I just returned Saturday (19 Jan 2008) from Mali. It was a really interesting, eventful, stressful, and ultimately, fun trip.
I left San Francisco on January 4th. It was pouring down rain here. There was talk about Tahoe expecting 10 feet of snow over the weekend (I'm told they actually got 11). I was really worried about getting out of SF. I tracked the plane coming into SFO that would become my plane leaving via Google Earth. For those of you who haven't seen it yet, FBOWeb is a cool service that allows you to track flights in Google Earth. I was at my office, getting ready to leave for the airport, when I realized I had left my anti-malaria drugs back at home. At first I reserved a Zipcar so I could drive home to pick them up, but then I didn't have my Zipcar card with me, having taken it out of my wallet since I was going to be in Africa. I ended up grabbing a taxi, running home, and grabbing the pills. During the drive to my house, the radio said that BART was closed down due to a train hitting a tree so I took the taxi all the way to the airport.
One of my rituals of leaving San Francisco is to stop at the sushi bar in SFO for lunch before my flight. I met up with Henry there, who was coming into town for a wedding and we had a nice lunch. I highly recommend the sushi bar at SFO in the international terminal. It's good sushi, particularly when you're leaving for a landlocked African country with bland food (more on that later).
After lunch I checked in with Virgin Atlantic for the first leg of my trip. I originally was going to take this trip with my (now ex-) girlfriend, Monica. She decided not to come, so I used the frequent miles that were going to her ticket to upgrade myself to business class. For Virgin Atlantic this meant "Upper Class," which is quite the posh experience. I was looking forward to the Upper Class experience. Upon check-in I was given an invitation to the Upper Class Lounge, which is a nice little lounge on the 5th floor of the SFO international terminal. They have a little bar along with a kitchen that serves a small menu of snacks. After a drink and a desert I picked up a copy of the Financial Times and waited for my flight.
One thing I should take a moment to comment on: Continental has a totally obnoxious reservations system for reward travel. It's horribly complicated, it doesn't show all the flights you can choose, it randomly will show a flight one day, and the next day, say it doesn't exist. It was really frustrating to make my reservations. I had wanted to fly Virgin Atlantic both to and from Africa, but I was told several times that there were no seats available on the return flight. I learned, just before leaving, and too late to change anything, that there were seats, everyone else just used the wrong flight number to look up the flight. Add this to the list of stupid and frustrating things with Continental reward reservations.
The flight from SFO to London was uneventful. I was unable to sleep despite having the lay flat bed. I think it's just hard to go to sleep at 6pm (as your body thinks). I've never really had any success in going to bed on eastern bound flights. I spent a lot of time thinking about luxury vs. money and my attitude about it, but that's a topic for a post on it's own.
Once I got to London I met up with a friend-of-a-friend who offered me a couch to crash on. We spent the afternoon cruising around London, had some awful Indian food and then I went out for a drink with a girl I met two days before I left on OkCupid. Anna and I had a great intellectual conversation over drinks in a pub and I eventually had to go find that couch. I really enjoyed London. I need to get back there to spend some more time in "Mirror World".
I left London Sunday morning, stopped in Paris for a few hours where nothing really interesting happened and then got on a flight for Bamako, Mali. I got into Bamako Sunday evening and met my Mom and brother at the airport. Then the real travel began. (continued in part 2)
