Game changers for travel! Couldn’t be better holiday presents! Two new drugs one of which is exceptionally effective treating Covid. U.S. ends restrictions on southern Africa!
I’ve scheduled EWT’s first public safari that I’ll guide for June! I think that’s the first moment that international travel to Africa will be manageable.
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Les Fisher has died. He was 100 years old, the former director of the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago.
Les was a very special friend and a very important mentor. My businesses matured in a dog-eat-dog world of the 1970s and 1980s. With sadness I have to honestly say that many zoo directors back then and many of their hand-picked volunteers organizing the group travel were horribly corrupt. I know. I pulled out wads of cash to get their business.
Les made me realize that wasn’t the standard. Worse than my world, he worked in the world of very corrupt Chicago politics. He didn’t change. Chicago politics changed because of people like him.
Les and I traveled together to Africa almost 30 times. We were among the first to see the mountain gorillas. We remain among a handful at most of travelers to explore Kivu Province in The Congo.
But it wasn’t just Africa! We were among the precious view travelers to ever get into Assam. We were among the very first to travel the Sepik River in New Guinea. We visited Manu in Brazil before it was Manu.
Many of these were first-time trips for the entire travel industry! There was real, enormous risk traveling to many of these places when we did. He insisted I ferret out these wild opportunities. So after I did my research I’d sit in his office and listen to the characteristically mild din of his sing-song voice that he wouldn’t go unless I did. I wonder if I would ever have gone if he hadn’t.
So beneath the mild veneer that so many people praise was a rigorous explorer, a risk-taker that inspired me.
But whether planning a trip or secreting in a baby gorilla against all the rules, he was a man of such impeccable morals it changed my behaviors forever for the so much better. The world isn’t as dark as I once thought.
I will never stop thinking of him.
If like me you have serious hope that Omicron (and fingers crossed, the whole pandemic) might be gone by mid-year then you might want to join me as I continue chasing the herds in Tanzania this June!
My November “Recky” turned out to be a “Wrecky!” We slipped into sub-Saharan Africa at just the right moment, early November. Days after we started a fabulous safari Omicron hit the headlines and literally days after we headed home new regulations by our CDC would have made coming home much more difficult than it was.
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Travelers squeezing hope out of several reports from South Africa that the Omicron variant declines as fast as it surges need to calm down.
Being cautious about this does not mean I don’t believe the reports. I do. This morning DMC News’ excellent summary highlighting South African scientists’ excellent field studies absolutely shows me that Omicron might be insignificant in South Africa in as few as a couple months. Why, then, the caution?
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How about if each of you – especially if you’re strangers to me – each send me $100 for the best dinner you’ve ever had in your life. We’ll do it in about a year. Promise it will be the most memorable meal of your life!
Any takers?
There’s a reason that travel purchases aren’t capitalistic. There’s no enforceable contract between the consumer and the provider of the service. In a sense it’s just hype. You can’t try it on. You can’t return it when it arrives broken. There’s no warranty other than ebullient promises.
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Whether, when, how and where to travel is more and more confusing.
You would think that someone like myself, having just returned from almost a month in Tanzania, would have some sage advice for you. Our trip to an “adventure” destination – one clearly in the throes of Covid – went off without a hitch. There were new hurdles to overcome that we all managed quite well. So what’s the problem?
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The BBC just published findings from thousands of British Covid cases of which 581 were the confirmed Omicron variant. The preliminary conclusion is that even those who are fully vaccinated with a booster have a 1 in 4 chance of getting sick from Omicron. How sick? The BBC is careful to say this won’t begin to be known until next week and hastened to add that the British Health Minister believes it will be “mild” sickness.
What is “mild?” Should you go on your trip?
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If Boris Johnson hadn’t closed down his country and if scientists were organized well enough to give us a quick determination that the disease caused by Omicron is – as claimed by the South African Chief Medical Officer – mild, and/or that existing vaccines offer as much or better protection against Omicron than the flu vaccine does for the flu… the world would be in a much better place, today.
Whether Johnson’s policies and all those who followed him were well thought-out or reactionary doesn’t matter anymore. The die is cast. This latest blow to tourism in sub-Saharan Africa could be lethal. It’s spreading far beyond tourism. The influential Sowetan-Live news published, “Travel bans smack of colonialism.” The war’s begun.
WHO’s exhausted arguing that Omicron can’t be stopped by travel bans which do however impede research and implementation of global initiatives to stem the virus. The organization concluded a special meeting yesterday begging western nations to open their borders and share more vaccines.
This is no longer just an epidemiological debate. It’s political, economic and cultural.
Think of all the American governors who refused to shut down, to issue mandates or even publish statistics. The “Trump Front.” And the Trump Front’s base is rural, poor and feels disenfranchised from the America we know and love. The Front becomes most vociferous and dynamic where the demographics of the under-privileged meet the urban Mar-A-Lagos. There, the victimized poorest and the criminal richest don’t collide but collude.
Excluding politicians, hedge-funders and other evil exploiters, the common denominator between Mar-A-Lago and The Front is ignorance and the fear that creates when something new and threatening emerges like Omicron. Self-interest becomes muddled when you don’t know what to do. That’s the worst terror for the selfish.
So whether you’re Ted Cruz fleeing to the Caribbean or Donald Trump admitting he obstructed justice, or any of the nameless 600 being hunted down for storming the Capitol on January 6, you’re scared and … reacting.
Like Boris Johnson and the dozens of countries that followed that closed their “borders” to a virus that sneaks through steel mesh. The ramifications weren’t thought out before the bridge was lifted from the moat: Jail for the insurgents. Loss for the politician. Disharmony for the world. The perfect cesspool for a couple more variants to form. (Is war with Russia part of this?)
“Hate for Africa is unscientific, mindless” writes another correspondent in the Sowetan.
”Donald Trump called Africa a ‘shit hole’… Western nations have treated Africa with total and utter disrespect. From monumental human rights violations …to the ruthless exploitation of Africa’s mineral wealth, these racist policies continue… Today, Southern Africa is being ruthlessly punished for discovering and alerting the world for identifying a new variant.”
There is one earth and the virus attacked earth, not Brooklyn, not Torres del Paine, not Stellenbosch. As it divides and conquers us it heaves us into raw and hurtful divisions and those with either nothing to lose or the most to lose begin to fight to the death.
“Young children [under 5 years old] being admitted [to hospitals] have parents who are not vaccinated.”
Statements today from South African public health officials paint a bleak picture of Omicron, a devil’s agent if ever there were one. “Tough days lay ahead of us,” Health Minister Joe Phaahla told the Daily Maverick.
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Of Kayak’s 226 countries it provides travel service to, only 6 are open to travelers without restrictions. 52 are closed entirely, sometimes even to citizens trying to return. That leaves 168 which you can visit provided that you are fully vaccinated, have a negative PCR test and are willing to quarantine on arrival for various lengths of time.
Trouble is to get to some of those 168 restrictive countries, you normally fly through one of the 52 (like Japan) that you can’t, now. So the practical number of countries that you can visit is probably less than 80, and almost all of them require quarantine on arrival.
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2-3 more weeks before we know how Omicron effects upcoming travel. The demographics of Omicron patients are right now being compiled: age, are they vaccinated and how many times and with which vaccine, are they a breakthrough? Laboratories around the world are mixing their serum with the antibodies current vaccines produce. What happens? One, two, a hundred experiments aren’t enough. 2-3 more weeks.
America is a horrible place to try to figure this all out. We’re either alarmists or aggressive reactionaries to alarm. But there are authorities and sources that if we’ll just be patient enough will give us good answers. 2-3 more weeks.
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Seven of us returned from 3-4 weeks in Tanzania on Thanksgiving Day. This is a report of the formalities required with regards to Covid. This is a very small sample of how people travel to and from Tanzania, but every little bit helps.
Like all unexpected obstacles to travel, it’s usually a lot easier than presumed. I often refer to the time in 1970 when New Orleans announced the first metal detector for departing passengers. For a year no one flew through New Orleans. Today it’s second nature to us all.
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This is not a recommendation that you should not mask. But the personal experience that seven of us just completed in Tanzania has a remarkable affirmation from … the travel insurance industry. That experience does not comport with many of the recommendations about masking.
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The rains start north to south, and we traveled north to south and always seemed to be just a day or two ahead of the rains. It was so dry and dusty in Tarangire when we got there Monday that the interior of my room was 105F and my hands were dry after washing my face in the sink before I could get to the towel rack.
We followed the Tarangire sand river and found lots of elephant but little else. At least the tse-tse were down in such conditions. Tuesday morning our dawn drive headed to the Silale Swamp and I swear that every animal in Tarangire was there.
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There are so many difficulties with protecting African wilderness but the biggest single one is elephants. Sunday gave me a surprising new insight.
Crushed into a smaller and smaller habitat between the sheering cliffs of the Great Rift Valley and the increasing girth of Lake Manyara, I expected the few remaining overly docile ele of the national park to be of little interest. How wrong I was!
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