Ben's Air Blog

My African Safari took place at Balule Nature Reserve, a private game reserve about 270 miles northeast of Johannesburg (a six-hour shuttle van ride away).  Balule’s border with Kruger National Park is unfenced, which allows animals to move freely in between the lands.  The advantage of taking a safari at a private reserve is they have the ability to take vehicles off road straight to the animals, whereas at Kruger, everyone must stay on the road.

This is my last update on the road as I will be flying back home tomorrow morning.  Spending six-weeks on the road overseas is tiring; I am ready to sleep in my own bed and go back to work to resume normalcy in my life.

With only one country and one week remaining,  my trip around the world is almost complete.  I am only four time zones away from home!

Whenever one goes on a safari, the goal is to see the "big five", named for the five most difficult and dangerous games to hunt in Africa.

If you are a geography buff, then you will find the Bosphorus Strait fascinating as did I.

My trip is now more than half way over and the first countries are a distant memory (I was in Australia?).

If there was a place (so far on this trip, anyway) where I wished I could have shared it with someone, Phuket, Thailand would have been it.

I logged my first Airbus A380 double-decker super-jumbo a few days ago. It was only a short three-hour flight, across the ditch (as they say), from Auckland (AKL) to Sydney (SYD) on board Emirates . Since I paid for this segment of the trip - I flew in Economy Class on the lower level. I will get a proper introduction to the Super Bus later this trip when I fly on Thai's A380 in Business Class (on the upper level of course) on a long overnight flight from Bangkok to Paris.

I arrived at the Middle of Middle Earth Airport.

The first leg of my trip around the world is complete. As planned, Australia was a spotting plus visits with friends and relative stop.