Kenya and Tanzania: A Classic Safari - 2024
This trip has been fifty years in the making. Priscilla and I celebrated our big five - oh (fiftieth) wedding anniversary. What better way to celebrate than going on safari in Tanzania and Kenya to see the big five. The big five African animals are buffalo, elephant, leopard, black maned lion and black rhinoceros. This will be our sixth trip with our tour group Tauck and our first land excursion. The first five trips have been cruises. The initial trip planing started 18 months ago. We considered another cruise, perhaps to the south seas or Antarctica but the lure of seeing the big five on our five-oh anniversary won. We will visit five national game parks and fly over the wildebeest migration in a hot air balloon.
These are the five game parks we will visit. We will fly on small planes between the parks.
Our trip will start in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. Mount Kilimanjaro is a dormant volcano and the highest mountain in Africa at 19,341 feet. We do not plan to climb Mount Kilimanjaro on this trip. The good news is if we do decide to climb this mountain there is cellular service all the way to the top.
Mount Kilimanjaro
Once we booked this tour we had to figure out how to get to Tanzania. We could fly well known airlines from Chicago to Europe and experience an all day layover and then fly all night to our destination. That is a mighty long airplane ride. Or we could use our United Airlines Star Alliance miles that we collected over a decade of flying internationally to book business class seats. Who knew Ethiopian Airlines is a Star Alliance partner? I didn’t know Ethiopia had an airline and never knew anyone that flew on that airline. We will be the first. It is a sixteen hour flight from Chicago to the capital of Ethiopia which is Addis Ababa. We will have a two hour layover and a plane change. Then it is only a two hour flight to Kilimanjaro. What is even more exciting is the location of Ethiopia. I knew it was in Africa. I have visited South Africa and Namibia and knew it wasn’t on the west coast. Ethiopia is in the northeast horn of Africa. Ethiopia was known as Abyssinia until after World War II. Emperor Haile Selassie promoted his country to become a founding member of the United Nations under its official name Ethiopia.
When I finally looked on the map I thought “wow, this is exciting.” The countries surrounding Ethiopia are Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Those are countries that are often in the news. We will be sure to stay in the airport during our layover. The Republic of Djibouti and the State of Eritrea also boarder Ethiopia.
Our safari will span thirteen days plus an extra day in Kilimanjaro and Nairobi. Trip planing began with yellow fever shots and visas for Kenya and Tanzania. The visa process online was dumbfounding. They wanted a photo of our sponsors passport. I hired Central Visa Services. They delivered.
Our adventure begins on Thursday October 3, 2024 at 9:50 am on Ethiopian Airlines flight ET 375.
Since this is a celebration of our 50th wedding anniversary here are the photos.
This is our wedding party from 1974.
This is our wedding party fifty years later in 2024. The flower girl and ring bearer are all grown up.