Sept 28, 2022, Vancouver, BC Grand Voyage Eve!

And the last minute scramble is on as we prepare for take off tomorrow afternoon on our Grand Voyage Plus voyage now commencing in Montreal. In total we will be away for 80 days, 9 days Montreal to Fort Lauderdale and then 71 days round trip around the Continent of Africa back to Fort Lauderdale. There are many i’s to dot and t’s to cross in embarking on a journey this long and as long as you capture the big ones, you should be okay - there is always something that will be missed, I have learned to just accept that, that’s life. Tip, look at you entire calendar for the time you are away, is your car insurance going to expire (should you cancel and just purchase storage insurance)? Is your home insurance going to expire? These types of things. Yup, going through the calendar one more time today.

So, two years in the planning and we are finally feeling that this Grand Voyage is going to be a go, obviously cancelled in 2020, and then again cancelled and moved forward from 2021. We really didn’t believe it until we were on the Voyage of the Vikings this past summer and saw that the gears of travel were going to actually catch and not disengage like a bad clutch. So, yes we are excited.

This voyage was originally planned out of Fort Lauderdale but with our Covid Cruise Credits from the VOV, we were able to use them to jump on the Zaandam 9 days earlier in Montreal, hooray! For those of you that don’t understand Covid Credits, should you contract Covid on board and are quarantined, you receive a prorated portion of you cruise fare back in credits to be used on a future cruise. We easily had enough to get us back on board on the leg prior to the Grand Voyage, hooray again! Thanks HAL. 

Circumnavigating Africa will bring us some amazing adventure opportunities, too many to list but will include, visiting the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, staying overnight in a Bebouin tent in Wadi Rum and a 3 day African Safari. Please see the itinerary listed below. We invite you to follow along as an armchair traveller if you would like to see what we get up to on this adventure, we blog pretty much daily. We do understand that there will be some changes to our eastern Canadian ports as a result of the recent hurricane, our hearts go out to those in the middle of this disaster, yes climate change is real and is all around us.

For now, time to get back to my final run through everything, haircut at noon. We would like to extend our thanks to all the folks at Cruise Critics, they have done an amazing job on this Grand Voyage, from the “spreadsheets” to the Photo Book to all the excursions they have put together, looking forward to seeing you all on board.