Little did I know when I booked cheap plane tickets to fly to Phoenix (rather than to Tucson, our ultimate destination) that we’d have to spend an arm and a leg on a car rental but it’s starting to look that way. In Nashville, we rented a car for $22 a day – our bill for three days came to just under $70. In Phoenix, the mainstay companies like Thrifty were charging $290 for a week (we need the car for only 5 days) which wasn’t great but that turned out to be the “base rate” – with various fees the total comes to a whooping $430. (Which we didn’t find out until we actually reserved the car.) So we are looking at smaller rental companies like Fox, Payless and Sixt. I reserved a car from Fox and was assured that the final rate is $262. Of course I’m a little suspicious – since I’ve never heard of this company. I’ve looked them up on various travel websites and they get mixed reviews but generally okay ones in Phoenix. The other issue is our flight gets in very late – close to midnight so some companies aren’t open at that hour (sadly that includes Enterprise, which gave us the good deal in Nashville.) We also get in too late (11:51 p.m.) to probably make the last shuttle van to Tucson at 12:15 a.m. NEWS FLASH: just heard from my dad and his wife – they’ve decided to pick us up at the airport, which is very kind, especially given the late hour. So no car rental!
All this reminds me of a trip many years ago – 25 or so – when we rented a car from “Sisters Rental Car” in Morocco. It turned out okay although we were a bit nervous, especially driving the car – which was a flimsy number that looked like an over-sized sardine can with a wire coat hanger in the dashboard, that served as the gear shift – way up into the Atlas Mountains south of Fez.
Toubkal Mountain in Toubkal National Park in the High Atlas
ChuckGrassley (
