While I am not a complete noobie to collecting miles or even using them, its always been on rather straight forward itineraries. However, for this trip the itinerary will be somewhat complex and I will have to take advantage of all kinds of partnerships. We are allocating ~2 months and we'd like to visit Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and S Africa. My initial thoughts are to fly from RDU to E.Africa; Addis Ababa, Nairobi or Dar es Salaam. If we land in Addis we would visit Ethiopia for 3 weeks or so and then head onto Kenya for a week or so to visit the Masai Mara. Then we would possibly go to Tanzania just for the Serengeti before flying to S Africa. We could travel S Africa in either direction flying into either Jo'burg or Cape Town and then fly out of the other back home.

The whole trip would be 2 months or so and we have all kinds of flexibility and would like to take advantage of stopovers and mileage partners. I currently have the following points:

American Airlines- Mine- 179,973
Wife- 114,504

Membership Rewards- 97,976 (Delta, Aeroplan Air canada, Flying Blue, Air France, KLM, ANA Star Alliance, Asia Miles, Emirates, Iberia, Singapore Kris Flyer, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin America)

Ultimate Rewards- 145,660 (Mileage Plus United, british Airways, Korean Air, Singapore Kris Flyer, Virgin Atlantic, Southwest Airlines)

Starpoints- 46,759 (Virgin Atlantic, Aeroplan Air canada, American Airlines, Delta, Emirates, ethiad, Flying Blue)

While it would be nice to fly some legs first class it is not necessary. My first attempt was to plug in an RDU one way flight to Dar on AA search engine and it showed up with ~$575 in charges in addition to the 37,500 points which makes no sense.

Thoughts anyone?

Thanks in advance.