Into the T-20s! Yikes!

Happy New Year, and oddly, what a fast new year it's been so far.  At least for me.

In terms of safari planning, I am just about done and ready to roll.  I found a great pair of half-priced Tevas (just try finding sandals mid-January in this area!) and also found a decent mosquito repellant and various other drugstore sundries, all of which are on their way to me.

My visit to the Travel Clinic was somewhat surprising.  The doctor would not vaccinate me against Yellow Fever.  Apparently the CDC recommendation has changed and that is only needed now if we are transiting through a country with a higher rate of Yellow Fever (like Kenya).  We are not, so that was not done.  However, I did manage to get a polio booster, given that there have been some outbreaks recently in Africa and I couldn't remember if I'd had one since my childhood shots.  I also came away with an prescription for Malarone, an anti-malarial drug which I need to take for a day before we leave and 7 days after we return in addition to the time we are there.

In addition, I requested from my regular doctor prescriptions for Cipro (the antibiotic of choice for anything that could ail me), an anti-diarrheal, an anti-vomitting, Xanax for the plane (never hurts to have it) and a sleeping aid for beating jetlag the first couple nights.  I feel like I have a veritable pharmacopia, because I'll also take cold and flu meds and packs of Emergen-C just in case.

I broke down and bought a Kindle too.  Carrying two paperbacks, plus magazines plus my Sudoku books was silly.  Or at least that's how I justified it to myself.  It's incredibly light weight and gets good battery life while carrying about 10 pounds worth of my reading material.  One bonus with the Kindle is that a field guide on lions in the Serengeti, which was 516 hardbound pages and $32 in print was only $8 on the Kindle.  So of course I got that first.  Score!

So with that, I'm just about ready to roll.  I could use more practice on the camera so hopefully after this weekend's Morrissey-related road trip, I can get to that too.

Next week we hit the teens...it's fast approaching.  And I'm going whether I'm ready or not!