Follow Me! My Itinerary to S. Africa and Mauritius...

Follow Me! My Itinerary to S. Africa and Mauritius Hello, I'm Tania and if you're a stranger to me, let me tell you, I love to travel. Luckily, I have been fortunate enough to also have a boyfriend that shares the same excitement for travel as I do. Having said that, it has always been our dream to go to Africa. We've fantasized about seeing it's countryside, going on a safari and mingling with the locals plenty of times. So when the time and money seemed right we jumped on the chance to follow our dreams and check off some boxes on our bucket list. It was such a great vacation for us. After our trip a lightbulb went off and I got to thinking about how many people often get overwhelmed with thoughts of planning such a trip. So I decided to share our slightly over two-week travel itinerary for those to follow that may find themselves in such a dilemma.

I live in Louisville, KY so that's where our journey began. We took a simple flight from Louisville, KY (SDF) to Washington, DC's Dulles Airport (IAD). From there we began our long awaited (and dreaded) two part journey from Washington, DC to Johannesburg, South Africa, which would last us a total of a whopping 19 hours or so combined. If you're curious, yes, we could have done a straight flight from Louisville to Johannesburg but for our own reasons we split up the first part of our flight.

Boy and I'll tell ya, there were such mixed feelings about the flight. We were excited about the journey that lay ahead but worried the flight would consume our soul with boredom. After all was said and done, it wasn't too bad. It was our first long flight and though we lingered through the air hour upon hour, we found things to keep ourselves busy with. We brought books, music and our most treasured outlet, a crossword puzzle book! But the best counter against our boredom was the fact that our flight enabled us to watch free new and old movies that we may have missed back home.

More than likely your flight will also be through South African Airways. I am unsure if all flights are different but our flight took us from Washington, DC. (IAD) then to Dakar (DKR) to JohannesburgO.R. Tambo International (JNB). A stop in Dakar's airport is required in order to refuel. Hey anything to avoid falling out of the sky is fine by me. Other than that to add to the greatness of the flight the food was actually pretty great. We received two meals on the flight. Flight and a movie? Not too bad.

We we're really impressed with our flight on South African Airways.

Also, South African Airways asks that you check-in at least 3 hours up until 24 hours before your flight. The earliest you do this, the better off you'll be. We decided to check in 24 hours before our flight as well as change our seats while we were at it. Best. Decision. Ever. Because they had us placed on the very back row right near the little girl's and little boy's room. Not cool. So it is wise for you to do the same if you didn't already have your seats picked out during your ticket purchasing.

Someone's gotta be near the restrooms. Gotta make sure it's not you! *Side Note: Normally a shot is required to immune against yellow fever and hepatitis A but luckily we didn't need it because we didn't have to get off the plane for its refueling. Awesome! Money saved. **Side Note: In the event that the first leg of your flight to Johannesburg was like ours and not a direct flight to Dakar, what we did to avoid rushing between picking up our luggage in Washington and rushing to check them back in, was simple. When we left Louisville we asked for our luggage to go straight to Johannesburg as we only had an hour between landing and getting to our gate. This was successfully done because our flight through United Airlines is in the Star Alliance network with South African Airways.