This trip came up on us sooner than expected - literally.  We found out sixteen days before our originally scheduled departure that we had to move things up by a week, i.e., nine days before our new departure.  This created a whirlwind of various tasks that needed to get completed in a very short period of time, and quite a bit of stress accordingly.

The genesis of the itinerary change relates to the main focus of the trip, Socotra.  It is an island south of the Arabian peninsula, east of the horn of Africa.  It is one of the most remote places on the planet to visit, and it’s been on our radar for a while.  Even before COVID, it was difficult to get to.  It used to be that there was a once-weekly flight from Cairo on a “real” airline.  Now there is a once-weekly flight from Abu Dhabi on what effectively is a chartered plane.

Our issue is that the “airline” decided to change the flight from being once a week to once every other week, and the change was going to take effect right after we landed in Socotra - i.e., there would be no plane the following week to return us to civilization.  As much as we wanted to visit Socotra, one week was sufficient in our mind.  So we had to move everything ahead by one week, just over a week before our trip was now set to start.

Moving all of our flights was thankfully possible, as we had quite a few.  Our planned itinerary was to fly direct from Los Angeles to Dubai, see Dubai (and a little of Abu Dhabi), then spend our week in Socotra and return to Abu Dhabi and Dubai.  From there, we’d have a couple of hours, then we were set to fly from Dubai to the Seychelles, and after eight days there, end our trip in Mauritius, which was the other main impetus for this trip.  We’ve both been fascinated with the “underwater waterfall” in Mauritius for some time, and while Socotra is not close to Mauritius, they are close enough to each other - and far enough from everything else - that it made sense.  Seychelles, being halfway in between the two of them, made sense to “tack on.”

We had plenty of hotel reservations set up, and unfortunately one of them was not possible to move up by a week.  So just a week or so before we were set to leave, we were looking for a new hotel in Mauritius.  This wasn’t easy, not because there were limited options, but because there were almost too many.  There were amazing looking beach resorts all along the south and southwest coasts, where we wanted to stay because of proximity to the sites we most wanted to see.  Eventually we settled on Shanti Maurice, which had a nice beach but also a rum bar with over 200 rums, which sounded appetizing.

Going to these remote tropical locations, we needed some medications, specifically malaria meds and also antibiotics in case we came down with a bug in the middle of nowhere.  Our medical network was dragging its feet in getting us the meds we needed, and the trip moving forward by a week exacerbated things.  The Friday before our departure date, Justin thought he had everything squared away, and we’d get what we needed on Tuesday.  But when we showed up for what we thought was a TDAP shot and some medications, they told us we’d be getting a shot only, and that no one - seemingly in the entire huge network (hundreds of doctors in San Diego) - could prescribe us medications that we’d taken at least a half dozen times before.

So Tuesday afternoon we called a travel clinic that we were scheduled to be at on Thursday (for a different shot), and asked if we could get a prescription for antibiotics and anti-malarials as well.  They said they could, but we asked if we could get a sooner appointment, as if our appointment wasn’t until Thursday afternoon, and we were set to leave our house Friday morning, we were worried the prescriptions couldn’t/wouldn’t get filled in time.  They had appointments on Wednesday, but at a different location much further from our house.  But that was our only option, so we took it.

Wednesday morning we woke up to a new issue.  We’d been dealing with so many “normal” trip planning hiccups, we had neglected to see if any COVID stuff might cause any problems.  But Wednesday morning our travel agent and friend Julian, whom we worked with in 2007 and 2013, told us that Abu Dhabi didn’t require any COVID testing to enter the city, but did require testing to enter public places, such as our hotel.  This was a problem, as we didn’t want to get tested, as none of the other places on our trip required any testing, and since Abu Dhabi was right at the beginning, if we flunked our test the rest of the trip would be shot.  So we asked if we could just spend a second night in Dubai and transfer to Abu Dhabi on Monday morning (rather than Sunday afternoon) for our flight to Socotra.  In theory, it seemed doable, but we’d need to actually see.  

Our travel clinic visit on Wednesday was thankfully a non-issue, and the clinician was a bit surprised that we knew we needed 16 Malarone pills for our 7 days in Socotra - the two days prior to Socotra, the 7 days there, and the 7 days thereafter.  But then we told her we’d taken Malarone in 2006, and 2007, and 2008, and 2010, and 2011, and 2012, and 2013, and 2014 - we were very up on what was required, and when.  So the consultation was accordingly very abbreviated.  It’s just too bad our own healthcare network couldn’t treat us like responsible, knowledgeable adults, but instead assumed any sort of a prescription should be treated like an addict trying to score some oxy or fentanyl.  The travel clinic was right near Curry & More, so at least we got some good Indian food out of the drive up North.

Thursday morning we got a hold of Julian, and he said the extra night in Dubai was no issue, and that we could now visit the Dubai Miracle Garden on Sunday afternoon, since we wouldn’t be going to Abu Dhabi that afternoon.  Our hotel in Abu Dhabi was being difficult in terms of not wanting to refund us for our room, which seemed petty given that it was still 3 days before we were supposed to be there, but we agreed with Julian we could take that up at a later date.  We wired him the delta for the new costs, our second supplemental wire of the week (the first being for the increased airfare costs moving everything up a week).  Also Thursday morning we picked up our antibiotics and malarone, so that was now all set.  Less than 24 hours prior to leaving our house for LAX, we felt a little more relaxed.