Summer/Fall travel plans shaping up.
 

Well we haven't been doing too much travel but that might change as we go into summer. My wife is working on a project with Rio Tinto, mostly with their mining operations. Looks like we will be in Namibia for the month of July and again in September. Not sure where yet, either Windhoek or Swakopsmund. The former is inland and the latter along the coast. I have heard the Namib desert and the Skeleton Coast are great for photography. We might do some side trips around the country, maybe the Elosha National Park for wildlife viewing. Also looking into doing a trip to Botswana and go to the Chobe River Delta for a week or so.

August will take us to Alaska to see my son and his family and also a daughter that also lives there with her little girl. My son will be busy finishing a home he is building near Juneau and his wife starts back to school in town where she is a teacher, my daughter works the afternoon evening shift at the Gustavus Inn so they need us to watch kids for a few hours each afternoon until my daughter in law gets home. It should be fun, 3 grand kids age 3 1/2, 3 and 4 months.

We also may go to Australia in October or November. Mostly in Brisbane, also for Rio Tinto Mining.

Oh, I thought from your other post she was retiring, my bad.:blush:

Does Rio Tinto do anything other than mining?

Rio Tinto's chief business is mining but they cover many other aspects of turning raw materials into other products. So far my wife has worked at their copper mines in Utah and will work on the mining project in Namibia which I think is uranium. Not sure about the one in the Brisbane area. She mostly works at the office and not the actual mining operation.

Do they do rare earths or another that is in great demand due to electronics (ie mobile phones) - tantalum? As I understand it, tantalum is only available is politically unstable regions - mostly in Africa.

If one googles well enough, one can find exactly where Tommy copies his posts from. Sad little lonely man.

Oh, I know that one... 1986.

The wife is headed home from her first trip to Namibia. She had a 2 hour layover in Johannesburg but wouldn't you know her plane from Namibia to Johannesburg was delayed well over an hour so she had to run from the arrival gate to the departure and barely made it. She should land in Dulles tomorrow morning and then head home to Houston.

I plan to go back on the next trip, July 3rd or so. Be there for 3 weeks and then 4 weeks in September into October. We plan to go to Etosha National Park in Namibia at the end of this coming trip and maybe Botswana on the next trip. Trying to figure out what camera gear to take!

From the looks of FlightAware.com she just left the refuel stop in Senegal.:)

Did you tell her to take snapshots or screen grabs so you can figure out what stuff you'll need?

My wife got home this morning and we looked at ticket options for next month. She says we can afford my ticket in Business Class but she plans to hit up her boss as I will do the driving to and from the mine in Namibia each day so why shouldn't they just pay for my ticket.

So we found a slightly different route this next trip. All on Lufthansa but booked through United on a code share that gets us all the miles and PQM and PQ$ to actually move up in status. The cool thing is we fly from Houston to Frankfurt and also the same on the return on the new A380-800 double decker jet. Business class there is the second deck. And on the flights to and from Frankfurt to Johannesburg we fly a Boinb 747-8 series and will be in the smaller upper deck Business class section as well. Total price for the trip was $4944 which is $3000 less than my wife just paid to fly SAA on her last trip. Why the heck to the ticket prices change that much from day to day?

Now to get a car booked. I'd like to get a small 4x4 for the rough side roads that one sometimes encounters there.

Nobody can figure out airline ticket pricing but I think that's the point, keep the rubes in the dark. :eyebrow: