2023 Around the World in 82 days

Pitfalls and pratfalls

(Note: this is NOT a travelogue. For that see Sally’s magnificent 600 picture album)

Background:

As part of our honeymoon, we needed to visit various family and friends in many parts of the world. Some research quickly showed that that the best way to do this was an around-the-world trip. Scheduling necessities required we travel West to East, which is an advantage as one is travelling with the jet stream all the way, cutting off about 10 hours flying time compared to going the “other way”.

There are some claims that jet-lag is easier to handle flying East to West, but we did not find jet lag a problem, probably aided by our extended stop overs after each leg. But irrelevant in our case as we had to go West to East to fit available dates for the friends and family we were visiting.

A packaged around-the-world ticket was an obvious choice, but these have so many restrictions, that we had to resort to a DIY trip, booking every flight on a different airline. This has many well-documented risks, which we minimised by booking every flight as a non-stop flight with a minimum of a 3 day stop-over. Not all airlines allow stop-overs, so this was a key “filter”. This led to a trip that looked like this:

Cape Town - Singapore (3) - New Zealand (21) - Brisbane (14) - Fiji (3) ( )are days in each place

Pratfall no 1:

The trip was meticulously planned over several months, so what could possibly go wrong? Well, arriving in Singapore at 6am on the first day, we discovered that the Hotel Quay Lavender (booked 5 months in advance) had subsequently been demolished and the taxi driver dropped us at the sister Hotel Quay – who had no record of our booking. 6 hours roaming the streets of Singapore in 33 deg heat, while waiting for a room to become available, rapidly took the “honeymoon shine” off our trip, not to mention the severe dent in the confidence of my good wife in my “travel planning abilities”!

Remedy? Check and re check bookings, weeks and days in advance.

Pratfall no 2:

Fortunately, our stays in New Zealand and Australia all went smoothly, except for leaving Australia. Arriving at Brisbane airport in good time, we were informed that we had been “bumped” because of a delayed flight, and would have to wait 14 hours for the next flight, arriving in Fiji the next morning instead of that night.

Besides the discomfort of sitting around the airport a whole day, there was also the problem of the car and hotel we had booked in Fiji. (If one is a no-show, deposits can be lost). First things first and much snot-en-trane secured us a hotel for the day, a taxi to and from the hotel, a $100 meal voucher and an upgrade to Business Class. (Others we met who had booked the same flight were not so lucky.) But it actually turned out well, as instead of having a night drive to our hotel, we did a leisurely daylight drive along Fifi’s beautiful Coral Coast.

Remedy: Be very demanding if "bumped".

Fiji - California (10) - New York - Ithaca (13) - Salem (3) - Florida (8)- New York - Cape Town

Auckland - Hamilton - Tauranga - Whitianga- Auckland (21 days)

Pratfall no 3:

Flexibility and the ability to re-plan on the fly are crucial to surviving a trip like this. Or so I thought, as that’s when things really went pear shaped. Leaving Fiji on the evening of the 17th June, we arrived in San Francisco on the morning of the 17th June. I had completely forgotten about the inconvenient truth of the International Date Line. This meant we arrived a day early for the accommodation we had booked. By good fortune, this was a Home Exchange where the owners had left the day before, so we were able to move in early. Anyone planning a trip crossing the date line (either way) should carefully work this out. It really does mess with ones mind.

Remedy: Swat up your geography!

Wheel chair assistance

Having had back surgery a few weeks before we departed, I was advised to use airport wheel chair facilities. Thank goodness I did. In most cases it’s as simple as ticking WCHR (Wheel Chair to Ramp) on the reservation. Only one airline (Fiji) requested a doctors certificate (which I had). It makes an enormous difference to the speed and ease of transiting airports. Well for me at least. For Sally, running behind the wheel chair pushing a trolley full of luggage, it was a little less easy! But she did benefit from the same rapid bypassing of the security and immigration queues.

Self driving cars

But we did hire a car for 10 days in California and for the trip from Ithaca,NY to Salem. What is now a boon, is that most hire cars in the USA are as least Level 2 self driving, so I was able to amble for 100s of km at a time with the car driving itself. Makes for much more relaxed and safe driving. I can thoroughly recommend it. We also had a car for 21 days in New Zealand. Not a self-driving car, but we were largely in the Coromondel Peninsula which is very twisty-windy, so self driving would not cope anyway.

Florida: Venice-Miami-Palm Beach-Coca Beach , Venice

(1000km of utterly boring driving apart from the Kennedy Space Center)

California: San Francisco - Yosemite - Salinas - Big Sur - Half Moon Bay - SF

Travel insurance

Air travel in this modern post 9/11, post Covid age is dreadful, with long queues and long delays at most airports the norm. Delays in connecting flights are all too common which can have calamitous consequences. We heard of friends and fellow travellers who had been delayed by 2 or 3 days because of missed connections. Worse is that if a delay is caused by weather, US airlines are absolved of responsibility and accommodation and rebooking costs can be for the travellers own account. Travel insurance is essential, covering not just medical.

Car hire in USA

One travel tip from our horrendous (but apparently normal) experience at JFK Airport in New York. We were originally going to stop over in New York, but due to various family circumstances needed to go straight through to my daughter in Ithaca. This is only a 35-minute flight from New York, but with only one flight a day, it was going to take 7 hours with a 6-hour layover. No problem, says me, we’ll hire a car and drive, it’s only 4 hours.

What I hadn’t factored in was that this was the July 4th holiday weekend, and the start of the summer holidays. As a result there were no, zilch, zero, none rental cars available! This is a long story relating to the Covid slowdown in travel, rental companies disposing of cars and then being unable to restock due to chip shortages which delayed car production in the USA. So beware, travelling in the USA at peak times requires careful advance planning – and advance booking of cars in particular.

Home Exchange

One last anecdote about a truly memorable trip that we thoroughly enjoyed, despite it’s length. We had joined Home Exchange shortly before we departed. This enabled us to cancel all the Airbnb and Booking.com reservations we had made in the USA and use Home Exchanges instead. Besides saving several thousands of Rand, the more important aspect was that we stayed in some truly memorable and delightful homes. We also had a person staying in our home for a month while we were away, so accumulated over 4000 points – enough to cover 20–30 nights in Europe next year – our next destination! We came home with many more points than we had when we left!

If anyone is interested in finding out more more about Home Exchange, give us a call or look at https://www.homeexchange.com/?sponsorkey=tonyandsally-c24d7

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