OK, its getting down to the wire. One week from tonight, we'll be in a hotel in Toronto awaiting our flight out to San Juan, Costa Rico on the 27th of September. We have a 9 page checklist of things we've had to do before we leave and the good news is that we are down to probably less than 10 items which by their very nature have to wait until the last day or so - such as putting the cars up on block's, etc.
It is astounding how much planning work has to (in our minds at least) go into planning a trip like this. We started out thinking that we'd keep things pretty loose but visa requirements of the places we initially plan to visit (Tanzania and South Africa) are demanding that we have outbound flights out. This means that the itinerary needs to be a lot more locked down that we would have thought/liked. When I get a moment, I'll post the to do list (or a subset) in case anyone is crazy enough to try this and follow in our footsteps.
The itinerary itself hasn't changed much. We're still heading out to Costa Rico on the 27th of September and flying back to New York City (JFK) on October 29th. We'll spend Halloween and our anniversary in NYC and fly out the 1st for Kilimanjaro with a stop in Amsterdam. We ended up getting very good deals on the airfares both to CR and back to NYC and then on to JRO (Kilimanjaro). One of the things we discovered about airfares is that you really need to look where AND when you are flying. There are some great deals... and great sites to find them. SkyScanner, Cheap-o Air, among a few. We've also come to rely upon TripAdvisor for hotel reviews. Its somewhat comforting to read hundreds of people have done what you are doing and have enjoyed themselves.
We get into Kilimanjaro on the 2nd of November and spend two days in Moshi, Tanzania (on footsteps of Kilimanjaro) decompressing and preparing for our 8 day Safari in the Serengeti and a few other choice spots and then the 2-3 weeks of volunteering around Moshi after that. We've found a house where we'll stay which is run by the folks we'll be volunteering with. We haven't yet landed on the beach plans... likely Zanzibar but we may also end up in Mafia as we hear that's a bit more reasonable - which is important to a family without incomes for a year!
After that, we plan on flying down to Johannesburg, South Africa and going on a 10 day mini-safari/guided trip, around Kruger, Vic Falls, Botswana, Swaziland, Nambia, etc. I'm quite looking forward to that. Then we fly down to Cape Town and rent a car and head back up the coast to Jo'Burg. That'll take another 10 days or so and then we fly out to Singapore. We haven't got that booked yet but it looks like we'll either go through Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) on Malasian Airlines or through Quatar in the middle east. I'm voting for the later so I can get out and stretch. I'm not keen on 14 hour flights in the back of the bus.
After that we know we want to see most of South East Asia.. but also would like to get to see my daughter and her boyfriend in Australia before we fly to Europe.
Enough on the plan.... next post on what we're bringing.
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