So, maybe I was a little nuts to jam 5 speaking things in four days across 2 states requiring air travel to/from Providence, Rhode Island and Nashville, Tennessee. In the winter.
But I really wanted to speak at both conferences — Blissdom in Nashville and ETC in Providence. So I said yes, and crossed my fingers for good weather.
And the weather wasn’t too bad at either of my destinations. Unfortunately, the latest snowpocalypse was forecast to hit the Mid-Atlantic on the day I needed to travel back to Providence (that would be today!).
My original Southwest flights, through Baltimore, were canceled Thursday evening, so I rebooked on Continental through Newark. That flight got canceled this afternoon, so the airline moved me to a flight tomorrow night (Saturday). That wouldn’t do much for getting me back in time for a presentation tomorrow morning so I called to speak to an agent who assured me that, no the flight was today, just two hours before the original departure.
So I hauled it for the airport. Only to find when I checked in, that the Continental Airlines phone rep was an absolute idiot. I was booked tomorrow.
BUT the ticket agent at Continental in Nashville was smarter than the phone rep and managed to get me a seat on a flight leaving in 15 minutes. If I ran, I could make it. I made it with about 5 minutes to spare, thanks to wonderful fellow travelers who let me cut in line.
And when I got to the gate, the gate agent fixed the back half of my reservation so I could get to Providence from Newark.
So here I sit with about another hour to wait (I’ve already been here for about 4) but I’m moving steadily northward.
Many thanks to the Continental Airlines ticket and gate agents in Nashville today for their help.
Bread and water to the reservations system and the dumb ass phone rep I spoke with.
And if you have to kill a chunk of time (and haven’t eaten all day) the Vino Volo in Terminal C at Newark is a lovely place to pass the time. I even found an outlet.
Last Friday, on what would have been Elvis Presley’s 75th birthday, I was in Las Vegas, a town that is indelibly associated with him, to attend the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
More accurately, I was there to speak on a panel at the MommyTech at CES conference, although I did walk around the show a little bit. I also participated in a “View”-like live-streamed panel about Facebook in Kodak’s booth, along with Real Housewife of New York Jill Zarin, Suburban Outlaw Pam Sherman, entrepreneur Suzanne Kantra and Kodak VP Leslie Dance. It was pretty funny — you can watch the repeat here. I’ll have more about some of the products I saw over on my digital parenting post at BlogHer on Wednesday.
Since this is my travel blog, this post is about the trip. Even though I am not particularly fond of Las Vegas, I actually had some pretty nice experiences on this trip.
First, I flew Southwest Airlines, and I highly recommend spending the extra $10 each way to get Early Bird Check-in. This option automatically puts you in a queue to get your boarding spot 36 hours before the flight. No more having to log-in exactly 24 hours before the flight and hope to get a decent spot in line. On both flights, I had a great A spot, just after the Business Select passengers.
Of course, it is ironic that Southwest brags about your bags flying free and charges for better seat choice, but I don’t care. It’s worth it to me, to be able to benefit from Southwest’s often lower fares and NOT have to remember to check-in at the 24-hour mark, which is sometimes impossible when traveling on business.
Speaking of my bag, on the way home, it went (free) to Boise Idaho instead of Manchester New Hampshire. It did eventually turn up, but there were some hiccups in Southwest’s lost bag procedure.
Making the report at Manchester at 11pm on Saturday night was no problem; the clerk told me the bag was in Boise and would probably make it back to NH sometime late in the day Sunday and be delivered Monday at the latest. Great. No problem. Home I went.
My concerns started Sunday afternoon when Southwest called to give me an update. A very unsatisfactory update that they were looking for my bag and hoped to have better information soon. Hullo? Saturday midnight, it was in Boise, Sunday mid-afternoon, they don’t know where it is? Not confidence inducing. We called customer service back for a better explanation. Turns out they give this very non-committal response until the bag actually turns up at the destination airport. Hhmm. If you aren’t going to give a real status report, methinks you’d be better off saying nothing.
I never heard from Southwest again on the bag, but when Dave went out to get the paper this morning, it was sitting in the driveway. The good news, of course, is that I got the bag back. The not so good news is that Southwest never called with a final update. Now, I understand that it may have arrived in Manchester very late last night, clearly it was delivered pretty early, and when I made the report, I did say that someone would be home Monday morning. But, still, I think a call was in order. What if it had been raining or snowing?
Moving on, and back to the Las Vegas trip, I had used Marriott points to stay at the Courtyard directly across from the Convention Center. Getting around Las Vegas during a big conference can be a pain, especially at peak travel times. The monorail improves things somewhat from the bad old days (when the Sands was a hotel, not just a convention center), but being within walking distance is priceless.
When I got to the hotel Thursday night, they told me that they were oversold, but had arranged for me to stay at the Marriott Residence next door that night, were paying for the room, and had bounced back my points for the one night to my Rewards account. Sure, it was a bit of a pain to have to switch hotels on Friday, but they are right next door to each other. Kudos to the staffs at both hotels for making things relatively painless. My only really negative comment about the hotel was that my breakfast omelet on Saturday had way too much cheese. And I love cheese.
There’s a fairly new Marriott Suites hotel right around the corner from the Courtyard and Residence hotels. I’m wracking my brain trying to remember what used to be there. I thought it might be the old Debbie Reynolds’ Hollywood Hotel, but I checked online, and it is the Greek Isles that is there now. Anyway, the Marriott’s casual restaurant Cafe 325 is a nice place to grab a quick bite to eat. My burger was great, and the bartender let me take my second glass of wine “to go” even though I wasn’t staying at that Marriott. Viva Las Vegas!
I also recommend French bistro Mon Ami Gabi in the Paris casino. The food and service are great, and the prices are reasonable… for Las Vegas. On this trip, I had a yummy steak au poivre with frites ($24.00), which was made even better by the great company – Beth Blecherman (@techmama), Ciaran Blumenfeld (@momfluential) and Amy Oztan (@selfishmom).
Finally, getting to and from the airport. On past trips, I’ve always taken a cab, and bemoaned the long cab lines at the airport. I was on a pretty tight budget this trip, so decided to check out the local transportation offered on the Southwest website. Gray Line Shuttles was the option, with a round-trip price of $12.00.
The price was right, so I figured I could live with a little inconvenience in exchange for the savings. Except it wasn’t inconvenient in the least. Inbound, the wait for the shuttle was shorter than any cab line wait I have ever had in Las Vegas, and leaving Vegas on Saturday, my hotel was the last stop before the airport. In other words, exactly the same elapsed time as a cab. It might be a bit more hectic at other times of the day — I was arriving and leaving at non-peak travel times — but I was generally impressed.
All in all, probably the best trip I’ve ever had to Las Vegas.
One of the prettiest birds we saw during our trip was the national bird of Botswana, the Lilac Breasted Roller. In fact, I could not stop taking pictures of it.
Mashatu:
Mala Mala:
This pair of Lilac Breasted Rollers was clearly nesting in this tree on the lawn at Mala Mala.
On our very last day, as we were waiting to leave for the airstrip, I managed to get a photo of one in flight.
I’ll bottom line it for you. Mala Mala Main Camp is beautiful and very elegant. We saw some amazing animals, including the Secretary Bird and the Ground Hornbill. Lots of lions, leopards, elephant and giraffe. We had a tremendous sighting of two bull rhinos on the last morning. We saw a mother and baby hippo walking across the lawn around 11 pm from our room. Our ranger, Lucky, was phenomenal. He was even able to spot a chameleon in a tree at night.
For most of these photos, you’ll need to visit my brother’s photo gallery because I managed to delete a whole bunch of my pictures from Mala Mala when I got home (don’t ask, I am still pissed about it.)
Nevertheless, we preferred Mashatu. Why? Mala Mala is elegant and the hospitality is impeccable. It just didn’t feel as friendly and down to earth as Mashatu. In fairness, our experience of Mashatu may be a little colored by Mum’s friendship with Afke and deep knowledge of the native animals due to her time spent “at the Pond.” Likewise, our first night at Mala Mala was not the smoothest — starting with the long delay of the plane and ending with some confusion upon arrival, well detailed in my mom and brother’s posts linked above.
However, I’m a pretty objective person. Even after I eliminate all of that, if your budget is limited and you can only do one “luxury” game reserve, I would recommend Mashatu over Mala Mala. If you can visit both, by all means do. The landscapes are completely different, and there are animals in each place that you just won’t see in the other.
But if you have to choose, make it Mashatu.
That said, here are some of my favorite pictures from Mala Mala.
A few years ago, my mom got involved in the online community for the National Geographic webcam at Pete’s Pond in Botswana.
Pete’s Pond is an artificial watering hole created to give the animals on the Mashatu Game Reserve an alternative water source to the nearby Limpopo River where they are easy targets for poachers. The webcam shares the activity at the Pond with viewers around the world.
Including my mom.
Last year, at about this time, my brother got the idea that we should take Mom to Africa. Amazingly, we made it happen.
The webcam is located in a hide, and runs 24×7. At night, it is on an automatic sweep, but during the day, there is a camera operator to find and follow whatever action is happening at the pond. In our western mentality, we think, how much could happen at a pond? Quite a lot actually. Especially in a semi-arid climate like Botswana where there isn’t much water most of the year. And, unlike the game drives, where the animals and birds are aware of the vehicle, at the Pond, they are mostly unaware (unless there are unexpected loud noises from the hide.)
When our plane from Mashatu to Mala Mala was delayed by four hours, we were privileged to spend the time at the hide. Afke, the volunteer who runs the webcam, had come to see us off, and when we had the long wait, she graciously invited us to wait at the Pond.
My full set of pictures is on Flickr, but here are some of my favorites.
It’s hard to get good pictures of warthogs. They scamper off PDQ. I got my best shots of them from the hide.
A Bee-eater
And a Pied Kingfisher
George & Gracie, the Egyptian Geese and GuineaFowl
On our last drive at Mashatu, we got closer to an elephant than any of us ever thought we’d be… without zoo bars in between, that is. I knew we were pretty damn close when I heard Elvis mutter something like “that’s right mama, keep going…”
We also saw another leopard, ostrich and the ever-present impala. It was so interesting to see the different species interact, something we rarely see in zoos, even wonderful ones like San Diego’s Wild Animal Park.
All too soon it was time to make our way to the airport and say our good-byes. Afke, my mom’s friend who runs the camera at Pete’s Pond, came to see us off.
(Mum on the left, Afke on the right)
A mighty good thing that was, as our charter plane to Mala Mala in South Africa ended up being delayed by about four hours. Instead of hanging around the airfield or going back to Main Camp, Afke cheerily and without hesitation invited us to come to the Pond.
So all five us, Mum, Doug, me, and our now fast friends and traveling companions Michael and Gary made our way to Pete’s Pond for a completely different and quite unique wildlife viewing experience. One that you can share thanks to National Geographic’s 24-hour webcam.
Here are a few images from Mashatu Main Camp, including the resident bushbuck.
We had decided to do the Predator Drive instead of the regular game drive, so that afternoon we separated from our friends Michael and Gary, and our regular team of Elvis and Aaron, and went off with Andrei Snyman of Mashatu Research in search of one of the recently tagged leopards. The animal led us on a merry chase, but eventually Andrei was able to spot him and download some data from his collar.
We didn’t see nearly as many other animals on the Predator Drive as we had on previous drives, so if you are there for a short time I wouldn’t recommend it. However, we were at Mashatu for three days and had plenty of opportunity to see a variety of animals, so it was very interesting to see how the research process works.
We never did find a tiger, but five cheetahs was a more than respectable substitute.
The bush is full of little stories, each playing out in a tableau that virtually ignores the presence of humans in four-wheel drive vehicles. On this morning, we watched hyena and cheetah in a dance probably as old as time.
First, we saw three cheetah brothers, largely ignoring the hyena nearby but responding to the distant drum of horses.
Then we saw a young male and his mother being tracked by a single hyena. Needless to say, the hyena didn’t press the issue.
We were very lucky to see the Wild Dogs of Mashatu. They had denned in Mashatu, but shortly before we arrived, the pack had gone south into South Africa.
In these photos, they are playing in the mostly dry stream bed of the Limpopo River.
It was particularly interesting for me as a breeder to observe the wild dogs. So much of their behavior is, not surprisingly, similar to the behavior of my dogs.
Susan Getgood: Mine is slim compared to some folks. And I’ve added a few things since I posted this.... Kyle Judkins: That looks like a pretty packed schedule! I haven’t been to very many conferences, so I’m... RhodeyGirl: Just found your blog- hope I get to meet you at BlogHer! Susan Getgood: Hah! I doubt that. Everything seems to have piled into Thurs. and Fri. which is kind of nice, as it... Elisa Camahort Page: Gee, i hope we’ll have time to say “hello”, you are probably busier than I...
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