April 6th, 2024

We have a few updates for you all. On our last post we were headed for Durban, South Africa to try and get off the boat and continue on our way for our 5 day safari including Victoria Falls since we were unable to dock in Richard’s Bay, South Africa. Well that did not happen. The weather remained bad all day and the MSC boat was delayed leaving port and by the time they did and the port was clear the weather had turned again and we were unable to go in. It is a narrow channel but the tricky part about the port is that you have to turn around once you get in so that the front of the ship is facing out and there was concern that with the high winds we could not maneuver safely.

Below is the map of Durban and we were supposed to dock where the Queen Mary is so you can see some of the turns that would ahve to be made under high wind conditions.

Durban port

Finally around 5pm they came in to the Star theatre where everyone on the 2 overnight safaris were asked to wait and we were told we could not dock. They did not tell us anything else and that was a little disappointing. We did not know if Viking would try again in Port Elizabeth or what the plans were. We knew that Sunday was a sea day but we hoped to hear something and we never did. What we did notice was that the money we had paid to do the 5 day safari was placed back into our onboard account so that was our first clue that no other arrangements would be made. Now we had to scramble to get excursions for the next 2 ports since we had turned our tickets in since we thought we were going to be off the boat. We got put on the wait list for both ports for our first choice and we were lucky enough to get on our original excursions but others were not that lucky.

I should also mention at this point that there were quite a few people that had planned private safaris and were either going to fly out of Richard’s Bay or be picked up in Richard’s Bay. All of these people had already paid for their private safaris and from what we have heard most, if not all, were non-refundable. Viking has no responsibility since it was not a Viking excursion so people have lost thousands of dollars since we did not make the port and the alternative port fell through. As you can imagine there are some pretty unhappy people on board but Viking really did all they could to try and get us on shore and they cannot control the weather.

Next stop is Port Elizabeth and we do have a day safari planned.