There is one moment in this journey that I am waiting for with particular excitement: the day I finally cross into Africa and begin discovering the continent one step at a time.
For years, Africa has existed in my mind through maps, photographs, documentaries, stories and the experiences of other travellers.
But seeing a place from a distance is very different from being there.
I want to walk its roads, experience its landscapes, meet its people and discover the small details that can never truly be understood through a screen.
For me, entering Africa will not simply mean crossing another border.
It will mark the beginning of one of the most important chapters of the HavikWay journey.
Africa beyond the images
When many people think about Africa, familiar images immediately appear: deserts, savannahs, wildlife, mountains, villages and enormous open landscapes.
Those images are real, but they represent only a very small part of an extraordinary continent.
Africa is made of countless communities, languages, traditions, landscapes and ways of life.
There are modern cities and isolated settlements, busy markets and silent desert roads, tropical forests and dry plains, Atlantic coastlines and mountain regions.
What interests me most are the places and stories that are rarely shown.
The roads between the famous destinations.
The small communities that most international travellers never visit.
The people whose everyday lives may never appear in travel magazines or documentaries.
I want to discover Africa for myself
I do not expect to arrive in Africa already knowing what I will find.
That uncertainty is part of what makes the journey so meaningful.
I want to arrive with curiosity rather than expectations.
I want to discover what each country feels like when travelled slowly and what changes when the distance between two places is crossed on foot rather than through the window of a vehicle.
There will be things that surprise me.
There will probably be moments that challenge what I believed before arriving.
There will be landscapes I have never seen, food I have never tasted, traditions I have never experienced and conversations I could never have planned in advance.
Those are exactly the moments I am looking forward to.
The discovery belongs to the traveller
Africa is not an undiscovered continent.
Its people have built communities, cultures, trade routes, cities and civilizations across thousands of years of history.
The discovery will be personal.
It will be about discovering how much I still do not know.
Places that are currently only names on a map will gradually become real roads, landscapes, faces and memories.
A town I know nothing about today may eventually become one of the places I remember most strongly from the entire expedition.
A road that appears insignificant on a map may lead to an unforgettable encounter.
And a person I meet unexpectedly along the way may completely change how I understand a particular country.
Crossing into Morocco
The first contact with the African continent is planned to come after travelling south from Amsterdam through Europe toward Spain.
From there, crossing toward Morocco will represent far more than another stage of the route.
It will be the moment when the European chapter begins to give way to something completely different.
The climate will change.
The landscapes will change.
Languages, architecture, food, traditions and the rhythm of everyday life will begin to change as well.
And from Morocco, the road ahead will become increasingly unfamiliar.
Into West Africa
After Morocco, the expedition is intended to continue gradually south through western Africa.
Countries such as Mauritania, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria and Cameroon are expected to form part of this enormous section of the journey.
Each border will introduce another country with its own identity.
I do not want to treat those countries simply as points that must be crossed on the way toward South Africa.
I want to understand something about every place through which HavikWay passes.
That may mean spending time in a village, talking with a local family, visiting a market, learning about a traditional craft, listening to someone's story or simply observing how everyday life unfolds around me.
Finding the stories between the destinations
Some of the most interesting discoveries may happen far away from famous attractions.
Long-distance walking creates a very different relationship with geography.
When travelling by car or bus, hundreds of kilometres can disappear in only a few hours.
On foot, every kilometre has a story.
You notice the landscape changing gradually.
You see where people collect water, where children walk to school, where farmers work, where roadside businesses appear and where communities gather at the end of the day.
The places between destinations stop being empty space.
They become the journey itself.
The Africa I hope to find
I am especially interested in discovering an Africa that is often missing from international headlines.
Not because difficult realities should be ignored, but because no continent should be defined only by its problems.
I want to see creativity, entrepreneurship, hospitality, traditions, everyday work, family life and the ambitions of people building their future.
I want to understand how small businesses operate in different communities.
I want to meet people who create something with limited resources.
I want to hear what young people hope to achieve and what older generations want to preserve.
These may eventually become some of the most valuable stories documented by HavikWay.
Not everything will be easy
I also know that Africa will present serious challenges.
There will be extreme temperatures, difficult roads, long distances between services, border formalities, different languages, unfamiliar environments and situations that cannot be predicted from Amsterdam.
Some parts of the route may have to change because of weather, security conditions, border restrictions or local circumstances.
There may be days when discovering something new feels exciting and others when it feels exhausting.
Both belong to the journey.
HavikWay is not intended to show only beautiful sunsets and perfect moments.
The difficult days will also be part of the story.
Learning to see differently
One of my greatest hopes is that travelling through Africa will change the way I see the world.
It is easy to form opinions about distant places without ever experiencing them.
It is much harder to maintain simple assumptions after sitting with people, sharing food, hearing their stories and seeing their reality directly.
I expect Africa to teach me things that cannot be learned from preparation alone.
Patience.
Adaptability.
Respect for different ways of living.
The importance of community.
And perhaps a better understanding of what people truly need in order to build a good life.
Documenting what I discover
Photography, video, journal entries and field updates will allow me to document this part of the expedition as it happens.
But the goal will not simply be to collect beautiful images.
I want HavikWay to preserve context.
Where was the photograph taken?
Who lives there?
What happened before the camera was turned on?
What did I learn from that place?
What changed in my understanding after leaving it?
Over time, these individual moments can become something much larger than a travel gallery.
They can become a record of a continent experienced slowly, kilometre by kilometre.
Waiting for that first step in Africa
At the moment, Africa is still ahead of me.
There are preparations to complete, equipment to test, documents to organise, routes to study and thousands of European kilometres to travel before I reach that first African road.
But I already think about the moment when I will finally arrive.
The first morning.
The first road.
The first conversation.
The first photograph.
And the realization that the part of the world I have spent so long studying from a distance is finally beneath my feet.
I am waiting for Africa because I want to discover things I cannot yet imagine.
I want to find places I did not know existed, meet people whose stories I could never have planned to hear and experience moments that no route planner could ever predict.
That is one of the reasons HavikWay exists.
Not simply to cross Africa, but to experience it slowly enough to notice what would otherwise be missed.
Africa is still ahead of me. And perhaps the greatest discoveries of this journey are waiting somewhere beyond that first road.
