Homer's Travels: Another Continent ... Another Adventure

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Another Continent ... Another Adventure

In a few weeks I will be adding another continent to my list: Africa.  The Wife and I will be visiting Morocco, Kenya, and Tanzania.  The last couple weeks, the final pieces of our trip were finalized and, like our last big international expedition, there were last minute hiccups that promised to change our long held plans.

A few weeks before our China-Nepal-Bhutan-India trip two years ago, the Chinese changed the rules concerning travel in Tibet resulting in the serendipitous addition of Bhutan to our itinerary.  This time it started with an article on my BBC News Twitter Feed.  Several British tour companies were evacuating British tourists from Kenya due to an increased threat of terrorism.  Over the next few days I waited patiently for the call from our tour company saying our Kenya-Tanzania trip had been canceled.  The call came four days later.

I got a call last Monday from the tour company representative.  She asked if we were aware of what was happening in Kenya.  After answering yes, she began feeling me out.  What do you think about this?  How does it affect your upcoming trip?  You could tell they were checking to see if we still wanted to go or were skittish.  The threat was predominantly for areas near the Somali boarder, along the coast (including Mombasa), and in the capital city, Nairobi.  We were only going to be in Nairobi for a couple nights before we would fly about as far away from the trouble spots as we could and still be in Kenya.  I let her know that I wasn't too worried.  She sounded a little relieved and we discussed various options if changes had to be made: canceling the tours in Nairobi, canceling the Kenya portion all together and keeping the Tanzania portion, or canceling the entire tour.  I threw in an option of my own, plan B.  If the whole thing were canceled, would they switch us over to a South African trip that was taking place at the exact same time.  She thought, in the event of a total cancellation, plan B would be a viable option.  Then we waited.

Three days ago I received an email from our AAA agent.  She forwarded an email from the tour company saying that the tour would continue as planned (HURRAH!!!).  The only thing we had to settle was one last little detail.  They wanted to know if we needed a hotel in Dar-es-Salaam since we had a nine hour lay over there.  After a little negotiating we got our flight from Zanzibar to Dar-es-Salaam switched to a later flight so we could have another seven hours or so sitting on the beech watching the Indian Ocean waves and exploring Stone Town.

With this last detail finalized, we are ready to go.  In a couple weeks we will be in Morocco.  A smidge over a week more and we will be amongst the wild animals.  That's assuming this post doesn't jinx it ...

2 comments:

  1. Oh Awesome!!! Morocco sounds amazing, I can't wait to hear how you like it! I'm really glad they didn't cancel your trip!

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    Replies
    1. Autumn: Thanks! I'm looking forward to Kenya and Tanzania the most.

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