Official change of plans

In December, we had booked our flight out of Tanzania for March 21st, with a destination of Dusseldorf, Germany. We had some faint hope of possibly being able to pick up our new motorhome at that time. Now, with only four weeks to go before our scheduled flight, we highly doubt that the entrance restrictions to Germany will be lifted by that time.

Our flight with KLM was fully flexible, with no change fees. So the only extra would be whatever the fare difference was to fly somewhere else. 

I've mentioned in previous posts of our desire to visit Albania. We actually might have originally gone there instead of Tanzania, but Albania is fairly cool in January. Anyhow, by mid March Albania will be very pleasant.

So yesterday, I spent way more time than it should have taken getting our flights changed.

The problem was that KLM's website would not accept the change. There is a glitch somewhere, and the only destination changes it would allow were within Germany! However, the flight routing I wanted definitely showed up when I searched for a new flight.

KLM's facebook based customer support was no help. They said that the flight routing I wanted didn't even exist. They later told me that they only had access to fares based on the KLM Dutch website, and that fares on the KLM Canadian website could be different. 

Eventually, I had them fully cancel my original booking and process a credit voucher. I then booked a brand new flight and used the credit vouchers as partial payment. The flight booked perfectly and we have confirmed tickets.

So now, we will be leaving Tanzania on March 18th. Flying from Dar es Salaam to Amsterdam, connecting to Rome, and connecting to Tirana, Albania.

North to Amsterdam, then backtracking to Rome, then across to Tirana.

Our original flights to Dusseldorf had cost $469 CAD per person, but the ones to Tirana were $95 CAD more, so a total of $564 CAD ($447 USD) each for the one way trip.

I have already booked us a full month car rental for €210 ($321 CAD, $255 USD), with an option to extend it as I would expect we will be there for more than a month. Now, we will have three months from March 19th to decide our next move.

When we depart Dar es Salaam on March 18th, we have to get a PCR test done 72 hours before. The National Health Laboratories in Dar es Salaam do them for $100 USD each, with results in 24 hours then at the airport we have to have a rapid test done 4 hours before the flight and it costs $25 USD.

I had mentioned that we wouldn't be returning to Canada by air while that ridiculous overpriced mandatory hotel stay is in place. However, the loophole is that you can still cross the land border from the U.S. into Canada and not have to do the hotel thing. So we could conceivably fly into Washington DC and connect onto a United flight to Ogdensburg, New York and simply walk across the border. Our daughter might be able to drop off a car for us to hop into and we could drive directly to Ruth's dad's house to do the 14 day quarantine. So, you never know. We might still make it to Canada in May!

Other than the internet research, yesterday was mostly a day of rest. We did go out for lunch, and then bought a few fruits and veggies at the market.

Lunch. I had the pepper steak and chips.

 It was pretty good!

Ruth ordered the beef stew, but they made a mistake and brought the beef curry. We didn't bother correcting them because it was good too.

Then we went through the Sunday market and picked up some fruits and veggies...

Cost was 5,500 shillings.

($3.00 CAD, $2.40 USD) for everything.

Looks like we've got a few rain days in the forecast for this week. But there are lots of books to read here, and we have some movies to watch!

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