Canceled Tour
Tauck just canceled the August 22 departure of this tour to Bali. I had booked this to coincide with a Landmark birthday. They are now offering me a departure of September 8 or 12. Is anyone planning to take either of those departures?
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Interesting Smarks, I had forgotten you were taking this tour too. They just cancelled our late September tour and offered us the October 3rd tour and we are in the process of finalizing changing flights. They will have to reimburse us over $500 each in air change fees.The only concern I have is that October is the usual start of the rainy season which is a concern after the rain in Africa 😀 this is reflected in the price since it $600 less each on that date.
I was assuming that our cancellation was maybe due to fact that our original departure date was during a Jewish holiday. This is the first time Tauck has called us in a situational like this though we have known others have this happen in the past though it clearly isn’t that common.I wonder if people have been reading about Komodo island being closed to travelers. Tauck was not scheduled to visit there anyway, they use Flores to see the Dragons. Dragons is why we booked the tour.
What are you going to do?
Okay, I could understand that if they were the actual flying, fire-breathing sort, but hey, they are just giant versions of their distant reptilian relatives the iguanas, just, much, much larger, more dangerous (poisonous) with longer tongues! The special effects folks would attach dorsal fins and other rubber appendages to them and use them as dinosaurs in old movies.
Here ya go, British. A 3 hour drive and you can see Kimodo dragons:
https://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/komodo-dragon
Or 2 hours in the other direction at the Bronx Zoo.
W
e
ll you definitely can’t see Mountain gorillas in a zoo like we saw in Rwanda
I can’t get my videos to load unfortunately
Expressive eyes (a window to a soul?) and a lot more cuddly than any old monitor lizard!
Great shots!!- how far away, what power lens?
Was that one Silverback in the second photo mooning you?
British: Great to see the gorillas again - I will never forget that day! I have so many "mooning" pictures from our game drives that I need to delete!
About Bali - not sure what is going on. My travel agent says Tauck almost never cancels a tour and to hear they are canceling several is interesting. Maybe it is the Komodo Dragon issue (although I don't care which island I see them on), maybe it is fear of the "flu" now swirling through parts of Asia, who knows. I am disappointed about the timing of this given my very important birthday in August! I will discuss this further with my travel agent tomorrow (may see if another company has an alternative in August) but If I decide to go forward with this I will probably go as early in September as possible (depart September 8) as I looked at the weather history and the later in September or early October the greater chance of rain (got enough of that in Africa!).
Let me know what you decide to do. Give my best to Mr. B.
Smarks, I’ll private message you. Look for the symbol in the top right of the page.
Alan S, the gorillas were mere feet from us. We had to be vigilante because a couple of times we had to step back so they could pass by us. Mr B had a couple of play fighting little ones roll across his feet. No powerful lenses required.
I almost finished our Gorilla Shutterfly Book yesterday since I was marooned in the house due to torrential rain. Smarks had a similar sized camera to mine but with a better lens and she knew her camera well. I bet she has some fantastic shots. The gorillas were so mesmerizing and so many of them and the little ones rolling around so much, it was hard not to just enjoy watching them. Looking thru a lens stopped you seeing everything, so not as many shots plus some of the best were video. Worth every penny of this very pricey trip.
Wow!! Thanks. Now I need to find a benefactor to fund our trip!