This is the first of a series of blog posts retelling the adventures of two city slickers travelling in Africa.

It all started innocently enough over a bottle of red wine one Thursday evening. My girlfriend Cathrine and I had gone out for our monthly anniversary dinner and towards the end of the first bottle our conversation turned to travel and my past regrets of not having travelled much. When added to our fairly staid life in Johannesburg, a steady (but uninspiring) job and another bottle of wine, we soon began to imagine what it would be like to drop everything and escape our lives for a while – a simple case of “stop the world we want to get off”. With our somewhat inebriated attentions now firmly in the realm of destination travel, we began hatching a wild plan to buy a 4x4 vehicle and drive north to visit my sister and her husband who were building a lodge on an island on Lake Tanganyika, in Tanzania. A few hours and a cup or two of coffee later, we shook hands on the deal and headed home to bed.

We awoke the next morning feeling a little worse for wear, however contrary to most ideas plans made over a couple of drinks, our bold plans of the previous evening still held their allure in the clear light of day. Far from us wanting to change our minds, the thought of doing something so outrageous and outside of our comfort zone just felt right. It was as if a great weight had been lifted from our shoulders – we now had purpose, we now had a goal. Africa beckoned.

The days and weeks that followed were filled with whispered promises, unspoken dreams and unbridled enthusiasm. There was a sparkle about us, and nothing about city life could get us down.

We soon found ourselves buying Getaway magazines, stopping in to check out the latest offers from the outdoor stores and marvelling at any 4x4 vehicle that we drove past. We became totally focussed on our seemingly impossible goal and were still too afraid to tell anybody in case they thought we'd gone crazy.

Reactions when we finally did were mixed, our closest friends thought we were indeed mad and for the most part probably didn't think we'd really do it. My mom was thrilled, but my dad kept muttering about the loss of a promising career and concern for how we would we support ourselves whilst away. Cath's folks were great, if fact I ended up losing a bet (a bottle of 12 year old Jamesons) with Cath's dad over how well her mom would take the news. Work was disappointed to be losing me, but although they didn't understand our choice of destination and didn't feel we were particularly well suited to a life in a tent, they were for the most part really supportive. It was only once we were on our way that we found out they were in fact running a book on how long we would last – nobody gave us more then 3 months!