Well the good Mrs PHOENIX PHIL and I are sitting here at Phx Sky Harbor awaiting the start of the airline journey to hunt with
@KWALATA SAFARIS in the Niassa concession that Jaco hunts there. Not sure how this hunt report will go. I know there is internet coverage in camp, but not clear on the bandwidth. So I’ll start this will the boring stuff that someone may find useful in the future.
So as mentioned
@AZ KJ, my long time friend and hunting buddy as well as myself and wife will be hunting with Kwalata. I’ve known Jaco Strauss for as long as I’ve known Jacques Spamer. While I’ve represented Jacques all these years and it’s been fun to be a part of and watch him grow his business, it’s also been fun to was Jaco’s career progression.
Not too long ago when he secured this Niassa block to hunt, it immediately hit me that I’d need to do this hunt. And I’m so looking forward to this. In case anyone is wondering, I’m still repping for Jacques and
@JKO HUNTING SAFARIS and plan to continue to do so. It’s simply as yet he does not have any area in the Niassa where I’ve wanted to hunt for awhile now.
Animals to Hunt:
Cape Buffalo, Spotted Hyena, Niassa Wildebeest, whatever else comes along that Donna would like.
Rifles:
Chapuis .470NE, my trusty M70 .375HH
Ammunition:
North Fork Bonded Cores and Cup Point Solids for the double, 300gr North Fork Bonded Cores and Flat Point Solids for the .375HH. Flat point solids for use on any of the “tinies” that may show up.
Travel:
For the first time since our first trip to RSA in 2010, we are flying on Delta Airlines. I have become a big fan of both Qatar Airways and Emirates in recent years. And I can’t say Delta has ever impressed me that much. But as much as I tried, I just couldn’t put together a desirable itinerary on QA/Emirates. Furthermore, one reason QA has been such a favorite choice was there fares were so good. But that changed this past year, they went up considerably. So in the end Delta won out due to better itinerary and considerably cheaper.
Complicating the itinerary is getting to Pemba, Moz. I followed Jaco’s advices (which many others would concur with) of not using Air Mozambque and choosing Airlink instead for getting from JNB to Pemba. There is one daily flight that leaves out of JNB at 11:30am. This is where it gets a little challenging with other airlines. The itineraries had us getting in with only about 1-1.5 hour layover in JNB, which is not enough when traveling with weapons. Or a long layover where we’d have arrived in JNB at like 3:30am.
The Delta flight arriving the night before the Moz flight just made more sense. We will overnight at City Lodge which after some 24 hours of travel is just fine. So far Delta is doing well. The nice part of flying them out of PHX is their gates are at Terminal 3. T3 is much smaller and less busy than Terminal 4. We walked right up to the counter at check-in. The lady there was friendly and on her game. She said she wasn’t an expert in handling firearms, but she was great. Off then to TSA for a nice surprise. In Term 3, the TSA guys have a type of X-ray machine the run gun cases thru. They don’t require you to open the case and do the swab down. All of about 2 mins and we were on our way.
So in a couple hours we should be on our to ATL and the DL200 flight this evening. All for now.
