Despite having booked this trip (a Dual Lodge Safari with Churchill Wild) about a year ago, it nevertheless snuck up on us. We have a lot going on, and have had a lot going on basically all year. We are moving abroad - theoretically - 3 weeks from today. We are set to move back to Puerto de la Cruz in Spain. We found a house all the way back in February, when Justin went out to look at houses and go to Carnaval. But the process of purchasing it and applying for our visa took longer than expected, as the order of operations (i.e., whether to purchase the house first and then apply, or apply first with the house in escrow and a contingency being the approval of our visa) got completely screwed up. [We think we can thank Russians fleeing Russia for this, but that’s a whole different story.] So we didn’t end up purchasing the house until the end of May, when we both went out to sign the paperwork, get our keys, and file the paperwork for the visas.
But then getting the visas themselves took longer than expected, even though it was supposed to be a 21 day process, i.e., by the end of June. We had hoped to move ourselves, Lola, and Avon, sometime before the end of September. United Airlines now has a direct flight from Newark to Tenerife, and with there being multiple daily flights from San Diego to Newark, this would have all been very straightforward. But some bureaucrat at some desk somewhere had other ideas. As June passed, July passed, and September got closer, we got more concerned that our plans were not going to come to fruition. The United flight is seasonal, and the last scheduled flight was 28 September. We knew we had this trip in the second half of October, so as it got closer to September, we had to make a decision of whether to put all our eggs in the basket of hoping we moved in September (only to then fly back to Canada from Spain), or to just put off the move until after this trip was over. We decided on the latter, as Lola was slowing down considerably and it didn’t seem right to fly her halfway around the world in her final days/weeks/months.
She passed away on 1 September, and we still hadn’t received our visas. We were beginning to think we had bought a house we’d never be able to live in. It was a very cruddy Labor Day weekend. But whilst at False Idol on that Labor Day Monday evening, we got a message from our friend Montse to call her about the visas. She had great news - they had been approved that day. So finally we could start making some firm plans for the fall. Justin went on a short trip to the Sierras to see Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and Sequoia National Parks, as he was embarrassed he’d never been despite living in California for almost 50 years. He also took one last trip to Pahoa to get everything ready to be empty for a while, and to (hopefully) find a renter.
We decided on a move date of November 6, as that was the easiest/best routing for Avon to fly. We ended up booking the same flights as he, such that if there were any issues, we’d be diverted to wherever he was. That meant that after this trip was over, we’d have 10 days before the move. Because of that, we’d already contacted our property manager about putting our place up for rent just before we went on the trip, so that he could show the property while it was empty for 12 days.
Putting all that together, and bringing things back to today, we were simultaneously trying to 1) get the house completely clean for showings, 2) pack as many things as we could for our move, but without making a mess, and 3) getting Avon and his things ready to spend 12 days at Crystal’s parents house. So again, we have a lot going on. It wasn’t the most efficient way to do things, but we were making the best of it.
At 11:00 we got lunch at Papas y Tacos. On the 6th we’d made a to-do list of the dozens of things we needed to accomplish before the move. Included on this list was a number of our favorite restaurants and bars in San Diego, which we wanted to visit one more time. For posterity’s sake, the list included (in no particular order):
By going to Papas y Tacos today we’d already crossed everything off but La Bonne Table and dinner with Hal and Jo, and done it in 10 days. We’d gone into Tijuana on Saturday along with Crystal’s family, so just two days prior to us leaving for Canada. Going to all of our favorite jaunts was about the only fun part of the to-do list. After lunch we got most of the house clean, then got ourselves clean, then cleaned the master bathroom last. As we were doing all of these tasks, we were texting back and forth with Charlotte on Tenerife, the person handling Avon’s travels. Today was the first day it would be (theoretically) possible to book arrangements for his flights, as it was 21 days before the first leg of his journey.
Dewey and Clarita picked us (and Avon, and Avon’s things) at 13:00. There was lots of traffic on the way to the airport, making what should’ve been a 5-10 minute drive at least double that. Avon was making a ton of noise in the back, as he doesn’t seem to like stop-and-go traffic. We hoped he’d behave for Dewey and Clarita, and not make a mess of their house.
Once at the airport, it was an easy trip through security, and we were at the gate about 90 minutes before takeoff. We normally don’t fly Delta, but the cost and convenience made this routing (San Diego-Minneapolis-Winnipeg) an easy choice. We had no lounge access, however. The flight went by Monument Valley, and we could vaguely make it out from the window. It was an easy flight, with TV and WiFi. We landed on time, but we didn’t have an especially long layover, and we didn’t know how big the airport was. We knew our next gate was at G13, so we were relieved when we saw our plane pulling into G14. It was good that we pulled in next door, as it was perhaps the slowest de-planing we can remember on our travels. We have no clue what the issue was; maybe no one else had a connection that late in the evening.
Interestingly, despite the gates being next to each other on the outside, on the inside we had to walk around a couple corners. It wasn’t that far, just not as close as we expected. Justin put on his pants and socks - we were not in shorts-and-sandals-type weather any more, and wouldn’t be until getting back at the end of the trip. All of the workers were Somali, which was coincidental timing since Justin had just read an article in Afar about the large Somali population making a name for itself in Minneapolis.
It was just a one hour flight to Winnipeg. To our surprise, it was actually a little west of Minneapolis, and closer to the border than we thought. [We would’ve guessed it was northeast of Minneapolis.] In Winnipeg, we had to go through the customs line, but it was just our plane as it was about 23:00 already. Justin put on his fleece, and Crystal zipped hers up. Theoretically it was 7 degrees Celsius outside (mid 40s Fahrenheit). It was just a 2 minute walk to our hotel (Grand Winnipeg Airport Hotel), literally just across the street from the terminal.
Inside the hotel we got to our room a little after 23:30. One restaurant/bar was open until 24:00, and we decided to go there, but it was down several long hallways, and by the time we were there, we realized it was actually in a neighboring hotel. It was still open, but they were taking last calls, so we just put in our drink order - no food tonight. We also couldn’t charge our room (as it wasn’t our hotel), which was a (minor) problem because the credit card we had was one that had foreign transaction fees. Thankfully two drinks weren’t going to be that pricey. We got back to our room a little after 00:00, and went to sleep shortly thereafter.
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