After bidding another fond farewell to friends and family we set off to the airport. Many thanks once again have to go to my father Paul for taking us. Thanks also to my little bro Adam for keeping us company, even though he was a bit surprised when he realised we weren't travelling from Stansted. I hope the extra few hours in the car weren't too bad!
The journey to the airport was the only normal part of what has turned out to be a bit of an adventure in itself. On arrival at the terminal we were met by some Virgin Atlantic staff telling us that they had oversold the flight and were looking to get 15 passengers to re-route via Dubai for some compensation. Not being in any great hurry we were interested, but obviously concerned for what this would mean regarding our bicycles. After assurances that our bikes would be checked all the way through to Nairobi and that transferring to a different carrier (Emirates) would not be a problem (remember this), we accepted the too good to turn down offer of free return tickets to anywhere in the world, bookable within 18 months. An added bonus was that we were also upgraded to premium economy on the Virgin flight!
Everything was going well, the flight in the bigger more comfortable seats was great and we arrived in Dubai in good spirits. With only a few hours until our next flight left, we headed to the Emirates desk to get our boarding passes. Finding the desk was a bit of a mission on its own but we eventually found it and happily went up to get our passes. From then on it all went a bit wrong. Emirates informed us that we had too much baggage and we would have to pay or take it up with Virgin Atlantic. Having been given the instructions to find Virgin's desk and be back at the Emirates desk to collect our passes within an hour, we hurried back through the airport.
Half an hour of our valuable time was wasted at a airport desk waiting for a phone call that never came, so with even less time we located the Virgin gate and finally got to speak to the duty manager. He was very apologetic saying that he had spoken to Emirates but they wouldn't budge. He told us that the only real option was to pay the excess and then claim it back from the Virgin office in Nairobi. We weren't very sure about this, but with time running out and a promise that our case would be emailed through to Nairobi, we rushed back to the Emirates desk. $350 later and we had our boarding passes and just made it to the gate with not much time to spare.
Our flight on Emirates was a relatively short 4.5 hours, but from our experience during the flight I would say that despite their excellent reputation we were not that impressed. The food was terrible and it was a very tired looking plane. Still we were on it and heading in the right direction.
We arrived on schedule in Nairobi and quickly got through immigration. Things were going well, it's just a shame that our bikes that we had paid extra money to ensure were on the plane didn't arrive!The staff at the Emirates baggage desk told us that they were arriving on the next flight and we could come back and pick them up. We insisted that they could deliver them to us and having filled in all the paperwork, we had no choice but to leave the airport. To add insult to injury the Virgin office was closed so we couldn't even claim back our costs! We can only hope that it all gets sorted in the next few days. Fortunately time is not something we are particularly short of.
Our journey from the airport to our camp-site was accompanied by torrential rain, which seemed strangely fitting to the day we had had. Pitching a tent when we got to the site was going to be a challenging and somewhat damp experience.
Wildebeest camp seems pretty good and we managed to get pitched despite the weather. A few beers and a nice meal ended a tiring and probably more stressful day than we needed. Still we made it to Kenya and with any luck so will the bikes, or it's going to be the world's shortest cycling tour!
Wow, that's some start to your trip! Reminds me of the time I first went to Halley and BA had overbooked our flights to Cape Town and myself and one other person I was working with were bumped off the flight. We were then sent on a wild goose chase around Heathrow from BA to Virgin to get their flight, BA promised they would call through to Virgin and ask them to keep the gate open for us............. hmmmm, they never called through, we arrived 2 minutes after Virgin closed their gates and they would not let us through. Back to BA (30 min jaunt from T5 to T3 and back again.....). Eventually BA put us up in an Ibis hotel just outside of the airport (horrible!!!) and told us to come back the next day. It didn't seem to bother them that we were part of a large group all travelling to Cape Town to meet a ship that was due to set sail the following day to Antarctica..... luckily for us the ship was delayed leaving anyway (so we weren't the ones holding it up!) but rather than having a nice relaxing day in Cape Town we ended up arriving in the morning, doing all our customs stuff and then getting on the ship and going..... Wasn't my ideal way to start the trip but it's made for a good story! I will never fly BA again through choice!
ReplyDeleteI hope you guys have a fab time, can't wait to read some more.
Love Karen x x x