Travel to Africa has been a desired travel destination for decades. But how to decide where to go? By profession or nature, I tend to see forests for trees. My view of potential Africa destinations is the Maghreb along the north coast, West Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, and Central Africa. We’ve been to the Maghreb, Central Africa is in too much political turmoil and violence, I knew little about West Africa except that it’s not well known for its game reserves. So that left the countries of East Africa and Southern Africa. Yet for some reason the time or opportunity never seemed right to pull the trigger.
In 2017, long time friend Thom canceled his plans for a trip to South Africa to attend our wedding in Italy. In 2018 he talked about rescheduling his trip for 2019. That provided the opportunity we needed to make the commitment for a journey to the other side of the world.
Thom and I traveled together to Antarctica in 2003 for our 50th birthdays, did our “post soviet” tour of Moscow, Ukraine, Slovakia, and Budapest in 2015, and in 2016 he and his wife (also named Robin) and we traveled to Colombia together for a portion of our extensive South America trip. Since he’d already been to East Africa two decades prior, that focused us on Southern Africa.
In August 2018 we moved beyond ideation to detailed planning and reservations. We both love the research and planning aspect of travel almost as much as the experience. However, we have different styles and priorities; I tend to research history, geography, and culture; while Thom tends to research trends of contemporary society: restaurants, politics, hip or gentrifying neighborhoods, and economics. Over the next eight months of planning and reservations, the two perspectives balanced our agenda.
After deciding South Africa and a safari on a reserve near Kruger will be the primary objective, Thom and we saw an episode of Parts Unknown where Anthony Bourdain visits Senegal in West Africa. (We miss him). Senegal is the longest ruling democracy in Africa, it’s includes the western most point on the continent (a geography geek thing), it is a former French Colony (Thom speaks French) and they have excellent cuisine. It also seemed more “African” than South Africa. As we peeled the onion of opportunity I figured that a five hour flight to NYC to visit the girls and a week layover in Senegal would nicely break up the long flight across the Atlantic to the continent. The final leg, all in Africa, from Senegal to Capetown via Johannesburg would be as long as the previous two flights combined - five hours, seven hours, and twelve hours. It’s a BIG continent.
Having established Senegal, Capetown, the wine country and the southern coast called the Garden Route, Robin and I decided we wanted to take a train from Capetown to Johannesburg, embarkation for our safari destination. The start of the train ride would be where Thom’s and our itineraries would part. Since we were half way around the world and we’d be at the northern border of South Africa we thought we should visit the rest of the Southern African countries. From the safari on a reserve outside Krueger, our travels continued a counter clock-wise loop through Victoria Falls in Zambia and Zimbabwe, water based safari in the Okavango delta of Botswana, and concludes with two locations in Namibia. Details of all to follow as we experience them.
For our return to Seattle, Thom’s wife found a 12 hour non-stop flight from Johannesburg to Hong Kong, followed by another 12 hour non-stop flight from Hong Kong to the West Coast. Although Johannesburg is not quite half way around the world, surprisingly the flight continuing east was cheaper and faster than returning through Europe or Senegal, and it gave us a two day break in a great city.
During my professional life I’d flown around the world six times, but this was always in the Northern Hemisphere, and never along The Great Circle Route: the shortest distance between any two points on a sphere is along a plane that passes through the center of the earth. The equator is the most obvious example. This is why when flying from the Seattle to a similar latitude in Europe, the flight path is typically over Canada, Greenland, and Iceland, not due east.
During my professional life I’d flown around the world six times, but this was always in the Northern Hemisphere, and never along The Great Circle Route: the shortest distance between any two points on a sphere is along a plane that passes through the center of the earth. The equator is the most obvious example. This is why when flying from the Seattle to a similar latitude in Europe, the flight path is typically over Canada, Greenland, and Iceland, not due east.
As I mentioned in my NYC blog, I am a geography and cartography geek. This particularly routing appealed to my sense of completeness. Because the earth is 75% covered in oceans it’s difficult to find major city airports to circumnavigate the globe on the Great Circle Route. Below is our routing. To make this a perfect Great Circle route we’d need to fly from San Francisco instead of Seattle to NYC, and to Sydney instead of Hong Kong from Johannesburg. But we are pretty close.
My next post “The first six hours” will be my arrival in Senegal and from then on it’ll be about the travels.
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