As you may notice in the above banner, we are trying another trip using Approach Tours. Our Sicily trip last spring was great, so we are trusting our adventure to the same company. This one was kind of last minute as I saw there was one double room left on the April 6th departure. Now, if you have followed us before, you will know that we always like to squeeze in a vacation between my hockey season and golf season. This means April is our (my) choice time to get away. Unfortunately, this usually means having to look South to get any kind of decent weather. This time we are really going South.
One of the big questions about Africa in general is when is the best time to go there to see the most 'stuff'. There are many schools of thought about this. There is definitely a bad time to go and that is rainy season. These days who knows when that is although the December to March range seems to be the consensus. Many people say to go in the September/October timeframe as this is spring in the Southern hemisphere and there is less 'brush' for the animals to hide and also fewer mosquitoes since the rainy season is far behind. The one problem with going at this time, is that if the winter (June to September) has been unusually dry, the majestic Victoria Falls are a mere trickle as they were in December 2019.
Anyway, an African Safari has always been on my bucket list. I would say the Myrna's bucket might not contain the same things, but she was a willing participant on this particular voyage. She also thought that it was a now or never situation considering the flight times to our destination. Long flights have never been an issue for me but Myrna seems to dread them. I looked into upgrading our two flights to Cape Town to business class but the cost was $12,064 (not a typo) for both legs (Montreal-Amsterdam - Amsterdam/Cape Town). Since I had already paid an extra $1000 for preferred economy seats for all 4 legs, I thought the $12k was a little excessive. Since my credit card offers free lounge access in Montreal, we will make sure that we are 'relaxed' enough to enjoy our non-business class seating arrangement.
If you are at all familiar with Approach Tours, they offer all-inclusive tours. This means getting picked and dropped off at home and of course all the airfare. It also includes all tips and meals and much more. Their pre-tour travel kit also includes things that you will definitely need. In this particular case, two South African plug adaptors that are not standard fare.
That
being said, since we booked inside the 91 days before departure, the
groups flights had already been booked. With that information, I looked
to see if I could be on the same flights to Cape Town and out of
Johannesburg . I was able to get those, so we will be meeting our 'group
guru' and 28 travel companions at the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam.
This also means that we will have to make our way to and from the
airport here in Montreal. The upside of booking our own flights, is that
Approach Tours al ways depart from Toronto, so we save that leg of
the trip.
This trip starts in Cape Town with our first of seven safaris is only on day 7. That safari is one of the 2 water based ones. We eventually make our way to Kruger National Park and then at a private game reserve. Near the end of the trip, we head to Victoria Falls and another river safari.
Once again, we will try to update this blog on a daily basis. I will be cheating a bit by posting the pages from our guide book. The PHOTOS link on the left should lead to pictures that will be uploaded daily and depending on our access to the data networks even multiple times a day. The TRAVEL LOG link will be the day to day thoughts that will be noted and updated at the end of the day, when possible. The time difference everywhere we are going is 6 hours. This means, that when we are going to bed after a day of adventure, it will be late afternoon back home.
This is hoping you virtually enjoy our trip should you wish to follow along.