Month: December 2021

E-mail to the team:

Dear Kenya expeditioners and partners,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. 19 (out of 24) have replied. 9 do not want to defer (4 do), 3 want to defer if there is any quarantine at either end, 2 are undecided and 1 does not mind either way. Nobody has deferred already.

In some encouraging news, there are early indications that three Biontech vaccine shots provide ‘significant’ protection against omicron and that boosters are the way out of variant trouble. Further clarity should emerge in the next two to three weeks.

My decision for now is therefore to wait for another 3.5 weeks until Friday, 7 January at the latest to make a final decision on whether to run the expedition or not. Please do not make any balance payments until that decision is made and ignore the 3 January deadline on your invoices. Please also make sure you obtain adequate insurance cover.

It is extremely likely that we will require everyone to have had three vaccine shots, with the last not older than six months by the time your expedition ends and at least 14 days before your expedition starts. This should give you plenty of time to sort out your booster vaccinations between now and when you start your expedition.

Please feel free to continue to engage, ask further questions and share your news and opinions. We will also provide updates as necessary and will get back to you by 7 January at the latest, if not before.

Have a great Christmas and all the best for 2022. Stay healthy and hopefully we will see you all in Kenya.

Regards

Dr. Matthias Hammer
Executive Director

We have just deferred our 2022 Arabia expedition for another year. Here’s why (from an e-mail to the team):

—–Original Message—–
From: Biosphere Expeditions
Sent: 04 December 2021 12:40
Subject: Arabia expedition deferred

Dear Arabia expeditioners,

thank for your patience and kind words of support and encouragement over the last 10 days or so.

We now have three people who have already deferred to the expedition 2023 and three more who are strongly in favour of deferring / about to defer.

This means that it is now well-nigh impossible to run the expedition, whatever happens with the pandemic or the omicron variant.

I have therefore taken the decision to defer the expedition for another year and hope you will understand and support this decision. 

The dates of the 2023 expedition are 7 – 14 January 2023. If you would like to defer to that expedition, then please just e-mail back and we will do the rest for you. You can also defer to any other expedition on our portfolio within the next 30 months. You can tell us now or later which expedition and we will handle everything else for you. Details of how deferment works are on https://www.biosphere-expeditions.org/faq#coronavirus.

If you require any confirmation letters for insurance purposes, then please also let us know. 

Thank you again for your support and understanding. Thank you for your patience. I am sorry for the disappointment and the inconvenience this decision will cause you.

Stay health, stay safe and we will see you on the other side of this in a year, if not before.

Regards

Dr. Matthias Hammer
Executive Director

Thank you to you, our Friends and all donors of our coronavirus appeals. Through your support and generosity, we managed to raise over € 85,000 across three appeals! Thank you very much for this. This has given us a good chance of survival, even if the pandemic is coming back with an omicron vengeance and we are likely to have to defer expeditions early in 2022 yet again.

But for now, let’s celebrate this success and give you the thanks and honour you deserve for supporting us. You can see details of the appeals and an honour roll of donors here. 

So thank you again from all of us at Biosphere Expeditions. We really appreciate your support and we probably would not be around today without it.

All of us at Biosphere Expeditions