We'd looked at a few options including buying each flight as and when we needed it and one of the several Round The World (RTW) tickets offered by various coalitions of airlines. Buying a flight as and when you need it seems like a flexible system but most countries ostensibly require you to show your return ticket (or presumably your onward ticket) on arrival so you do have to know when you're leaving a country which makes it as inflexible as a pre-purchased method.
The RTW tickets come in various flavours with complicated rules attached. The Star Alliance (SA) is pretty flexible and the version we looked at allowed for 39,000 miles around the globe on any of the scheduled SA airlines with up to 15 stops for £1749 (September 2002).
So we downloaded the timetable and flight planner and set to work matching SA flights with our schedule. As a side issue, SA don't fly out of Nairobi (where the safari ends) so we knew we'd have to book a separate flight to get to the Maldives. So, flight plan in hand we popped into the local travel agent (Thomas Cook in Marlow, Bucks.) and asked for a quote.
The quote came back with everything as desired except the vital first port of call, Johannesburg on the 1st of October to coincide with the start of the safari, was scheduled for the 23rd of September. Actually, the last flight was pencilled in for before we wanted but it transpired that the computer system could only cope with flights 331 days in advance. The Nairobi-Male flight would go via Dubai.
We said that the 23rd of September was no good -- there are enough scare stories about that part of the world that made the idea of staying in Johannesburg unwelcome (even if it is just staying by the pool), were there any alternative options? The answer was basically, no, SA flew from London Heathrow (LHR) via Frankfurt (FRA) to Johannesburg (JNB) and that the FRA-JNB link was fully booked.
A phone call a couple of days later from Thomas Cook hinted that the flight had suddenly become available but a trip into the shop and half-an-hour on the phone to Flightsavers later revealed a glitch in the system where the seat availability was wrong. No flights.
We asked how do you get to JNB then? The answer was that there was a flight from LHR to JNB via Dubai for £255. So, we could make our own way from LHR to JNB, then Nariobi to Male so that to SA we'd effectively have gone overland from LHR to Male. So, could we have a RTW ticket where we have the first section, LHR - Male, as an "overland" section ? The answer was no, the rules state that the first international crossing must be on an SA flight. We went away.
We came back with the brilliant idea this morning. Why don't we just fly LHR to FRA, the FRA to LHR, then we'd do the overland LHR - Male. Answer, no, the rules state that you can't use your starting country as a transit during your trip.
Can you go from LHR to anywhere else, vaguely en route to JNB and get an onward ticket there. Well, yes, but those onward tickets are at least £1000. For some peculiar reason you appear to be able to fly from London to Johannesburg for a pittance. Flights from say, FRA or Paris, cost up to £1500 which is much more than the cost of the flight to LHR plus £255.
OK, can we buy an SA RTW ticket starting and ending in Male? No, Flightsavers could/would only sell a RTW ticket originating in the UK. OK, what do they know about us buying a RTW ticket in New Zealand, say, if we weren't residents? They weren't allowed to know by SA what the rules were for other countries.
Ooh, this was getting frustrating. But for one flight (FRA-JNB) which was fully booked for over a week before and most of the week after the 1st of October everything was just peachy. No offers of paying surcharges could be accepted, the SA Economy fare meant you went cattle class (actually "B" class) everywhere. We did look to see if there were any conferences going on in Johannesburg that week but it doesn't appear so.
As an exercise we checked the cost of the individual flights in our schedule. The £5500 cost made the need to use the £1749 SA RTW fare all the more apparent.
So to lunch then today. A fight with a couple of wasps and a debate of whether or not you should report the registration number of a car that picked up a man in the High Street who was blatently casing cars (was he guilty of anything versus police incapability) later it suddenly clicked. Take an SA flight out of LHR then fly back on your own account to LHR, take the flights to JNB (via Dubai) and Narobi to Male (via Dubai) and then claim to SA that you're overlanding from Europe to Male. It's so obvious.
So, back in the shop. Wait the standard 20 minutes to be served then we're off. No hopes raised at all, let's just plod all the way through before getting remotely excited.
Finally, another hour and a half later, we're done. We have some 18 flights booked. We're due an overnighter in Paris on the 28th of September to account for the necessary first international leg out of the UK on a SA plane, then back to London the next day to get the LHR/Dubai/JNB flight the day after. Woohoo!
Seeing as we reckoned we couldn't be that bad at football we entered a team of people from the company together with various hangers-on into the local Powerleague. We entered into the second division of the (allegedly) tough Monday night league halfway through the season.
We lost every game.
Joking about being so bad that they would have to create a new division to match our merits we couldn't quite decide what to think when they really did create a brand new fifth division for the next season and we were in it.
Undaunted by such administrative snubbing we launched ourselves into this new division determined to show the powers that be that they were quite mistaken.
Fourteen games later at the end of the season we were firmly placed bottom.
So, that brings the doleful history of the Marlow Tornadoes more or less up to date and here we are in our second full season and to be honest things aren't going well.
Record breaking dismalness has spread throughout the team. The regular pre-match optimism (not only would we win this but it would be like stealing candy from kids) quickly fell away with the first few goals. No amount of inspiration words from captain Clark at halftime could prevent the inevitable 16-6 defeat.
Copyright 2002 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.