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Post by The Walk of the Penguin Mich on Oct 16, 2016 15:45:00 GMT -5
I thought I'd write some thoughts out on this, in case someone might be interested.
Why we wound up in South Africa was that we 'won' an auction for a safari. As it turned out, all the other Americans we met at the lodge one an auction as well. It was an interesting marketing tool, but it turned out to be fortuitous, because I don't think we'd have gone to South Africa otherwise. I want to go back. In all, the safari was nice and gave us a taste to see more. the only animal of the Big 5 we didn't see was a leopard. In the area we were at, they are very transient visitors. Our guide told us he's only seen one about 12 times in the last 10 years he's been doing this (pretty much solely in South Africa).
As one does not travel halfway around the world for a 7 day, 6 night safari, we tacked on quite a bit onto the trip. We flew into Johannesburg (5 days), rented a car and drove to Zulu Nyala. After the safari, we drove to Durban for 3 days, dropped the car and flew to Cape Town. Original thought was to drive it around the coast. However, i soon realized that driving that distance on these sorts of roads would detract from the amount of time we could take in Cape Town. So we flew (British Air). Flights within SA are incredibly cheap, this was only a $60 flight (about 3 hours).
We flew Emirates for the entire trip. Incredible airline, way better than any US carrier I have flown. Luckily, I scored an great deal on our flights and it only cost us about $1400 each. Our route was Seattle - Dubai - Johannesburg - Cape Town (6 days) - Dubai - Male (Maldives 8 days) - Dubai (2 days) - Seattle. With the sale that was going on, I really wish I had checked to see what Business Class would have cost. I know better now, but the 14 hour flight from Seattle to Dubai it would have been nice to be able to sleep. BTW....Dubai is a freaking HUGE airport. I'm glad I had w/c assistance. I don't think we were in the same section twice!
I got hotel overload trying to book hotels. Normally, I have some idea of the lay of the land, and know where I want to be in certain cities. I was utterly clueless. I used Expedia and Trip Advisor, and think I did ok. Expedia gave me the choice to filter out hotels, I tried to stay in 4 and 5 * hotels. Then I did a price breakdown, not wanting to spend anything more than $150. There was one hotel that I read about on a travel blog, but when I looked into it, it was about $2000/night. No. As it turned out, we stayed in boutique hotels (all turned out to be 5*) that were anywhere from $100-140/night. No complaints about any of them. All hotels included breakfast, parking and wifi in that price, and as it turned out, very well located.
Car rentals (including insurance) were very inexpensive. I think that they ran about $7-11/day, and our 2+ week rental cost us about $200. 6 day about $100. Eating was also very inexpensive, generally our meals ran around 200 rand (14 rand/$), so a little over $10. Our most expensive meal we had the entire time we were in SA was our wedding lunch. Massive quantities of seafood (langoustines, prawns, calamari, and several different types of fish) and 2 bottles of wine for the 4 of us was just a little over $100. As it turned out, our wedding and lunch only ran about $300 total, no way would we have gotten out of it that cheap in the US!!
In Cape Town, we hired a driver to take us to vineyards. Driver for the day, using his van cost about $50. We were out from 9 am until 4, and hit 5 vineyards. I got crocked, so we passed on the last one that was planned. "Premium" wine tastings ran about $5/vineyard. We splurged there, and drank some really good wines. Unfortunately, none of the wines are available in the US, and as we were going to the Maldives and Dubai after, packing wine to take with us was not going to work.
The resort we stayed at in the Maldives was Meeru. I chose an AI plan and want to say it cost about $380/day. We had a beach villa, where our little villa was about 20 yards from the ocean. My biggest concern was scheduling the damn speedboat to take us to the resort, but that really turned out seamless. I went where they told me, the guy checked my name off the list (we were the last to arrive) and we went immediately to the boat. The time we went was rainy season, and the skies opened on the boat ride. It continued to rain buckets the rest of the day, and I had these visions of it raining the entire time. As it turned out, that was the only day it rained - even though it rained a couple of nights. I'd go back here in a heartbeat.
Dubai was only a quick stop. We went to the gold and spice souks, where I bought far more jewelry for myself (and others) than ever before. The amount of gold is soooo overwhelming. I had to bargain for everything, which I think took TD by surprise that I could haggle so well. I spent more than I should have at the spice souks, but by then I was really tired (the very humid heat is really oppressing) and my hip was done. I did haggle some, but I should have been paying more attention to things. My bad. I had about 8 charges on my USAA credit card from Dubai, and I had fraud alerts before I left Dubai. Each charge had USAA calling me asking me if it was a valid charge. After the third call, I finally spoke to a rep to tell them that the other 5 charges are valid too. I'm kind of wondering what the purpose of me telling them that I was going to be traveling in the area and using the card.
I want to go back now.....and have already been looking for another safari!
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taz157
Senior Associate
Joined: Dec 20, 2010 20:50:06 GMT -5
Posts: 12,976
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Post by taz157 on Oct 16, 2016 18:50:50 GMT -5
Sounds like a great trip! Congratulations on the wedding again too!
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msventoux
Senior Member
Joined: Feb 12, 2011 22:32:37 GMT -5
Posts: 3,047
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Post by msventoux on Oct 16, 2016 20:12:37 GMT -5
Sounds like a great trip! Congratulations on the wedding again too!  It's not a trip I'll likely ever take, but I enjoyed reading about yours. |
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spartan7886
Familiar Member
Joined: Jan 7, 2011 14:04:22 GMT -5
Posts: 788 
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Post by spartan7886 on Oct 18, 2016 8:18:00 GMT -5
Sounds like an amazing trip. Africa is on my bucket list if I can ever convince DH to go. I've got 3 continents down, 4 to go.
In reference to Business Class on Emirates, it's amazing. I flew it a few years ago Houston->Dubai->Kuala Lumpur and back on business. You thought just the airport in Dubai was big? The Business Class lounge is the entire third floor - the same size as the airport! That way you can board directly from the lounge and take an elevator down so you don't have to mingle with the plebes. It's crazy. They have showers too, which is very nice after that kind of flight. The First Class lounge is the entire second floor. I really want to fly that one day. It's not a First Class seat, it's a First Class suite. I'm sure I'll never be willing to shell out the money, though. I think just my business class seat was five figures.
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msventoux
Senior Member
Joined: Feb 12, 2011 22:32:37 GMT -5
Posts: 3,047
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Post by msventoux on Oct 18, 2016 20:36:23 GMT -5
Sounds like an amazing trip. Africa is on my bucket list if I can ever convince DH to go. I've got 3 continents down, 4 to go. In reference to Business Class on Emirates, it's amazing. I flew it a few years ago Houston->Dubai->Kuala Lumpur and back on business. You thought just the airport in Dubai was big? The Business Class lounge is the entire third floor - the same size as the airport! That way you can board directly from the lounge and take an elevator down so you don't have to mingle with the plebes. It's crazy. They have showers too, which is very nice after that kind of flight. The First Class lounge is the entire second floor. I really want to fly that one day. It's not a First Class seat, it's a First Class suite. I'm sure I'll never be willing to shell out the money, though. I think just my business class seat was five figures. I remember seeing this video about a first class seat on Emirates a while ago: The $21,000 First Class Airplane SeatNice, but $21,000?  |
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Post by The Walk of the Penguin Mich on Oct 24, 2016 14:24:50 GMT -5
Yeah, we weren't about to shell out $21,000 for a first class seat.
We got to the airport early in Dubai, on our last leg home to see if we could upgrade that to Business class. Because we took the route we did, it got really complicated. The ticket counter sent us to customer service, who sent us to the gate. There WERE seats available in Business class, but trying to get in one when you didn't pay upfront and were willing to upgrade became a pain in the ass.
Normally, when I do book flights I take a look at First/Business class to see what the prices are. For some reason, I just didn't this time.
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