Pre-Honeymoon and Leaving USA
So before we detail out
our amazing South Africa Honeymoon, some of the backstories are needed to fully
illustrate how stressful of a trip this was leading into it. Quitting our jobs, Black Plague in
Madagascar, canceled trip to Seychelles, expiring Passports, and Chicago
apartments…oh boy
Quitting Gentex
Back in Spring 2017, we
each asked our bosses at Gentex for 3 weeks off in November 2017 (11/11-12/3),
and due to the Gentex schedule, this turned out to be only 11 days of
work. 11 days off for 23 days of
vacation, pretty good! We had two 9-80
Fridays, and Thanksgiving break in there.
But what happened as the summer went along, is that we decided Nadine
would accept the Wilson position and move to Chicago! Which means we needed to somehow quit Gentex,
i.e. put in our two weeks. When Nadine’s
start date was finalized at January 2, the only way we felt to do this with our
best interest, was to put in our two weeks the first day back from our
Honeymoon (Monday Dec 4)…stressful!
Madagascar
So this trip was quite
a huge undertaking for planning. We
split up the trip between us (Nadine planned Seychelles, Dave planned South
Africa, etc)…and then for Madagascar, we found out that you needed a 100%
guided trip. When we finally figured out
our trip plans, we found out there was no way we could do it all driving…we
needed to have private planes! And when
we did some early searching, we quickly found out that a Mada-based company was
the only way to not break the bank. We got
several quotes, some over $10k! And some
people even told us they couldn’t even do our itinerary, ha! A true NaDave trip! We finally settled on two companies…Cactus Tours
& ??...and in late August, we put dates to our “Day 1, Day 2, etc
plans”. We put Mada on the back end of
the trip to ensure anything that may happen (get sick, etc) wouldn’t spoil the
whole trip. Well…the companies reported
back that the Tsingy Nat Park & nearby hotels would be closed by late
November due to the rainy season, and the only dates to guarantee openings was
the 1st stop on the trip. So
we had to completely rearrange the order!
(No more South Africa first!)
It was early September
when we finally got our two quotes…and ?? was cheaper but they were much worse
at responding. In fact, we had to take a
phone call during our tour of the 9/11 Museum in NYC to finally get in touch
with them! As October approached, we
knew we needed to commit to a Mada itinerary.
We went back and forth several times, and even made some last minute
changes, which Cactus Tours responded much quicker too. In fact, we even called them too to confirm
some details (who woulda thought we’d be calling Madagascar…ever?). Then came the crazy news about the Black
Plague (what, the plague?) Yup, we
freaked out. It was international news
that Mada had the plague, and it was so bad that other countries were canceling
flights to/from Mada. What do we do…we
thought this can’t be that bad, right?…but it was Cactus Tours gave us the true
heads-up. How? They saw our flight leaving Mada to
Seychelles was canceled, with only 4 weeks to go. What???
(see Cancelling Seychelles below)
After getting our
post-Mada plans figured out, time was running out to book Mada. Every day we went back-and-forth….would it be
safe, should we risk getting sick, etc. Since
Cactus Tours had quotes that would expire in price (and we had some planes get
booked that changed the prices)…we finally had to make a decision on a Saturday
morning by 10am to avoid another whole re-quote. We woke up, nervously ate breakfast, talked
it through one more time…then booked the most expensive 6-day trip ever in our
lives (thank you honeyfund!) We were
relieved, but also stressed…the joys of traveling!
Cancelling Seychelles, booking Mauritius & Reunion
So when we found out
our flight from Mada to Seychelles was cancelled, we figured, okay, no sweat,
just book another flight to Seychelles.
We found out that since the airlines cancelled our flight, they would 100%
refund us or arrange our next flight. We
found a 1-stop flight through Mauritius and figured let’s do it. So we had them book it…oops
The next day Nadine got
a message from the STEP program about the Mada plague, and how Seychelles was
quarantining anyone who had been Mada the 7 days prior. She checked another site…Americans were
currently in quarantine on the island….sure enough, we were screwed.
There was no way we
could go to Seychelles after Mada. Our
heads were spinning, what do we do.
Cancel Mada? Rearranging the
whole trip was too crazy, we were only ## days away.
Nadine was super
bummed, our luxury beach location for our honeymoon was taken away from
us. What do we do? Where do we go? We called back the airlines, but couldn’t get
our flights back…money down the drain.
What about our booked
flights leaving Seychelles going to Victoria Falls. We called Priceline…and we needed to re-book
the next 3 flights, as changing the 1st flight messed up the other
flights because the first country was changing.
We got some money back (after spending an entire afternoon on the phone
fixing our flights, all on company time, ha!)…but lets just say booking flights
around Africa 3 weeks out is not cheap.
So what did we do,
instead of Seychelles? Nadine had read
about other islands off the east coast of Africa. Mauritius and Reunion were east of Mada, and
they were allowing people from Mada to visit.
Starting only # days before our honeymoon we started planning 6 months
prior, we planned trips for two islands (both of which Dave had never heard of
until that week!). We winged all
right. We booked AirBNBs where we could,
we rented cars(Reunion’s price for an automatic was highway robbery), we just made
it happen! We also cancelled all our
Seychelles plans where possible. In the
end, we were fortunate that we saved money to keep our honeymoon trip alive.
Nadine’s expiring Passport
So Nadine typically
tackles all the visas to enter countries.
We checked our passports early, and neither of them would expire until
2018. But Nadine’s would expire in early
2018…kinda close but should be okay, right?
As she was checking out Dubai, she read that your Passport needed to be
good for 6 months after your entry date.
And Nadine read this in mid-October, Ut-oh, she needs a new passport! Turn-around times to mail-in your passport
are 4-6 weeks…too late. So we freaked
out again, and then found out you could drive to NYC and have a passport
updated on the spot. So Nadine took a
personal day on Monday October 23 (she drove to NYC the Sunday before from
Philadelphia, where we did our Philly trip!).
She stayed with a High School friend Rian Morgan, then got to her
appointment at 9am, then while waiting for the passport to print she went to
Ellis Island (what a crazy girl!), then got her passport and drove back to
Scranton. Oh man!
Chicago apartment
So the final piece to
this crazy puzzle, was that we realized we needed to have an apartment already
picked out in Chicago if there was anyway we were going to successfully move
between Dec 14 (our last day at Gentex) and the Holidays…not to mention Matt
& Meagan’s wedding on Dec 31st and Nadine’s 1st day
at Wilson on Jan 2. The only weekend we
could squeeze in a Fri-Sat trip, was the 980 weekend before the Honeymoon. What?!
We had assured no plans for that weekend, we’d stay home and rest. Not anymore!
Long story short…we drove to Newark Thus Nov 2, arrived into our
Arlington Heights AirBNB around midnight, met Nadine’s boss for breakfast at
7am Friday, met our realtor at 8am, then Dave went off to a pseudo-interview in
Elgin for lunch, then we saw ~10 apartments & didn’t like any of them, then
we went home and searched some more & Dave found 614 S Dunton, we saw it
10am on Saturday, then went to the office to sign papers until 3pm, then hopped
on a 6pm flight and arrived back into Scranton 11p Saturday. Good lord!
Friday Nov 10
Okay, time to start the
trip! We had purchased all of safari
shirts, hats, and pants…and sprayed them down with super duper bug sprays. We had all of our books, and packed them all
up the night before.
We left the Gentex office
a little early (and little did they know, we would be putting in our two weeks
when we returned). One the way home, I
dropped off Nadine to get our one-way rental car…and she got a free upgrade
because she told them it was our honeymoon!
Gotta love having a rockstar wife.
We were a little late getting out the door as we tried to get the global
SIM card we had purchased to work on Dave’s phone, but no luck! What a waste of $$, and a start to the trip.
It was finally time to
take the first step of the journey! We
quadruple checked, kissed each other as all honeymooners should, then headed
for NYC! We were excited but nervous (as
all the details above explain). We
safely got to Nick Lippas house on-time, and waited for him & his GF to
finish dinner. We stayed up talking and
eventually crashed on their air mattress.
We both kinda slept, but mostly tossed and turned.
Saturday Nov 11
Dave awoke early in the
morning to a cramp in his right calf!
Great start to the trip! Even
walking to the bathroom was painful, how would hiking Africa all work out,
ha! We had a 10am flight, so we got out
the door by 7am to get to JFK. It was a
freezing cold morning! We were dressed
for summer in Africa, not November in NYC!
We got to the
international terminal in plenty of time, but looked like pack mules walking
with our 40L packs. Nadine accidentally
cut in line by mistelling the South Africa Airways lady that we were premier
class (ha!), so got our tickets quickly and the real trip was starting! Exciting, we had our tickets for NYC to
Johansessburg to Antanarrivo! Mada here
we come!
We made final family
phone calls waiting by our gate, took a few minutes to reflect on all the
amazing planning we had done. Now was
the time to enjoy the trip! We boarded
the plane with South African attendants & accents, and then took off. NaDave honeymoon was off! We had 15 hrs to rest up…and finally read up
on Mauritius & Reunion!…Africa here we come!
Out the door in Scranton we go!
Honeymoon Schedule (before we had to cancel Seychelles!)
All of our stuff for the trip!
Out the door in Scranton we go!
No comments:
Post a Comment