I am currently sitting in my hotel room in Accra, Ghana! I am here with three of my classmates to work on our G-Lab project which, as I mentioned in my previous posts, is to develop a sub-Saharan market entry strategy for a high-end antenna system. We will be meeting various regulators, operators, tower companies and base station providers in Ghana and Kenya to conduct a more in-depth on-ground research of the telecommunications sector in Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya. Unfortunately our Nigeria on-ground trip was cancelled due to some travel safety concerns, but we will be spending three weeks total in Ghana and Kenya over the MIT Independent Activities Period.
But first thing's first, I should talk about my trip to New Zealand, which was absolutely amazing. Unfortunately I got off to a rough start because of a snowstorm in Boston and my really complicated trip itinerary. Basically, my itinerary for winter break looked like this: Boston -> Miami -> Bogota -> Miami -> Boston -> LA -> Sydney -> Wellington -> Queenstown; Queenstown -> Christchurch -> Wellington -> Sydney -> LA -> Boston -> DC -> Accra -> Nairobi -> Zurich -> Boston. I left Bogota a few weeks ago and successfully flew back to Miami from Bogota. However, I realized that I had a 12 hour overnight layover so I had to get a hotel room. Then on my way back to Boston, it started snowing and the entire east coast was on travel alert due to the upcoming snowstorm. Fortunately my plane from Miami managed to arrive in Boston, but my flight to LA had been cancelled. The next 48 hours was just pure stress. The Facebook mini-feed was filled with status updates from my classmates who had their flights cancelled. Fortunately, I managed to book the last seat on a Virgin flight leaving for LA, which was great because otherwise I would not have been able to leave Boston for two days. It was one of the last planes to leave Boston that day just as the snowstorm was hitting, but unfortunately it took too long to de-ice the plane that I missed my connecting flight to Sydney. In a way it was a blessing because I got to meet up with my really close college friend in LA and a Sloanie who graduated last year, but I spent the entire night calling United and Air New Zealand because now I was going to miss the rest of my connecting flights to New Zealand. It was a nightmare with neither of the airlines wanting to take responsibility for the flight cancellation for the rest of the trip because the tickets were booked separately. United advised me to just catch the next flight over to Sydney and sort things out with Air New Zealand there... and voila, everything worked out in Sydney. Having lived only in places with warm or relatively warm weather (especially compared to Boston), it was the first time I had ever run into this sort of problem and learned a number of things in the process: 1) it is nice to have travel insurance for long flights originating from or going to Boston or the northeast in general during the winter; 2) try to have the same airline take you all the way; 3) if at all possible, avoid coming back to the northeast to travel elsewhere in the winter; 4) airlines are so much nicer to you once you've actually missed your flight... if you try to re-book for flights you are going to miss, they try to charge you a lot of money.
Anyway, in the end I arrived in the sunny and beautiful land of New Zealand and everything from thereon was a blast. It was a small trip with a couple of my close buddies at Sloan, and we started out the trip in Queenstown, driving up the lake towards Glenorchy, exploring the paradise track and doing some hikes along some trails. We saw sheeps - lots of them - and enjoyed the magnificent scenary that is the sculpture of nature. We did a tour of Milford Sound, which is actually not a sound but a fjordland, and stopped by some lakes and nature walks along the way. That night we celebrated new years eve in Queenstown with a couple other tourists we met there. Queenstown had a cute band and lovely fireworks for new years eve. We hit a dance club and had kebab on our way back to the hotel. Next day we hit the road to go to Mount Cook. We hiked the mountain in the rain and went close to the glaciers. We ended the trip at Christchurch, where we swam with hector dolphins.
Some of the best things about New Zealand were milky blue lakes, snow-capped mountains, surreal landscape, cherries, sheeps, icecream and other desserts. The trip felt very short though, so next time I will go there for at least a month and do a glacier hike and perhaps the Milford Sound hike as well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFIZ502-eAs&feature=player_embedded
I came back to Boston from New Zealand two days ago, spent a day resting and packing, and then boarded my flight over to Ghana. The weather here is nice and warm (92 degrees... yes!) and people are extremely friendly. We're going to Cape Coast Castle and Kakum National Park today to do the canopy walk.
Happy IAP! I'll blog about my trip to Ghana and Kenya next.
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