Africa Cruise Travel

Greetings, again, everyone! Welcome back!

We are now heading east to take a cruise around Africa on the Seabourn Sojourn!

For those who closely watched our World Cruise last year you will recall we were supposed to see Africa then, but Asia and Africa shut down due to COVID-19, so we turned back after Tahiti. Joy and I are trying to fill in the gaps of that failed World Cruise.

This is the Seabourn Sojourn. It is another small ship – we’re really liking these ships! She holds about 450 passengers, so she is smaller than the Oceania Insignia, and larger than the Silversea Silver Cloud.

Our Itinerary starts in Victoria, Seychelles, goes west to Africa. starting in Tanzania (Kenya has been cancelled), then south to South Africa and around the cape, then north to Namibia, Benin, Ghana, Togo, The Gambia, and Senegal. We will then head west to the Cape Verde Islands and the Canary Islands before returning to Morocco and wrap up in Barcelona, Spain. As of this writing the map below is accurate except for Mombasa, Kenya.

We begin this journey on Friday, April 7th, with a chauffeured ride to the Orlando Airport. This is a nice benefit of flying in business class on Emirates! Adam, our driver, is a little scary behind the wheel! He makes a left turn onto the I-95 ramp from the straight through lane, pissing off the pickup truck driver he tried to jump ahead of. Adam then drives like a madman along the Beechline. I’m glad I can’t see the speedometer!

Finally we arrive in one piece at the Orlando International Airport – we go to the new Terminal C for the first time to catch our Emirates flight. We’ve never flown Emirates before and are looking forward to this! This new terminal is wide open and clean, and it almost appears empty!

Our flight departs at 9 PM. 14 hours later we arrive in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, at 5:30 PM the next day. We have semi-private cubicles on the flight!

Even though we had lay flat seats in business class we couldn’t sleep – the family behind us had a screaming boy who burst out sobbing every several minutes! Just when we started falling asleep he would burst out again. Grrrr…. But the plane has starlight ceilings, so the nighttime ambiance on the flight is pleasant!

Arrival at Dubai is pretty much on time, but Saturday is shot! We have a 7-hour layover to our flight to the Seychelles. We had booked a room in the Dubai International Hotel, which is in the airport and inside airport security, so we head in search of that! We do need to go through another airport security, but they only cared about the metal detectors and not the bottles of water we had with us!

We check in to the hotel with a wakeup call to make sure we get to our 2:15 AM flight. Again, neither of us sleep for various reasons, but it is nice to have a chance to grab a shower and change clothes!

Soon we head out to the gate for our Seychelles flight. The airport is relatively quiet! Joy asks, “Is that a Hard Rock?” Yes, right next to our gate! Nice! I get my Dubai souvenier – two T-shirts!

The flight to the Seychelles goes without incident – the best kind of flight! A little before 6 AM we cross the equator – welcome to the Southern Hemisphere!  We arrive in the Seychelles at 6:30 AM, just a little after sunrise.

A wonderful feature Emirates offers is the ability to watch the aircraft’s cameras on the seat screen! I watch the landing in the Seychelles!

We offload using stairs – no jetways at this airport. This Boeing 777 offloads at three of the four doors!

We arrive at our hotel, Eden Bleu, well before the 2 PM check-in time. Surprise! 8 AM is a little bit before 2 PM, right? The receptionist works to get a room for us early. Meanwhile, we hang out. Joy checks out the island map!

Our room has a wonderful view of the harbor and the mountains!  Small rainstorms sweep through a couple of times.

It is hot and humid! Too hot for us to take the walk we thought we’d take. So we take advantage of the cool air-conditioned room to catch up on the sleep we’ve been missing! We venture out in the evening for a nice dinner at the Maharaja Indian restaurant nearby.

The next morning we are whisked to the “New Port” (as opposed to the Old Port) and board the Seabourn Sojourn! No fanfare. Small tents. We begin our Africa journey!

Our neighbor from the World Cruise, Steve Selka, is waiting on board to greet us!

Tomorrow we will be in Praslin, Seychelles.