As friends and family know, I typically take one "big" trip a year right around my birthday. With it usually being the week of Labor Day, it's an efficient way to take a week off and only have to use four days of vacation. On occasion, I decide to do things differently. This year is one of them.
I had been tossing ideas around in my head for a few months now as to how I was going to celebrate my 45th birthday this year. Since my bucket list contains only one item, to hit a century (or visiting 100 countries), I was trying how to add a few more all in one shot. With the business travel to Germany now that I work for a German company, I've been able to add European countries pretty easily. However, there's one thing that's been stuck in my craw and that was the fact that I still hadn't been anywhere in Africa.
Therefore, a trip to Africa was on my mind. The problem was that it was difficult to decide where to go since Africa's so large and diverse. I had thought that maybe I'd do South Africa since it seemed like an easy entry point to the continent (like I felt that Singapore was for Asia) but really couldn't get up the nerve to sit down and plan anything.
That all changed a few weeks ago when I got a Tweet that there was a Groupon for a trip to South Africa. Now, I had recently removed Groupon from my phone because it seemed everytime I got a notification, my other phone apps froze up. In addition, I hadn't bought a Groupon in the year that I had the app.
Therefore, I had to go to the website to review the Groupon. I couldn't believe what I saw. It was a Groupon for a trip through South African Airways Vacations for a 10 day, 7 night trip in South Africa. I looked through the details a little further since a lot of these trips are for pairs and not singles. Lo and behold, it appeared that I struck gold. Not only was it available for single, the discount was more than a quarter off!
I spent the next few days hemming and hawing about whether to buy the trip or not. I asked a few questions about the trip through Groupon and got interesting answers back. I also posted on Facebook about the possibility and got a lot of people telling me that I should just go for it. My big deal was that it was a lot of money for a vacation. While I like to travel in style, I'm frugal about it. I don't like overpaying for things. However, I was also nervous about trying to independently arrange a trip in Africa since I don't have a lot of knowledge about the continent nor do I know many people that do.
I thought I was going to have to rush to make a decision since Groupons have a deadline to purchase but was given a reprieve when they extended the deadline. This gave me a weekend to think about it and ask my boss if I could take the time off when he returned to the office on Monday. Actually, I lost pretty much the entire weekend looking at information about South Africa and the remainder of the continent. This was important as I had decided to stay an extra week after the package was over. I was already going to be down there so there was no reason not to.
When I saw my boss on that Monday, I asked him about taking two weeks of vacation and was told it wasn't a big deal and that he'd cover for me. I'm in charge of a large construction project and at that point all we'll be doing is site and structural work so I shouldn't be missed. Therefore, all I had to do was pull the trigger on the Groupon and book the trip. In the back of my mind, I couldn't let go of how much it was going to cost. However, once I realized that it would be relatively hassle free (since I rarely have hassle free travel) and that most of the details for the first week would be arranged, I decided to make the plunge and book the trip.
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