Luggage
We are on the May 18 Wildlife Od tour. We got our duffel bags today but not really clear on what they allow for Carry on.
If you have done this trip could you let us know what is ok to bring I am thinking a soft side 22 inch but may be over the weight limit. Help!!
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Put your duffel empty in your suitcase and take your usual carry on, just remember that on parts of your tour you can only take the duffel with just a small personal bag like a small backpack with you that must fit under your seat as there are no overhead bins. On the small planes.
Your tour director will give you details about where you need to take duffel bag with an additional carry on.Till then it comes in your packed suitcase.We found packing cubes helpful to put sets of clothes for different parts of the journey;saves time when you check in and out of hotels.
so am i correct in assuming that you take regular luggage from US TO JOHANISBERG, with your duffles inside your suitcase Then when you fly the small bush planes you take what you need for the overnight stay in your tauck duffle. Your bags mean while are trucked to your next hotel. Yes ???
Yes. But change that to overnight stays plural. Some folks who know what and how much to pack, sometimes choose to just take the Tauck duffle bag on tour and not a suitcase.
Yes, exactly as Alan describes
We just got an email from our Tauck director that started you must use the duffel as your only bag.
If anyone has done this tour recently please let me know just what is correct
Unless it is a deviation from every other safari tour that we have taken with Tauck, I suspect you have misread something. The usual way is to take the duffel only when you go on the safari part of the tour and your main luggage is stored or sent on to another hotel. The email may mean that you must use the provided duffel and not any other similar types as I have known people try to do on previous tours.
Would you mind copy and pasting the email to help us. Failing that, your only alternative is to call Tauck for clarification as they don’t often monitor the forum.
We may not have been clear, but yes, you must use the Tauck duffle for most on-tour legs. Unless you are told differently, you can take a suitcase to and from the tour, but once on tour you must switch to the duffle only for designated legs (standard luggage won’t fit in the tiny luggage compartment of the small aircraft you will fly.) Tauck will temporarily store your suitcase when you switch to duffles.
Bella, I just read the itinerary for your tour and it looks as if you do not take your first internal flight until day 6, so I suspect you won’t need to just use your duffel until then. I only just realized this is not your first Africa tour.
How about emailing the tour director back asking for clarification?
We did contact our TD. And we have to use the duffel all the way. No regular luggage. The bag is very large so I am using packing cubes to keep things organized. Carry on need to be smaller and mine is already full. And I am not finished with it.
Anyone doing this after us should definitely contact you TD. She helped a lot
Interesting, does the bag have wheels? We took an Africa safari tour with another company and we were only allowed to take the duffle but it had wheels. We had to lug it around ourselves, on to the small planes etc and when we were done, both our bags had holes in the bottom of them as did others. However, there was plenty of room for all our clothes and laundry was free. We took our usual backpacks too. The smallest plane had just six seats including the pilot. My husband sat next to the pilot, there was another couple and I sat in the back and the empty seat had some of the bags on it, the remainder went in the wing storage.
I’m surprised that Tauck may be doing this. We have been with Tauck to the same destinations and we still took regular suitcases with duffles for most of the tour. The regular suitcases were moved separately for us.
This is the first time I've seen such severe luggage restrictions!!
The Tour Info page starts with the typical Tauck luggage info, but then adds the following:
"To help in your packing, Tauck will provide each guest with a large rolling duffel bag. The duffel bag has been specially designed to provide more than adequate space for essential items needed while on safari. Please pack light and bring ONLY the Tauck-issued duffel bag with you on safari."
"Strict limitations on our on-tour flights require that each guest take only one piece of soft-sided luggage (the duffel bag) weighing no more than 33 pounds, or 14.97 kilograms. This weight limit includes all camera equipment. Soft-sided luggage is required to ensure your piece fits into irregularly shaped luggage compartments."
I just read the info you quote Alan. I do wonder because it says ‘While you are on Safari’ —-when you get to Cape Town, that is not a Safari. If it was me going on this tour, I would still call Tauck, not the TD. We booked this tour in 2020 when it was canceled. We tries again in 2022 but could not get the flights and the extra in-journey required Covid testing that was required at the time. We transferred to another tour instead. Right now, we no longer think we will take this tour as it is such a short time on safari but we do look forward to you posting a review of the tour Bella, it will be helpful for future decisions.
I had the same question. I can't imagine they fly in small 12 passenger Cessna Carvan's or smaller on the legs from Victoria Falls to Nolspruit or Noedspruit to Capetown- they are almost 2 - 3 hour flights (via bizjet) according to Google Maps and flights. Two of the carriers on these routes are using small jets (Embraer 190 and RJ 10000 which should be able to handle regular bags. The Kruger leg would need to utilize the small planes which necessitate duffels.
Sooo, who knows, but a call to Tauck should clear it up. I suspect Tauck's rolling duffels will hold a lot more than the old ones. Maybe Tauck does not want to go through separate baggage land transport, like on the K&T and B,SA,Z tours, so have decided this is an easier and cheaper way for them and so they can hold costs down???
Rolling duffels are not necessarily light. My 28" Samsonite duffel, which was furnished and required for our non-Tauck African safari trip weighs 7.4 lbs. Both my Eagle Creek duffels are lighter and much better made. We carried duct tape on that trip, just in case. The EC 29" duffel weighs 6.8 lbs. and the 26" weighs 5.4 lbs.
Please let us know how much the duffel weighs.
The reason for duffels, is not the weight or weight carrying capacity, it is that duffels can conform to irregular spaces, reduce wasted space, and fit better in small luggage compartments on small aircraft.
Yes, I'm well aware of the reason for duffels, but a rolling duffel is heavy compared to the non-rolling versions and is also less conforming. With a max weight of 33 lbs, the added weight of the rolling version will mean there's only about 25 lbs of usable weight. It may not make a difference to you, but it will to a lot of people.
I would think Tauck knows their customers and many, like me, can not carry a duffle because of shoulder issues.
SAdovr, like you, we have taken a non Tauck African safari with a roll on duffel and several people took duct tape with them and needed to use it when their bags started to fall apart. I have no idea what the quality of the Tauck bags are like in comparison to our experience. On the forum for the tour, people had suggested using a large plastic bag to put their belongings in and then place that inside the bag so that if it starts to fall apart things are less likely to fall out. So we did that. We realized that the reason the bag gets holes is that when you are rolling the bags along, unless you pull them along at a certain angle, they sag and the bottom of the bag drags along the ground and quickly gets worn. On our tour, we had to drag them around when we got off the small planes on the runways and had to drag them along to the ‘terminal building’ I’m not sure whether Tauck has people to help carry the bags for you or not. It may be shortage of staff that has made them change their bags, or maybe to save costs of taking peoples large suitcases on to parts of the tours where duffels are not required. Remember there are still people who ignore the one suitcase rule that Tauck has and they are fed up of having to pay for and tackle carrying all over the place.
If people are worrying that the weight restriction is a challenge, it was not for us. You don’t need dressy clothes for African safaris, just practical multipurpose ones, lightweight, protective and quick dry. Laundry is also cheap in Africa.
The more we come across people on our tours who have traveled to over 100 plus countries and see how sensible their clothing is and how small their luggage is, it’s a real learning experience, they don’t have to worry about losing luggage because they just take carry on and we so enjoy talking to them about their adventures.
Getting back to duffel bags, there must be someone out there by now who has taken this tour and can speak out about the bags.
It doesn't matter if I only have one change of clothing like someone did on our 18 day India and Nepal trip, I will never be able to do carry-on only, because of the amount and type of liquid medical supplies I need to carry.
Back to Bella's original question, the limit before the latest revision was a max of 44 lbs for both checked and carry-on on the safari planes. I seriously doubt it's been increased. If someone's camera equipment puts their carry-on bag over the limit, then you put it in the duffel. I think the following statement, which is on the Botswana, South Africa and Zambia trip, was accidentally left off.
"Checked luggage aboard the on-tour flights in Botswana are restricted to 20 kg (44 lbs) to include both checked and carry on pieces."
SAdvir. As I understood it, liquid medical supplies along with an appropriate doctors note are exempt from the 3oz limits.
From the government website!
FAQ
Medications (Liquid)
TSA allows larger amounts of medically necessary liquids, gels, and aerosols in reasonable quantities for your trip, but you must declare them to TSA officers at the checkpoint for inspection.
Learn more about transporting medication on your next flight.
British, TSA rules only apply in the US and not internationally. A doctor's note is meaningless too outside the US. I know too many people who have had issues and have had their medical supplies taken from them at security in international airports, even with a dr's note.
So just back from an awesome trip on Wildlife Odd. Here is the answer to the luggage issue. Tauck issued the large rolling duffels because of all the moving by jeep and truck and air. Keeping it easy to stack and line up together. My bag was loaded and it only weighed 33 lbs. Yes the flights on a charter plane become the issue. There is a weight limit and duffels make it easy for loading and unloading the flights. The problem was with your carry on. Because you have to keep your meds and tech devises with you your carry on shoulder bags were too heavy and clumsy. My husband uses a c-pap and it took up most of his carry on. Some people brought small 18-19 inch soft side roller bags and they had no problem with them. Our TD said tauck was getting a lot of comments on the bags and in the future they will find an alternative. Check out my review on forum.