July 26th fly from Ouaga in Burkina Faso via Abidjan, Ivory Coast to Dubai, United Arab Emirates onto Melbourne and to Auckland arriving on Tuesday 28th to meet Tony at the Airpost, helping change terminals before flying in the evening to Wellington to meet Tessa and Melioni. It is always sad when Melioni does not recognise me after some weeks apart.
Wednesday we drove to Gisborne to sort medical supplies for the Bolivian expedition. meet again with Saint Vinny´s from Campion College on their fund raising night with Dominos Pizza. Thank you Saint Vinnys club for the very generous donation.
There was time for interview with FM Radio Gisborne and the Gisborne Herald, (Thank you for printing the complimentary photo), and on Saturday a small meeting of available Troppodoc Trustees and it was time to drive back to Wellington with Tessa and Melioni so Tessa could go back to Recovery Department night shift. A couple of days of sleeping off jet lag in Wellington and spending lots of time with Melioni, preparing her for her time in South America with me, warm clothes for a 10,000 ft altitude change.
On Tuesday August 4th, we drove back to Gisborne to meet with Roger to talk about the rapidly changing web page (Thank you for your hours and hours of valuable time) and Wednesday on the drive to Mount Maunganui to meet with Margaret and John, Marietta and Jenny, Stephanie, Sean, Jenna and Lauren. I found out that Melioni was unable to travel with Bronni and I to Bolivia as her Indonesian passport needs a visa (minimum 10 working days to get from Sydney Embassy) and the stop over (18 hours) in Argentina would need a seperate visa for Melioni and that would take a minimum of 25 working days!!!!
August 6th meant an early morning drive from McLaren Falls to Auckland to meet Bronni off her plane and we organised medicines for Bolivia at Tonys house to check in at 1830 hours with an extra luggage allowance (total 92 kgs, Thank you Aerolineas Argentinas) and soon Bronni and I were flying to South America on Troppodocs Exploritory Challenge.