The journey to get here was definitely eventful. Our last night in Zanzibar included me getting the stomach flu in the middle if the night and spending most of the night laying on the bathroom floor. Especially problematic was the next days travel schedule. So with no sleep (for me at least) we took an hour long transfer to the Zanzibar airport which we'd briefly seen on the way in. On the way out we got a much better appreciation for how unique the place was. Upon entry to the airport you go through security (seemingly common in Africa) but here their x-ray machine was down. So the staff were non-chalantly going through every bag. After getting through this we got to the line for our boarding passes when we noticed the sound of a crying baby. We spot the baby, but there is no one around. After a few minutes a security guard shows up and tries to attend to the child to no avail. About 5 mins after this starts a mother walks over and received the withering stares of everyone in line. Upon reaching the end of the line, the gentleman who was tasked with taking the bags from the counter to the plane promptly insisted on a tip or our bags were going no where. Once we get to the other side, there is just one door out to the tarmac and our plane. And somehow in this airport, there was free wifi.
After that we had a four hour layover in Dar Es Salaam where we couldn't check into our flight because we were too early. We went to the nearby seating area to find it overflowing. Me, requiring frequent bathroom breaks and unable to be comfortable without laying down, decided to have a lay down on a towel in the middle of a hallway. After discovering our flight time was 3:40 and not 1:40, I resigned myself to a awful flight. I managed to eat some food and nap while the drunk South Africans did their best to pickup the flight attendants. Eventually we made it to Jo-burg and an airport that seemed world class compared to the other airports we'd been through (ie Nairobi: half burned down). We made it to our hotel where I had one of the best showers of my life before napping. Despite the exhaustion and dehydration we went out for a night on the town to an area recommended by out safari hosts. Thankfully, this morning I awoke with an appetite and some physical endurance as we went on a day long tour of the city. We visited the CBD, Soweto, Mandela's House, and the Apartheid Museum.
Tomorrow we head off in the morning for Port Elizabeth and our first of the South African national parks.
No comments:
Post a Comment