Travel by Small Plane in Africa with Equipment - Weight Restrictions

[joel_turner]

Good Morning,

 

I'd like to hear your experience if you've traveled to Kenya anytime

within the past several years and have taken small planes from Wilson

Airport to any of the outlying regions. I'm leaving for a safari in

late September, and have been told that the weight restriction for the

small planes is 15kg or 33lbs which includes hand bags. I'm curious

how you traveled with camera equipment and other items and were able

to meet the weight restriction. I'm nervous about the following

statement on the AirKenya web site. "The carriage of excess baggage is

the sole discretion of the Company after taking into consideration the

aircraft being used and the number of passengers booked. When excess

baggage is carried it will be charged at the prevailing freight rate.

Paying the extra freight is not an issue as the exchange rate equals

to $2.20 per kg. At most I may be 6 - 10 lbs over.

 

Has any one been forced to leave baggage behind or been charged

excessive fees? What packing strategies did you use? Some people

advocate using a photo vest and walking on with your equipment.

Personally I don't see how that would work in this situation

 

Thanks in advance for your repsonses.

 

--Joel Turner

[alex_lofquist]

I have never had to pay a baggage premium out of Wilson Airport. I had always signed up with a guide and they had a way to "take care of excess baggage". Leaving from Kenyatta International is a different story: it all depends on the carrier and the destination.

[jreades]

If you're travelling with a group then chances are that one of two things will happen:

 

1. It'll all mysteriously get taken care of.

 

2. You'll be asked to leave a bag with your tour company in Nairobi and either it will make its way to you via car/minibus or they'll hold it until you get back.

 

So you certainly don't want to be leaving your pricey DSLR in Nairobi but maybe a few changes of clothes and some shoes or something to get you under the limit.

 

All of this is assuming that they even check. They might just weigh the entire plane at the end to figure out the fuel and not evey worry about whether any one person is over or under... Not to put too fine a point on it, but I seem to remember that when I flew out of Wilson there were two gutted planes parked right next to the runway. Of course, by then it was too late to bail but I was thinking that maybe the road was the way to go until I ended up on the Nairobi to Somalia highway a week later and wished for a plane, however unsound.

 

Ah, Africa.

 

jon

[alex_lofquist]

Once, prior to flying out of Kenyatta (Nairobi) to Mombasa, we were alerted to a small fire in one of the engines. They informed us that we would have to leave the plane, but had no facilities available for doing so. Eventually the brought up a stairway. (We finally left an hour later.) Africa is a real adventure.

[andrew robertson]

It sounds kind of gross, but there is fast drying travel clothing available now which has a

built in antibacterial technology. Maybe just 2 shirts, 1 pair pants, 1 pair shorts, and 3 pairs

boxers for your clothing?

[jreades]

Andrew's suggestion is actually quite logical, and sensible given your predicament.

 

I seem to remember having something on the order of 2 collared shirts, 3 t-shirts, and a couple of pairs of trousers for 3 weeks in Africa... The lions, elephants, wildebeest, and assorted wildlife seemed largely indifferent to my BO, and it's not like the rest of the guests don't stink to high heaven at the end of day spent roaming around the Serengeti.

 

As long as you remember lots of underwear the rest can pretty much take care of itself. Most places of any repute will have people 'happy' to wash your stinky clothes and if they're of the quick drying variety then you can even just do it yourself.

 

That said, do be reasonable about the amount of gear that you carry -- out of the cities it probably matters less (because it'll be packed away or in your tent/cabin/room), but it's never fun to lug around 40lbs worth of gear that you don't get around to using. At least unworn clothes are light. ;)

 

Besides, whatever packing space you *don't* use on the outbound trip can be stuffed full of souvenirs and tschotchkies from Nairobi. My trip to Africa wrapped up in Cape Town and I brought back six masks, a case of wine, placemats, and all kinds of stuff to hand out at the next family reunion.

 

Cheers,

 

jon

[mike cochran]

I went to Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe by small plane recently to 4 remote camps and the weight restriction was 26 lbs, considerably over half of which was my cameras/lenses, so I took only 1 change of clothes, for 2 1/2 weeks on safari. I used nylon type outdoors clothing, similar to swim suit material, made by Wide World Sportsman and Columbia, which are very light and durable, perfect for safari, and can be washed in a sink or tub at camp and will dry in hours or overnight and can be worn wet as well. The pants have zip off legs so you can use them as shorts, swim trunks, or long pants, and have built in nylon mesh 'underwear' like swim trunks, which obviates the need to carry that. The shirt has vents with nylon mesh, very cool, and had long sleeves that roll up and fasten. That way it takes all of minutes to wash your stuff once in a while, and your clothing is reduced to only a few ounces. The stuff also acts as a very effective sunblock. After all that planning it turned out the airport authorities and bush pilots NEVER checked the weight of anyone's bags anyway, so we could have carried more weight. Flights were to Windhoek, Ongava, Kulula, Duma Tau, and Xigera camps. By the way I also carried a small portable 60 gigabyte hard drive made by X-drives, which is battery operated and rechargable, with card slots for digital media, and about the size and weight of an Ipod, so I could shoot full 8 megapixel resolution with both RAW and JPEG simultaneously, and I only needed two 1-gig compact flash cards, which are downloadable in the field ( the portable hard drive fits in your pocket!) and can be recharged back at camp. I took over 2000 pix which equated to a little more than half of the x-drive's 60 gig capacity. It cost about $215 on the internet through ebay. Good luck

[joel_turner]

Thanks for all the responses. I'm going to compile a list of items I need, thoroughly review camera equipment necessities and try to pare it down. I think between my wife and I we should be able to distribute the weight so that both of us have no more than 60lbs total.