This trip has been in the works for over a year and was originally planned for late 2015 and referred to as “The Mother of all African Adventures“.   I decided to bring it forward to Nov 2014 because it relied heavily on United Mileage Plus and I had concerns that a devaluation could either make the trip impossible or knock us back to economy and since these flights were really long I wanted business class.  I was also afraid that a change to United’s generous routing rules (better explained by Drew at Travel is Free) would kill my planned stopovers.  This routing required both an open jaw and a stop-over and cost 320,000 miles in J class for both tickets.

United redemption on BR, CA, SA, ET & TG

I used British Airways Avios for some local routes on their South African partner, Comair.

Avios redemptions

The only paid ticket was Air Austral from MRU to TNR.  The only way to get this route with miles is Flying Blue on Air Mauritius but the taxes make it poor value since it is not easy to get Flying Blue miles.  Also, they didn’t fly on a Monday and I had no flexibility as I had specific places to go birding in Madagascar.  I could have flown Air Madagascar but they have had so many problems with flight cancellations and long delays, I chose not to take the risk and went with Air Austral via Reunion.

Air Austral route

I did make great use of Flying Blue miles on Kenya Airways to get from Madagascar to Ghana, 35,000 for both of us!

Flying Blue redemption on KQ

HOTELS

Although most of the accommodation was in birding or safari lodges, I did burn through a bunch of hotel points in cities to keep costs down.

Port Elizabeth – Radisson Blu 38,000 points for 2 nights

JNB Airport – Intercontinental used Chase annual free night

Mauritius – Used Hilton Honors 40,000 points from each of our accounts for 2 nights at this newly renovated property.

Accra – Used IHG Rewards 20,000 per night for 1 night upon arrival and 2 nights post birding in Kakum for a birding day trip to Shai Hills.

Of course I will be blogging in detail about the travel and the fabulous birds we saw over the next couple months!