Logistics...

Its a long way to Tanzania from Seattle. Ten time zones and about 55 degrees of latitude, to be exact. In other words, just about halfway around the world. Clearly, this would be a hard trip - more than 20 hours in the air no matter the route. In the interest of retaining our collective sanity, we decided on a couple of strategies. First, we would try and scrape together enough frequent flier miles to go first class. This would have the dual advantages of making us more comfortable and easing the burden on our wallets. Second, we would schedule in some rest time on leaving the bush and then break up the trip back with a stopover. Sounds simple? Hmmm....

As it turned out, things worked out pretty well. We had spent several months scraping together nearly 140,000 frequent flier miles each for the tickets, which turned out to be easier than expected, and by the end of 2010 and our first meetings with our guide David we were almost there. A few hundred dollars (all we spent out-of-pocket on the flights) purchased the remaining miles we needed.

Now we just need to book flights, right? (Right?)

Well, by this time we knew we wanted to shoot for August/September to catch the Migration at the north end. Unfortunately, first class frequent flier seats for a trip like this are pretty few and far between by 8-9 months out. Catherine went to work, though, and pretty soon things were starting to come together. Seattle to Chicago to Istanbul to Nairobi on the way out, then a local flight to Tanzania. Pretty simple. Now the return flight. Where did we want to lay over for a few days? London? Zurich? Paris? We finally settled on Barcelona, so the return would be a local flight from Tanzania to Nairobi, then Nairobi to Zurich and Zurich to Barcelona. After a few days layover we would return to Seattle via Toronto. Catherine managed to find first- or business class seats for all the legs except Barcelona to Toronto (quite a feat!), and as it turned out, the plane on that leg was configured for a single class, so there wasn't much we could do, anyway.

That just left a decision about where to go for the rest days after we exited the bush. This was a no-brainer, actually. Where else to go but Zanzibar! An island off the Tanzanian coast, hub of the historical spice trade, known for its beaches, and location of Stonetown, a UNESCO world heritage site. Even the name evoked adventure and mystery. Zanzibar is part of Tanzania, but maintains a special status with a certain degree of autonomy.

So, the big decisions were made and dates were picked. It's a good thing Catherine enjoys planning travel. When it comes to sorting this stuff out she is a wonder! With David on board organizing out time in Tanzania, we could now focus on preparing for the trip and making our arrangements in Barcelona. The dream was starting to look like reality, even if it was still several months off!