Yesterday was a highly accomplished day for a Sunday. Then again, any day of the week is a day that may require us to “pull up our bootstraps” to figure out a solution to an imminent situation, such as we encountered regarding the new lockdown in Kenya, which started on Friday, preventing us from going on our planned and paid trip to Little Governor’s Camp in the Maasai Mara.
If you missed yesterday’s post with the details, here is the link.
In all, we discovered we’ll lose a total of US $400, ZAR 6007 from the Kenya online Kenyan visa, and cancellation fees of US $100, ZAR 1502 per traveler for canceling the flight with Kenya Airways. It was quite a daunting task, undoing all the bookings for Kenya and creating new bookings for the USA. But now we feel at ease that we’ve got a handle on it. Now, we wait for refunds and credits to be applied to our credit cards.
Many of the credits will take 30 days to process. At this point, we have the cash layout for the expensive Kenya trip and the upcoming trip to the US. We look forward to all of the credits coming through soon.
This morning we visited Louise to explain our situation. Since it makes no sense to pay for two-holiday rentals simultaneously, we have no choice but to clear out of this house, leaving it available for Louise to rent it to other potential tourists while we’re away, especially when our return date is uncertain at this point.
Overall, we anticipate returning in approximately six weeks from our arrival on April 10, 2021, which would take us to the end of May at the latest. We can only speculate at this point. As soon as we know more, we’ll let Louise know what date we’ll be returning.
Last night we informed our kids and grandchildren that we’ll be coming, and they, along with us, are enthused for our return. It will be wonderful to see all of them once again after the long haul in India. It will be around 18 months since we were in the US to see everyone, so the timing is perfect.
Next week, we’ll start packing. We’ll only bring a minimal amount of clothing and supplies with us, especially since we’ll need room in our luggage for the items we’ll be picking up at our mailing service in Las Vegas. We didn’t pay the huge fees to send that package to us, plus the associated hassle with insurance and customs fees. We’re certainly grateful.
We’ve decided to go to Nevada at the end of our US stay so we won’t have to haul around the extra 20 pounds, 9 kg, paying for overweight luggage while flying in the US. We’ll fly back to South Africa from Las Vegas, when at that point, it will be an international flight, allowing more weight in our bags.
The packing will be challenging, separating what we’ll need for the US with varying weather conditions in each location and what we’ll leave behind in South Africa. But, as always, we’ll figure it out. Most likely, while in the US we’ll purchase some new clothing for both of us. We each need several items which we can only find there.
For now, we’ll continue to enjoy our bush home and the dozen or so warthogs, kudus, bushbucks, and wildebeest who’ve become very familiar to us and us to them. Mostly, I’m concerned about Frank and The Misses, who’ve enjoyed eating the seeds we’ve offered several times a day.
Surely, none of them will starve without our constant supply of pellets and seeds. The vegetation is lush and green, and most likely, they’ll visit other houses for treats such as those we offer. Once we return, within a few weeks, they’ll all be back. Frank and The Misses find berries, seeds, and bugs readily available in the park. Hopefully, they’ll remain in this territory while we’re gone.
We’ve done an inventory of how much food we have left. If we head to Komati tomorrow for a few odds and ends, we won’t need to purchase more groceries before we depart. Louise will give us a plastic tote to store our non-perishable food items, and of course, they will store that along with the baggage we’re leaving behind when we depart Marloth Park in 10 days to head to Nelspruit for an overnight stay for the next day’s long journey ahead.
Be well.
Photo from one year ago today, March 29, 2020:
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| The casual dining room where we had breakfast and dinner the first few weeks was in the hotel in Mumbai, India. A few weeks later, they closed the restaurant and started serving us room service only. It was a long ten months. For more, please click here. |