I liked Sudan, Somaliland and Mozambique. Actually, Sudan was one of my favorite places in my travels to roughly 100 countries.
You’re right, I loved Khartoum in the 70s, probably my favorite city in Africa. And I’ve raved about Somaliland in several posts here and elsewhere. Mozambique I was only in for a day, interrogated at gunpoint by Frelimo, it has probably changed.
One thing is you need to consider the climate where you are thinking of going to (very hot and humid certain times of the year…)–so go during the best season.
No one has mentioned languages spoken: while you would expect the usual tourist traps to have plenty of people fluent in English–one wonders if you get outside those areas. [and note only some of the areas were colonized by the English, others were colonized by the French…]
You can do all that from Cape Town (I’d recommend Aquila, it’s just a couple hours drive away), but Cape Town itself isn’t very “African” in feel, if that’s what you’re particularly after.
Also, we’re currently in a severe drought, so there’s that.
Forgot to say - Countries (other than South Africa) I’d recommend:
Botswana, if only for Okavango
Namibia
Malawi
Mozambique
Mauritius
Seychelles
In the colonized countries, once you are outside of a major city/town, the language most likely to be heard will be tribal, making communication a real problem. As for European language fluency, I didn’t find that to be the case, other than for people with some education. My work crews in Bamako, for instance, didn’t speak French, so I communicated through my engineer, who had a degree from ASU. Even though he went to an American university, his English had deteriorated since his return home, so it could be laborious. In Kampala, English is still spoken, sort of. I found that I usually had to go through a ritual of greeting and small talk to get someone thinking in English before starting in on the topic at hand.
Another thing that can be disconcerting for tourists in some countries is how rapidly one runs out of modern amenities once outside of a city’s boundaries. Even public toilets can be non-existent.
This is distinctly not the case in South Africa, you will be able to get by with English everywhere except real rural enclaves.
I meant to include a “most” or “many” qualifier, as I don’t like to generalize. I also never traveled outside of the J-P area during our brief stay there, so can’t speak with any authority about RSA or other former colonies other than Uganda and Mali. It’s my understanding than many other countries such as Ivory Coast and Nigeria are similar, however.
I almost froze in Addis Ababa, very cold. I had to go out and buy warm clothes.
For languages if you can get by in French (besides English), your pretty well off, no worse than anywhere else in the world. In the Sahel, a little bit of Arabic will come in handy, but not necessary…
I know people are scared of traveling to places where the locals might not speak the language but you can airways get by. I’ve been to places where I’ve had to mime what i needed. And it was one of the best places I’ve ever visited. These days you could do everything using Google Translate on a phone. Not as fun though.
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Apologies for the spelling. I’m typing on a phone!
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