.

I went to queue up in the immigration line, proud to show off my fancy new visa sticker, but a guy came up and told me to just walk on through. So I walked straight past the desk where they check your passport without showing them anything, and nobody batted an eyelid. It really feels like you could get into the country without a visa very easily if you just walked on through with a bit of confidence, although I'm sure you'd have trouble leaving.

So while in South Africa I managed to see the two main places people go, Johannesburg and Cape Town, which are pretty much at opposite ends of any spectrum you can imagine. Safety, things to do, how pretty the city is... Johannesburg ranks very low and Cape Town generally ranks pretty well.

My time in Johannesburg was pretty whirlwind-ish. I'd already decided that I didn't really want to spend much time there and would rather get to Cape Town, but I wanted to see the Apartheid Museum and I needed to reconfirm that I was actually eligible for my Tanzanian Visa on arrival, otherwise I'd need to make the 100KM trip to Pretoria to visit their consulate.

The visa thing ended up being a pretty simple phone call. They urged me to apply before hand, I explained that I wasn't in Pretoria, they confirmed that I could get it on arrival. Booyah!

I asked quite a few locals about safety in Johannesburg and if the whole danger thing was as big of an issue as people make out and was told I'd be fine as long as I stuck to safe areas. So none of the aimless exploring that makes travelling fun; just stick to the touristy spots and you'll be fine... and feel like a tourist.

I changed my flight to South Africa to be a day sooner in order to get to Johannesburg in time on Monday morning to go on a week long tour up to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe and back. Booking in on this tour was a bit of a spur of the moment thing, I'd only found out about it's existence the Wednesday beforehand; I checked if I could change my flights and if there was room on the bus, then got flights moved and got myself booked in.

I was picked up from the "hostel" I was staying in (It was really just a guys house that he let people stay in... you cant call it a hostel and only have one bathroom & toilet) at 5am. I had been told the day before where the keys were to open the front door, the front verandah cage and the massive padlock on the front gate, topped with an electric fence, and had been told to go out and unlock all the locks, then come inside and wait looking out the window for the bus to show up. At the time I'd though it must have been a terrible neighbourhood to merit all that security, but having spent more time in South Africa I've found that pretty much everywhere has crazy levels of security like that so I'm not so sure anymore.

The bus arrived on time and I was the first person to be picked up. Our guide David, an friendly guy with a goofy laugh and a missing front tooth, introduced himself and we headed off to pick up more people, two Australian sisters from Sydney, then two English guys, then two Swiss sisters and two American cousins. Quite a few pairs of relatives!

So I set out on this trip aiming to travel light, with just a 46 Litre backpack and a daypack, but after nearly 4 months on the road I put up the white flag.

Up until I hit Africa I managed ok, but almost always had an overflow bag clipped on to make packing a bit less of a pain day to day, but I could squeeze everything in when I needed to fly.

Doing Africa overland demanded that I buy a sleeping bag, and air mattress, which meant I could no longer squeeze just into the two bags. I tried strapping a now quite heavy overflow bag on the back of my pack, but it just mean that weight distribution was terrible and I wasn't carrying any less shit.