This year (2007) I am embarking on a trip to South Africa followed by a little jaunt to London. In the first two-week segment I will be assisting Karen and Anthony ("Macca") McDonald of Red Desert Tours in catering a tour sponsored by Ron and Viv Moon's Legendary Outback Expeditions. See Ron & Viv's Africa travel site, www.africaoverland.com.au for lots more Africa trip info and pics of my traveling companions.

As I write this my truck is on a boat heading to Durban. My flight to Johannesburg leaves on February 17. I have been preparing for this trip since my return from Australia in August '06. Most of the time has been spent in getting my truck back into running condition. It was in pretty sad shape as a result of the 30,000 miles that I put on it in Australia, most of them quite overloaded and about half of them in four-wheel drive in the bush.

I have also spent considerable time in getting my new trailer bush-ready. Though there are significant downsides to traveling with a trailer, I felt it necessary mainly in order to get some weight off the truck chassis.

Time has also been spent seeing doctors to get my body repaired and getting lots of inoculations. Though Australia is blessed in that they have few insect and water-borne diseases, that is not the case for Africa. I have done my research and I must say that what I found was somewhat daunting. But then again, I subsequently did the same for the good old USA and found that we have a lot of our own, though they aren’t as pervasive. But it put Africa in perspective. These factoids make sense since diseases need hosts to survive. Given the area, Australia is short on human hosts.

February 16 email to Ron & Viv Moon -

My trip has started. I'm in a brew bar in the Reno airport waiting for my flight. It's 7:15 PM Feb 16, I have my third beer in front of me, Bose headphones on my head pumping out Mick Jagger and crew. I'm in the mood! The house is cleaned up, taxes are paid, I have a DHL account set up, and my General Motors parts people have agreed to take care of getting parts and handing them off to DHL. This is a very good thing!

My flight takes me to San Francisco where I'll catch a flight to New York, arriving about 7 AM. My Emirates flight leaves 10:20 AM. and arrives in Dubai 7:50 AM the next day. It departs Dubai at 10:15 AM, arriving in J'burg at 4:25 PM Feb 18. All the times are local to the location. I haven't even attempted to figure out the actual times from now. For all I know, it might be yesterday or next week.

I'm off to the gate. Missing a flight would be a major setback.

Cheers! I'll check back in from SFO or NY.

f

Yahoo!!!

February 18 email to the Africa list -

Well, the next journey has started. I'm currently sitting in the Dubai airport waiting for my connection to Johannesburg.

Getting from Reno/Carson City to NY was a trial. It started out great with all of my to-do's done and arrived to the RNO airport at about 7 PM with enough time to spare to stop for a beer. That's when things started to fall apart. The arrival in Reno of the United flight to San Francisco was an hour late which caused me to miss my flight from SFO to NY's JFK which in turn resulted in multiple missed flights, hotel reservations, car rentals, and meetings in Johannesburg and Durban.

Oh well. Life on the trail. Lots of stress when I was running through terminals trying to catch flights but I've mellowed out after my Emirates flight.

I highly recommend the airline. Take it if you get a chance. The economy class food and drinks are comparable to most first class service. Comp top quality liquor and beer, choice foods, etc. I think it likely that it is losing money but we're paying for it at the local gas pump in Carson City.

The Dubai airport is quite grand. Lots of marble, glass, mirrors, lights, glitzy duty-free shops. I took a couple of pics and will post them if they aren't too embarrassing.

Cheers.

f

You know how in an airport security line in the US, an Arab-looking person in robes often gets an undue amount of attention? Well, I found it somewhat humorous that in Dubai the roles were exactly reversed. Dudes in robes were doing the inspecting and I was the one getting the undue attention.

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