As the sage Robert Earl Keene once said, “the road goes on forever and the party never ends.” Folks, this party is just getting started and the roads, well, who knows where they’ll end up.
However, there are some developments to report on the vehicle front for our cripesisitonly10weeksaway? upcoming move to Botswana. I outlined our options for acquiring a 4x4 for exploring southern Africa and beyond a couple of weeks ago, and got some truly useful feedback from all of you on how we should approach the problem (THANK YOU EVERYONE!). In short - we were considering shipping our current vehicle there, buying a truck in either Botswana or South Africa, or renting.
Sometimes, though, a solution that you weren’t necessarily expecting falls in your lap.
Behold, the Pajero.
In the interim, we had reached out to one of the current Fulbright Scholars living in Botswana to discuss a wide range of things, and it turned out he was looking to sell his Mitsu before he left to come back to the US this summer.
The price was right, and so was the backstory:
- 2000 Mitsubishi Pajero (Montero in the US)
- 130,000 km on the clock (~81,000 miles)
- 3.5L 6G74 GDI gasoline V6 with an automatic and four-wheel drive (obviously)
- It will come equipped with plenty of recovery and camping equipment.
- Most importantly - the current owner is the third owner, and he bought it from the previous Fulbright scholar, who had purchased it from the original owner.
- The original owner is a mechanic, and is still the current mechanic for the vehicle. So every service and repair is fully documented going back to 2000, and all of its services are fully up to date.
Those final points really sealed the deal for us (not to mention the low miles and the low price - he’s really cutting us a deal). Buying a used car in a foreign country is a fraught experience, so purchasing a fully documented vehicle from someone we think we can trust is a huge bonus. He’s going to help us walk through the bureaucracy of the purchase process when we get to Gaborone, too.
In truth, I’ve always loved the looks of these trucks, and the size and specs seem right to me for what we need. Also, there is wide-spread mechanical and parts support for the Pajero across Africa. I also know that Pajeros are not without their faults. I have heard rumors of transmission problems in particular, as well as fouling or burning of exhaust valves in the GDI engines. Fuel range will also be a challenge on long trips, as far as I can tell.
Any Pajero/Montero folks out there with advice? Please chime in.
On a related note, this impending purchase will also affect our long-term travel plans on the continent. The option to ship this vehicle home is out (too new, and, really, it’s just a Montero, so not exactly exotic), so we will have to consider carefully how we are going to approach that question.
One idea is instead of a one-way Cape-to-Cairo trip, make a big loop through southern, central, and eastern Africa, returning to Botswana with the hope of reselling the truck, perhaps to the next expat Americans looking for an adventure of their own.
On that front, several countries are very difficult for Americans traveling independently right now:
- Egypt - many reports from overlanders have suggested that foreign travelers in private vehicles are required to travel with military escorts on the road from Aswan to guard against terrorist attacks (!)
- The Sudan - bureaucratic hurdles due to Trump’s attempted travel bans on citizens from Sudan
- Uganda - destabilization from a flood of refugees from South Sudan
- Ethiopia/Eritrea - draught and impending famine, as well as kidnappings
- Kenya - political violence in the northern regions ahead of sketchy elections, Somali refugee crisis, impending famine
- Burundi - ongoing political violence
Anyway, that’s probably par for the course for travel on the world’s second largest continent, and the geopolitical landscape is always shifting. Who knows, by this time next year, things may well be entirely different. We’ll find out one way or another.