I took a Rick Steves bag to Central Europe this past September because it converted from a backpack into a shoulder bag – a nice feature when you are going to museums and places that don’t let you wear a backpack. But in actuality I used this feature almost never. It spent the majority of the trip as a backpack as it was much more comfortable carried that way than as a shoulder bag, especially when the laptop was on board. And as a backpack I give it at best a grade C for comfort (proof once again that when something tries to be too many things it generally doesn’t excel at any of them) as it had no back padding and the shoulder straps didn’t have much padding either . Once back home I reverted to the Osprey bag I’ve been using for about a year but after taking it to Las Vegas for CES and looking at the backpacks in the Thule booth, I came home and pulled my Thule bag out of the closet and loaded it up. It feels a lot sturdier than the Osprey fabric-wise and is water resistant, which the Osprey most definitely was NOT. Its strap setup is quite nice – not female-specific but I think that’s kind of over-rated (at least it is for me). The weather resistance and sturdy fabric will, I bet, be pretty important in Africa. I can’t for the life of me remember why I bailed on the Thule backpack in the first place – it’s the one I was using before I got the Osprey. I suspect (knowing me) I saw a picture of the Osprey on a website and fell in (fleeting) love.
Meanwhile, we are continuing to look at different African tours. I think we’ve narrowed things down to Kenya (versus Tanzania) and Jan or Feb have become our first choice months. While the migration sounds like an amazing sight, we have been reading that it also is the most crowded time of year, with tourist trucks and vans backed up – basically any LA freeway at rush hour, in Africa. Jan and Feb are a bit wetter than some months so may be a bit buggier but on the other hand, there are a lot of babies getting born. Really, from what we’ve read, there is no bad month – so we’re opting to dodge crowds and risk some rain.
We have also discovered two new tour companies that are now our front runner choices: Gamewatchers Safaris and Spurwing Travel. Both companies have tours in Kenya and as far as costs are in the middle of the African safari price range road – $3500-$4500 per person for an 8-10 day trip. We were thinking it would be really neat to stay at Giraffe Manor either at the start or the end of the safari, but the per night cost ($1600+) is giving us second thoughts. Put in perspective, one night there could pay for our entire roundtrip flight! So we’ll see. We watched Out of Africa a few weeks ago and if we had any doubts about wanting to go on this trip, they evaporated after watching that movie. I figure we can devote another month to research before we need to get serious and start booking stuff.
Getting excited!