Weight for Luggage

Ellie experienced considerable issues with luggage weight this year in her travels to Zambia both at check-in in the US and when re-departing at Jburg. In the US she was slightly overweight on her checked luggage, and had to remove items. In JBurg her carryon exceeded the 8kg capacity and she had to remove items.

It is one thing to be sending excess underwear home with the people who take you to the airport in the US and another to have to put your camera in the dumpster in JBurg (I am exagerating of course), but the MESSAGE IS THIS:

Be conservative on your luggage weight or you may have difficulties. In the past 5-7 years I have never had officials pick up my carry-on luggage to check it for size and weight, but in the early years they did it almost everytime I got on a plane. I have personally found that luggage that can be made to look smaller and more flexible like a back-pack tends to attract less attention from officials than hard-sided cases. As sure as I say that they will start singling out backpacks.

In worse case situations you may have to check your carryon luggage in JBurg for the final flight to Livingstone, and this usually doesn't cause any real problems, but for those of you with expensive electronics it is a little risky. I am not sure what advice to give you except to check things that are heavy and low value and leave only essentials for your carryon luggage.

Similarly, home luggage scales tend to be finickly, so going to the airport with a bag that (by your scales) is 49.9 pounds can be risky. Give yourself a couple of pounds of margin. You will be surprised how little it actually takes to be happy in the bush. Leave some stuff home;-)

If we have more official advice later, I will put it here, but I wanted to get you started thinking about it.