So, originally the plan was to head from Mexico City to Lisbon Portugal to spend about 3 months traveling around Europe. Unfortunately, my buddy who is traveling Europe with me had to delay his trip, so I pulled an audible as well. Luckily, as previously mentioned, I didn’t really have anything planned other than a 1 way flight to Portugal which is easy to change.
So, after doing some research I decided to head to East Africa, with my primary goal being to catch the great wildebeest migration on safari and also spend a week in Zanzibar on the beach. I found a very reasonable flight to Nairobi, next I needed to book the safari. So, I started reaching out to safari companies. The first 2 I talked to literally laughed at me. “Sir, you are trying to book a safari on 2 weeks notice, for the busiest time of the year, and we have many guests who had to postpone their trips the past 2 years due to covid. How about booking something for 2023?”
Apparently booking a safari on 2 weeks notice is very much not recommended. However, I’m not good at taking no for an answer lol. So I reached out to 20 more safari companies, 5 of which got back to me with pretty reasonable options, given the circumstances.
Once I nailed down the safari itinerary I wanted, the next challenge raised by the tour company was that I needed a yellow fever vaccine and I had to get it 7-10 days before starting the safari to ensure it was effective. I learned this exactly 7 days before the safari was set to start, so I had to find a vaccine that day in CDMX. I also needed Malaria pills and had reached out to my doctor in the US on this. He came back to me with a prescription that was only available in the US and also needed to be started 2 weeks before my trip. This wasn’t going to work, so I reached out to him to see if he could provide me a prescription for Mexico and it there were alternative medications that didn’t require a 2 week lead time. His response was “Sorry, I can only fill prescriptions in the US, can you delay your trip to Africa?” Thanks for nothing US healthcare system, I’ll figure this out myself.
I spent an entire afternoon trying to get this yellow fever vaccine and malaria pills. I went to 7 pharmacies and it became very clear that the pills that had been prescribed in the US are not available in Mexico. From there I went to 4 different clinics looking for the yellow fever vaccine, finally the 4th one I visited had it available! After the doctor gave me the shot, I explained to him that I was going to Africa the following week and needed malaria pills. He spoke no English, so this was a fun conversation. It’s one thing to be at a Mexican restaurant speaking to someone in Spanish and you may not catch everything they say but it doesn’t really matter. It’s a whole different scenario to be in a doctor’s office talking about medications for potentially deadly diseases with a doctor and not being able to fully understand what he’s saying. There was lots of “repite por favor” and some intervention of google translate in there, but we got through it and he gave me a prescription for malaria pills.
Next stop, back to the pharmacy to get my malaria prescription filled. I give the pharmacist my prescription, he gives me back 50 malaria pills, which was not enough. The prescription said I needed to take the pills twice a day while in Africa and then for 4 weeks afterwards, meaning I needed about 100 pills. The pharmacist was only accounting for the 4 weeks after my trip, not the trip itself, which I was trying to explain to him was an additional 3 weeks. He told me he could only give me the 4 weeks worth of pills because that is what was called out in the prescription and I would need a new prescription for more pills. At this point there was no way in hell I was going back to that doctor’s office to get ANOTHER prescription for malaria pills, when the one in my hand was sufficient. He didn’t seem like he was going to budge either though, so I dug my heels in at the counter and activated my super power of becoming the loudest man in the world and made things very uncomfortable for everyone in the store until he gave me my extra damn malaria pills LOLOLOL.
So there you have it, while I probably wouldn’t recommend booking a peak season safari adventure from a foreign country less than 2 weeks in advance, it can be done. You just have to be comfortable with cutting it very close, paying a little extra and sometimes you just have to be the most obnoxious guy at the pharmacy to get what you want.
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