20260805 Globus Kenya & Tanzania: The Safari Experience Day 1 of 19 - Orlando to Nairobi, A long travel day

Globus Kenya & Tanzania: The Safari Experience - Flying to Nairobi, Kenya via Washington, D.C., and Brussels, Belgium

We're off again! This time, it is a 19-day safari adventure in Kenya and Tanzania. One note - if you purchase anything from Amazon via links that I have provided in today's blog, I may make a small commission.

We absolutely loved our safari experience last year in Zimbabwe and Botswana. It was terrific, but not what we had expected. Our vision of Africa came from movies and documentaries where you see the vast open spaces and herds of animals. While we were there, Arlona's college roommate was in Kenya and Tanzania. Her photos were what we had envisioned. That motivated us to plan another trip to Africa for a different safari experience. This is that trip. Specifically, we are taking the "Globus Kenya & Tanzania: The Safari Experience plus Nairobi" trip offered through Globus Journeys.

Where, exactly, are we going?

We will start in Nairobi, Kenya. We are arriving a couple of days before the 15-day tour starts, so we'll have a couple of extra days in Nairobi. From there, we will be driven or take flights around southern Kenya and northern Tanzania, eventually ending up in Arusha, Tanzania. We will fly out from Kilimanjaro Airport, arriving back home 19 days after today.

We're pretty good travelers, and with that, pretty good packers. We don't usually start packing more than a day or two before we go anywhere, regardless of the destination or duration of the trip. A few days ago, I started checking a few things for this trip. We will be near the equator and going out onto the Serengeti, so we were trying to figure out what hot weather clothing we should be packing. To get an idea of what to pack, I asked ChatGPT what we should expect for weather while we will be there. TO my surprise, weather is expected to be in the mid-70s during the day and mid-50s overnight and for morning game drives. Whoa! Hit the brakes and revise our packing! That was change #1.

The bigger change came when I reviewed the "Advisements" section of the Travel Packet from Globus. Buried in the lengthy list of points was a hidden gem stating that for the intra-Africa flights (the flights that are part of the tour), the baggage limit is 33 pounds per person, including hand luggage. Wait, what? Oh, on top of that, all luggage has to be soft-sided without internal structure or wheels. Wait, what again?

I called Globus for clarification, and the clarification was that we can only bring 33 pounds of soft luggage per person. Yikes! My camera/laptop/tech bag alone weighs 22 pounds! I immediately got on the phone with our extraordinary travel advisor, Lisa McKay at LMK Luxury Travel. She contacted other clients who had just completed this same trip to get the lowdown. The bottom line was that yes, we needed soft bags, and while we needed to minimize our packing, nobody weighed the bags, provided that they weren't obviously massively overweight.

OK, we have a new strategy. First, thank goodness that I had the opportunity to review the Orbitkey 55L Foldable Duffel Bags. Because of that review, we have two of them. These replaced our hard luggage. Second, we are now packing for 5-6 days, no more. Lisa confirmed that all the lodges we will visit offer laundry services for a modest fee. We have several multi-day stays, and each one provides an opportunity to have laundry done. This means we need only 1/3 the clothing we had originally planned to bring. We stripped out everything we could and packed as light as possible.

Arlona took an organized approach

I took a more random approach

Insects are always a concern on safari. On the advice of our travel advisor, Lisa KcKay, we purchased Sawyer Products Premium Permethrin Insect Repellent for Clothing, Gear & Tents. This spray chemically bonds to fabrics and provides insect-repelling properties to your clothing through several machine washes.

You wet your outer layers and let them dry over a couple of hours - that's it

We treated shirts, pants, and socks

We're hopeful that this helps keep the pests away so we can focus on the larger animals.

We're very excited for this trip, especially after seeing the weather. Eastern Africa is now in the dry season, so we likely won't see any rain. The downside of that is that it will likely be dusty. Couple that with the expected mild temperatures, and it should be quite pleasant. The final piece of the puzzle is that we are arriving squarely in the middle of the great migration, where huge herds of animals are on the move, and that should be amazing to see.

With our clothing treated and a new luggage plan in place a full two days before departure, we're really ahead of the game for this trip.

On Tuesday, we did our last packing and prepping. We got our confirming notification from Creative Concierge that our ride would be at the house on Wednesday morning at 10:15 to whisk us to Orlando International Airport. We put both golf carts on a battery tender to make sure our batteries would be in good shape when we get home.

Wednesday morning, we packed last-minute items, ran the dishwasher, and got everything ready to go.

Our entire gear pile for 19 days

When the driver arrived, I turned off the water and water heater, and we headed to MCO. On the way, we passed a Waymo driverless car. It was the first time we've spooted on out in the wild.

It was on the Florida Turnpike and did have a safety person in the driver's seat

We had to check in at the United counter, even though we weren't checking bags. They had to verify that we had valid visas for entry into Kenya. Without them, we wouldn't have been able to board.

TSA was a breeze - we were behind one person. With that time savings, we were able to pop into the United Club for a quick Coke Zero before heading to our gate.

We got checked in and found seats quickly

Our gate was a short walk from the Club. We boarded yet another completely full flight. We're flying Business Class. On this 737 Max 9, that just means bigger seats and no middle seat. 

It will get much nicer on the next two flights.

The flight to Washington Dulles was quick and uneventful. We arrived about 15 minutes early, which gave us a little more time to visit the United Polaris Club. We walked from gate D13 to gate C17, only three gates from our departure gate. We scanned our boarding passes and went into the Polaris Club, a premier lounge for United passengers. What a zoo! There were people everywhere! We walked the entire club and found exactly zero available seats. The bar was two-deep. Yikes!

We finally found a small table in the dining room. They actually offer table food service here. We didn't have time for that with only an hour between flights. We grabbed some buffet food and a couple of Coke Zeros and had a snack.

This seems to be the new normal - Business and First Class lounges completely packed with people. With many airlines offering day passes and access if you have their credit card, they simply don't have the capacity to handle all those folks plus the ones who actually have Business or First Class tickets. Oh well, First World problems, right?

In about 20 minutes, we will be boarding. Since I won't have internet during the flight, I will wrap up this entry here, in the Washington Dulles United Polaris Lounge. Overnight, we'll fly to Brussels, Belgium, lay over for about three hours, and then fly to Nairobi. I expect tomorrow's blog will be short, as we will arrive at the hotel around 10 pm local time, seven hours ahead of the U.S. East Coast.

Think happy thoughts as we put more air miles behind us.