Let the Payments Begin

Oh. My. Gawd. I have just paid for my flight to Canada. Okay, the flights I managed to find yesterday were cheaper than any I'd managed to find when I was first planning this trip (under 12K, R1 under, for flights to Winnipeg, not too bad considering I could barely get a quote under 20K from Pentravel or Flight Center!). So that I'm grateful for. It's still a shedload of cash and handing it over in drips and drabs for a trip makes me nervous. I've completed and signed my booking form which will be scanned and emailed this evening (which is when they're next awake anyway). And I assume my deposit for that will come off almost immediately. At least the deposit isn't too bad at all. And then hopefully I'll only have to pay the remaining amount in July. Trying to balance payment for this trip and Zanzibar has been a little tricky :) But at least I'm managing to stagger it somewhat and I do have all the money in a savings account waiting to be spent (so it's not affecting my day-to-day). Sheesh. Still, it's something to see your balance drop like that in a matter of a month.

Oh, and with that I should mention that I collected my passport from Visas Zone yesterday with my shiny new Canadian Visa in it :) So how did my experience with them compare to MDS Visa? Well, let's weigh them up. Visas Zone is by far (over R100) cheaper than MDS Visa. But they didn't quote me the actual price I'd be paying ... they left out the VAT. Which is an annoying extra R49 ... taking their fee up to R399 compared with MDS Visa's R513 (or thereabouts). But on the other hand, the process with MDS Visa seemed somehow slicker and more efficient, if only because their had a courier service collect my passport and documents from me and deliver my passport back to me. I had to brave Sandton during midday to drop off and collect my passport with Visas Zone. My Canadian Visa did take longer than I expected but, I think that was down to the Consulate and the public holiday, rather than Visas Zone itself. But, let's face it, my experience with MDS Visa was still a walk in the park compared with Varen's last year. So I'd still say, if you can handle the trip to Sandton, use Visas Zone.

Other than my Polar Bear trip coming together, last night wasn't too exciting. A typical Monday :)