South Africa Days 1-4: Safari Time!

When my friend, Alexandria, and I arrived in Johannesburg, our flight from Atlanta arrived later in the evening so we stayed at the InterContinental airport hotel. It was literally right outside of the International Arrivals hall, and most importantly, it was free! I had some miles stored from getting the InterContinental Hotel Group credit card so I used that to pay for it. It was quite a fancy hotel! We knew we would be jetlagged, so we took our time relaxing in the beautiful pool and steam room on the top floor of the hotel looking over the airport.

The first thing we planned for our trip was a safari! I have a college friend from USC who was actually just in South Africa over Thanksgiving last November, and he recommended that we book our safari through Rhino Africa. I am not usually a big fan of using tour companies to book trips since I usually can get a better rate on my own, but I don't know much about safaris so I figured I'd try it out! We did our safari at the Kapama River Lodge Reserve which ended up being pretty affordable considering that it was an all-inclusive experience. It was roughly $200 per person per night and that included 2 safaris per day, all meals plus a tea time before each safari, and all accommodations. This definitely was a splurge for me, but you can't go to South Africa and not do a safari! And this seemed to be the best way to get the most out of the experience in the few short days we had there. If we had more time, we would probably would have tried to do something within Kruger itself.

Getting on the tiny prop plane to Eastgate Hoedspruit Airport!

So on Sunday morning, we slept in and tried to adjust to the new time zone 9 hours ahead of Mountain Standard Time. We had a noon flight to Hoedspruit, a tiny town just outside of Kruger National Park, where a ranger was waiting to take us to Kapama. This airport, the Eastgate Airport, was the smallest airport I have ever been in! Yes, this means it is even smaller than the Provo Airport!

We got settled into our room and had a delicious lunch cooked by very friendly chefs who can speak a handful of languages or more. One of them could even speak 9 of the 11 native languages in South Africa on top of Portuguese, Spanish, and more! Our first safari started at 4pm. At Kapama, there are 2 safaris a day, one at 6am and one at 4pm. Each safari lasts 3 hours. The animals you see depends on the weather. The first day, we saw a ton of animals. We had barely left the meeting area when a handful of giraffes crossed our path in the middle of the road! But on the second day, the sky was overcast and it was pretty windy, so a lot of animals were seeking shelter and staying in the bushes to protect themselves from predators they may not hear as well in that weather.

Each safari vehicle had a ranger who drove and explained things about the animals and plants you were looking at and a tracker who sat at the very front of the vehicle (quite literally) and looked for footprints, droppings, and other signs of proximity to any animals. Our tracker, Alfie, was excellent and found two rare white rhinos for us on our last day. He had amazing stories of his service in the military where he learned to be a tracker. For instance, he was once chased by a herd of elephants while on a bicycle!

Alex recording her moment with the elephant (above) and our tracker finding the white rhinos (see video below)

The food was excellent at Kapama, but dinner was always the best! We got to eat dinner with our ranger, Angie, and there was always some sort of wild game dish that we got to try. I had ostrich bobotie and impala pie among other things while I was there. It was all delicious! And on the second day, it was Alex's birthday so the entire wait staff brought her a slice of cake while singing to her in one of the local languages.

Overall, I am extremely pleased with my experience at Kapama. While it was on a reserve and not in Kruger itself, we had a great view of many, many animals without the traffic that we have heard plagues the park. The staff also do not manage the animals on their property; we saw lions eating giraffes on more than one occasion, and that is just a natural part of the life cycle out there. While it was a reserve and not completely in the wild, a large benefit is that Kapama is outside of the moderate to high malaria risk areas that encompass Kruger, which is an important consideration to make when traveling to foreign countries, especially in rural areas. I still do want to experience a safari in the African wild one day, this was the best option for us given the time restraints and health risks that would entail. Plus, we ended our stay with a ride to the airport by one of the extremely attractive local rangers :) I'd say the safari portion of our trip was a great success!

I Left My Heart in South Africa

I never expected to fall in love with South Africa. Everyone told me I would love it there, but I just assumed it would be like all the other places that I have traveled to and enjoyed in the past. I never actually believed that it would win me over like it did.

South Africa has a little bit of everything: every climate, every culture, every food, every activity you could possibly imagine. The safari I went on at the Kapama Reserve just outside of Kruger National Park for three days was everything I could have imagined it to be, but it wasn't until I got to Cape Town that I truly fell for the country. Cape Town is like a mix of San Francisco and Rio de Janeiro with a touch of New Orleans, full of hipsters, cyclists, and artsy people. As a city planner, I absolutely loved all the dedicated bus and bike lanes, the pedestrian malls, the historic Victorian and Art Deco buildings everywhere, and even the touristy V&A waterfront. There was not enough time and I must go back some day!

I haven't posted in a while since I decided not to bring my laptop on my trip to South Africa. All I brought with me was a backpack and a weekender bag for the 10 days I was there. I have a lot to say about my trip, so over the next week or two I will be sharing all the grand adventures I have had with the most marvelous people in South Africa!

Problem Solving: Traveling to Isolated Places is Hard!

I am currently preparing for two major trips within the next month. Next week I leave for a 9 day trip to South Africa, and two weeks after that I will head to Palau to visit an old friend from college and swim in Jellyfish Lake. Being in the middle of planning a trip to a very isolated island nation has been extremely difficult. With limited flight schedules coming into and out of the main airport, Koror, it was nearly impossible to find a cheap flight between Saipan, where my friend lives, and Palau. In fact, it was almost the same price to book a flight from Salt Lake City to Koror (a 22 hour flight) as it was to book a flight from Sapian to Koror (a 3-4 hour flight).

If I was going to pay that much for a plane ticket, I wanted it to be worth it. I didn't want to pay close to $1,000 (or more) for a short plane ride! So I rearranged my flights to allow me to stop in a handful of countries for the same price instead.

The Problem
Originally, I had booked a Delta miles award for 70,000 miles to fly from Salt Lake City to Saipan with a layover in Tokyo both ways, and I was going to either pay for a ticket (which I was expecting to be close to $600) or use United miles to travel with my friend from Saipan to Palau. Unfortunately, with the limited number of flights between Saipan and Guam and between Guam and Palau, tickets in March were absurdly high and there was no award availability for the week that I had off work. After a few weeks of waiting and searching for other options, I realized that there was just no way to get a cheap ticket to Palau for the dates that I needed. Isn't it always true that you either have time or money, but never both? This was a case where I didn't have the time to get the cheaper flights, so I was going to have to pay more for this trip than I was expecting. A lot more.

The Solution
Knowing that I would have to pay a lot for flights on this trip, I was looking at canceling my Delta Award flight to get my 70,000 miles back. This was a decision I made knowing that 70,000 Delta miles are worth a lot, even if Delta Skymiles isn't the best rewards program. I can get to Europe with those miles! And if I wasn't going to save very much money by using them to get to Saipan, I would rather keep them for another trip another time.

Having looked at flights from SLC to ROR (Salt Lake City to Palau), I noticed that all of them transited through Taipei, Taiwan, and it just so happens that I have a good friend who is teaching English in Taiwan for six months (his blog about his time in Taiwan and his awesome photography skills can be found here). Knowing that I could take a day or so and visit him in Taiwan on the way, I decided to try a few flight options out.

If you are looking to find a cheaper price on an expensive flight, one of the best things to do can be to break up your flight into smaller segments and purchase tickets that way. 

This is when I busted out all my travel tools. I used every single one of my favorite websites to check for cheaper prices and cheaper segments. I used kayak.com/explore to see if it was cheaper to fly from SLC to any city along the way to ROR. I used airline websites and OTA websites (Online Travel Agencies) like Expedia/Travelocity/Orbitz and looked for both mileage tickets and monetary tickets. I utilized google.com/flights along with matrix.itasoftware.com to price out individual segments versus the full roundtrip ticket, and I even looked into doing several roundtrip tickets (i.e. SLC to Taiwan, then Taiwan to Palau). It was honestly kind of fun, even though it was somewhat stressful since there was the pressure of having to find an affordable ticket.

This will most likely be my trip (Map generated at gcmap.com)

Ultimately, I found a much better deal to combine a roundtrip ticket from SLC to Taipei, which ended up being in the $700-$800 roundtrip range, with a mileage award ticket from Taipei to Palau. In fact, it was only 30,000 United miles for me to fly from Taipei to Palau, and with United miles, they allow a stopover (any stop over 24 hours) in any country along the way as well. I found the price for the SLC to TPE portion of the trip on kayak.com/explore, then found the flight segments on google.com/flights and booked it on an OTA. I got the best price by using a combination of these websites, so it took some playing around with dates and airlines, but I ended up with a schedule I liked.

The mileage ticket from TPE to ROR was an excellent find since it's a minimum of 25,000 miles for a roundtrip domestic flight, so for almost the same price, I was getting an international flight to my final destination plus I could add another stop along the way. As an added bonus, I could choose routings that added long layovers in any other city if United's website offer them. These layovers (under 24 hours) are difficult to force, so most times you just have to be aware of the flight routings you are being offered and make sure you take advantage of them. In this case, I was looking at routing my flight to have a stopover in Seoul to visit one of my uncles there, and it had me stop in Hanoi for a 10 hour layover between Seoul and Taipei on the return ticket. That would have been amazing if I could have made that work, but sadly it didn't.

This COULD be my trip! (Map generated at gcmap.com)

I have decided that I will definitely have a 5 and a half hour layover in Shanghai on my way from Taipei to Palau, but I cannot decide where I want to have a stopover of a day or two on my way back. I am leaning toward stopping in Beijing for a day or two so I can go see the Great Wall of China and Tiananmen Square, although it would be super awesome to see a different country for my stopover (since I will be seeing Shanghai on the way to Palau). And I will have 1-2 days on the end of my trip to spend time my friend in Taiwan. We are thinking of going to see the cherry blossoms in the mountains! I am so excited!

Either way, I really wanted to make sure I get the most for my money on this trip. And by changing my flights up to try to make it worth it, I will get to visit __ places and see more old friends instead of the 3 I was originally planning on visiting. Sometimes flight problems can end up working out in your favor in cases like this :)

Original Trip:                                      What I Ended Up With: ^_^
Tokyo - Layover                                 Taipei - Stopover, "Destination" of first ticket
Saipan - Destination                            Shanghai - Layover
Palau - Second destination                  Guam - Layover
                                                             Palau - Destination
                                                             Seoul - Layover (possibly Stopover)
                                                             Beijing - Stopover

Collecting Smashed Pennies: Finding Things To Do On A Trip

All my closest friends and family members know that one of my favorite things to do when I travel is to collect smashed pennies (or smashed coins). You know what I'm talking about. We all see those kitschy tall, skinny machines at the zoo or any theme park or even
random tourist shops.


I remember begging my parents for 51 cents to get a smashed penny every time we went to the Honolulu Zoo as a child, only to lose the penny shortly afterward. Then, when I was 16, I took a trip to Cedar Point, the Roller Coaster Capital of the World, while visiting relatives in Ohio over the summer. As a poor high school student, I couldn't afford any of the overpriced souvenirs in the park, and while getting a smashed penny is affordable, I wasn't sure it would be worth it if I was just going to lose it anyway. It was just my luck that in one of the gift shops I had discovered a Cedar Point themed "Penny Passport" which had slots for 36 smashed pennies and happened to be only $3.95. I have been an avid smashed penny collector ever since that day that I discovered a place to put my pennies.

Collecting smashed pennies was my way of showing where I have been, especially since I mostly traveled domestically at first. You can't get a stamp for visiting any particular city or state, but chances are good that that place has a smashed penny machine somewhere! I love my little collection which serves as a record of many of the places I have traveled to. It's an affordable hobby because even today, penny passports never cost more than $10. I always try to buy passports with neat designs rather than the ones that have the simple and plain "Penny Passport" label printed on the cover.



San Francisco's Chinatown

One of my favorite things about collecting smashed pennies is that you stumble across the machines in the most random places, and if you want to deliberately find a machine, the places that have them are almost always worth visiting. I have discovered a helpful website which I consult before every single trip, domestic or international, to help me find machines. I have never been disappointed yet. It lists penny machines for each state (and even country) by city and address. On road trips, I like to see if there are any locations on my route. When I was driving from Utah to Denver two years ago, I decided to stop at the Red Rock Amphitheatre and in Vail at the Ski and Snowboard Museum just for the pennies, and both times I discovered some really neat places. For my trip to South Africa this month, I will be consulting this website to find places to get more smashed coins. All the places that have machines sound amazing. I prefer to collect coins and not tokens, so you can click the picture or read the description of each reported machine to see what they have. This is crowdsourcing at its best! (Okay, maybe not, but I love it!) Here is what it looks like for that trip:

There is a story behind each smashed coin that I have collected. I try to get pennies that are truly representative of the places I visit. My favorite styles often include city skylines and local architecture. Sometimes I like a lot of the designs available, so I'll come home with 4 or 5 or 8 pennies from one place. Other times I won't like any design, but I still get one to represent that trip.

Pennies from St. Augustine, FL & Washington DC with some Euros from Rome and a Won from Seoul

Here are a few of my favorites:

I love this penny I got the very first time I drove the PCH from San Francisco to Los Angeles. We drove across the famous Bixby Bridge and I was able to get this penny in the visitor's center at a campsite in Big Sur even though I didn't camp out there.


I love the design of this one that I got in Charlotte, NC when I was visiting one of my cousins who lived in downtown. As a city planner, I absolutely love cities, and I love how the downtown skyline is represented here.




This one is one of my all time favorites because this is where my parents got married. It's the Laie, Hawaii LDS Temple. As a Mormon from Hawaii, this represents so much in my life. I think it would be really neat if I could afford to have a smashed penny machine whenever the heck I get married that had an image of the temple that I end up getting married in. But that's wishful thinking.

This penny is an example of a design that I don't particularly like because you can't tell what it is! It says Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde so you know where it's from (Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado), but the design doesn't look like the familiar cliff dwellings everyone knows. But still, it's a penny depicting the ancient Anasazi ruins and I think that is very cool.

I like this one of the Seattle skyline, "The Emerald City," that I got at the base of the Space Needle because it shows the city skyline so well. I am a nerd for all things city and urban!

I got these two pennies the first time I visited Zion National Park in southern Utah. I supported a team on the Red Rock Relay, a ~200 mile 12-person running relay from Brian Head to Zion, and the day after the race I got to hike The Narrows. It was an absolutely stunning hike, and that entire weekend is the reason why I started running. Ever since then I have run 6 half marathons and 1 marathon.

This one is just a cool penny from home that represents Hawaii so well. It's the King Kamehameha statue that is in front of a government building on King Street near Punchbowl in downtown. I used to catch the bus in front of this statue all the time. (Sorry it's sideways...I will work on rotating these pictures later).

These pennies also represent home to me. I grew up a few miles away from Pearl Harbor and went there often as a kid. These pennies are an image of the actual USS Arizona Memorial and the actual plaque that represents the spot where Japan surrendered ending World War II on the USS Missouri, the Mighty Mo.

 

And this penny is one of my all time favorites because it depicts an Okapi from the San Diego Zoo. The Okapi is one of my favorite animals. It's so quirky! It looks like a deer, zebra, and giraffe all at the same time.



When I discovered that a handful of other countries also have smashed coin machines, I fell even more in love with this hobby of mine. A good friend from graduate school had spent a couple of weeks in Mexico and brought me back a smashed peso! Every time I have traveled abroad since then, I have sought out my own smashed coins. In Canada, they have machines stocked with American pennies. In Europe, there are smashed Euro machines everywhere. When I was in Thailand and South Korea, one of the few machines that exist were on the top of tall buildings. In Bangkok, I got to visit the observatory at the top of the tallest building in the country in order to get my penny. In Seoul, I visited the Sky Art Gallery at the top of the 63 Building which had a really awesome Beatles exhibit where their machine was located. I would have never gone to any of these places if it were not for the machines. This is just one example of how a fun little hobby can help you see the world.


View of Bangkok from the top of Baiyoke Tower where I went to get a smashed Baht

The Beatles art exhibit at the top of the 63 Building in Seoul where I went to get a smashed Won