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Dvol's South Africa / Dubai TR

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dvol:
A few months ago I met a sales rep from a South African safari tour company who also did kosher safaris and the idea of a kosher safari stayed stuck in my head. Fast forward a few weeks and my husband and I decided that we would do a South Africa trip in August to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary.

I sent an email to the tour company with the amount of time I wanted to spend there (6-7 days), and my dates (anytime in August). I knew absolutely nothing about SA, had never been and knew only 1 person that had visited there. The tour company was fantastic in helping me plan this trip and guided me every step of the way and answered all of my many, many questions. Could this trip have cost me less if I booked everything myself (in which case I could have used points for some of it)? Yes, although without points I don’t think the savings would have been too significant. Would I book it through the tour company again and/or recommend others to do so? Definitely. They took care of everything from the domestic flights in SA, to the tour guides, to the kosher food and more. Due to certain circumstances we were able to splurge on this vacation a bit and so booking this way was completely worth it for us, but to each their own.

After I got a few prospective dates from the tour company I had to see which dates would work best with flights that I could find since I did want to book that solely with points. Due to my husband’s work we could not be gone for more than 1 Monday and because we were leaving 2 kids behind we didn’t want to be away more than 1 Shabbos or too many days in general. I searched Alaska for availability in F on Emirates and found availability JFK-DXB-CPT on August 9. I transferred 185K SPG points (in 3 increments) to JAL since 115k JAL points were needed per person. I did the first transfer on a Monday and by Friday morning all 3 transfers showed up in my JAL account. There was enough availability on Alaska that I wasn’t worried it would disappear in those few days, and worst case I would book alternate dates since I hadn’t confirmed the rest of my trip yet. For the return I was not seeing anything on Alaska for Emirates in First on any of my desired return dates. Being that one-way fares on EK in F from SA were pretty decent I ended up booking my return with Amex points and getting 50% back (this was in May). I booked a flight leaving Johannesburg on Wednesday evening August 17 with an 18.5 hour layover in Dubai and arriving back to JFK Friday at 9AM.

All pictures were taken by my iPhone 7 and I’ll be the first to say they are probably awful. My husband did take his GoPro Hero 5 (with Karma grip) but we haven’t even looked at all the hours of footage and pictures on there yet.

JFK-DXB-CPT

Since my departure was booked with JAL miles we were not eligible for the chauffeur pickup. We got to the airport about 2.5 hours before our flight time (which was 11:20AM), checked in at the dedicated First desk and headed straight to the Emirates lounge.



While it was a nice lounge it wasn’t extraordinary but we did love the fact that we boarded directly from the lounge. This was our first flight on Emirates and what an experience. We boarded and were immediately greeted by the FAs and shown how everything worked and given pajamas and Bulgari amenity kit:



 

We had seats 3E and 3F:



We were immediately offered drinks, snacks, newspapers, magazines and of course champagne and the FAs came through with Arabic coffee and dates. The purser also came by to introduce himself.
There was only 1 more passenger in F on this flight and so after takeoff we had them make up the window seats in row 3 on either side of us as beds and kept the 2 in the middle as seats.



I have of course seen countless photos and reviews of EK F but nothing comes close to the real deal. It was an amazing experience and was almost like a trip of its own.
Being that this was the A380 equipped with showers, we scheduled our showers for 1.5 hours before landing. Since there are 2 we were able to schedule them for the same time and the FA made sure with us that she had our permission to wake us then if we were sleeping.
We were floored by the size and elegance of the bathroom and it was a real treat and unlike any other airplane bathroom I’ve seen before:



And of course, there’s nothing like a shower at 35,000 feet:



The bar/snack area for first class:



 

The bar for business and first located behind business class:





While we ordered kosher meals we didn’t end up asking for it as we had brought along sandwiches and that was good enough for us.
Neither of us could sleep much between the excitement and it being in middle of the day for us but the 11+ hours flew by (pun intended :P) and before we knew it we were landing in Dubai. Our connection time was just under 3 hours (They did have a 1 hour connection but I could only find business availability on that flight). We headed straight to the first class lounge which was truly impressive and MASSIVE. It stretches the entire length of the terminal and was easy to get lost in. We scheduled our complimentary 15 minute massages and had some coffee in the lounge while we waited. Besides the numerous bars and snack spreads in the lounge there is a complimentary restaurant inside as well as a pretty large smoking area:



Unfortunately we could not board directly from the lounge for our flight to Cape Town so after a while we made our way down to the gate. They shuttled all passengers to the plane (a surprisingly long almost 10 minute ride) and they had separate shuttle buses for each cabin. While I didn’t get to see the economy or business shuttles these were the seats on the First class shuttle:



Our 777 waiting to take us to Cape Town: (I was scolded for taking photos)



This was an older 777 and while the seats themselves were identical to those on the A380, the screen was smaller and not a touch-screen and the remotes were much more outdated. The bathrooms were regular airplane bathrooms and there was no star lighting on the ceilings. There were only 8 seats in first class and besides for 1 empty seat, all were taken. While we were originally seated in 1E and 1F in the middle, my TV wasn’t working so I was moved to the only open seat available which was 1A. This was fine since by that point we were exhausted and slept through most of the (pretty bumpy) flight.

Next up: 3 Days in Cape Town

@Yehuda:
Nice start! Great writing style and pics. That flight looks like quite the experience.

Joe4007:
Great start! Excited for the next segment.

Z56:
excellent report! waiting for the next part

maxmiles:
Great TR so far! My brother did a Kosher Safari in December, he said it was the most amazing experience!

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