Sydney - Johannesburg - Cape Town
Trip Start
Jan 22, 2006
1
156
Trip End
Aug 16, 2006
Cape Town, South Africa
Monday, June 26, 2006
At such an early hour the hostel was deserted, apart from the poor chap behind the reception desk. We handed in our keys to him and then stood outside the hostel at 6am, waiting for the airport shuttle that we'd booked yesterday to show up. By 6.15am there was no sign of it and we'd spent fifteen minutes in the cold, as well as finding out just how many weirdos there were wandering around Sydney at that time in the morning after an intoxicated Saturday night (a night much like the one I imagined my brother was having back in England to celebrate his birthday at that moment in time). A white mini bus did turn up five minutes later, but it turned out not to be the one that we'd booked. However since it was the same price as what we'd been quoted and was leaving at 6.30am, we quickly put our bags onboard. We were joined by a large Irish family who were heading towards the domestic terminal and who looked a little worse for wear (again perhaps a little like my brother was looking at the moment!).
After a twenty minute journey we pulled up in front of the International terminal, paid $10 dollars each and shook the hand of our Russian driver. Here was a first for us, we were five minutes early for the official start of checking in time for our flight (it'll definitely never happen again!). This meant that the check in clerk refused to deal with us and we had to wait for five minutes before they'd attend to us. Finally we got rid of our rucksacks, cleared immigration and went through the hand luggage security checks. Here we had a half hearted look around the duty free shopping area and book shop (purchases made in both but nothing exciting). We were both a little disappointed to find that there were only a couple of restaurants in the departure lounge itself, so I had a measly bowl of Coco Pop and a cup of tea.
The prospect of a fourteen hour flight wasn't really an appealing one to me and as a result I was in a bad mood by the time we boarded the plane. Our flight was fairly full because there was a large number of teenage girls who were going to South Africa on a school trip. I thought that their destination slightly shaded the visit that I'd been on to Hungerford's twin town when I was at secondary school. They'd also had special jumpers made for the trip with the Lion King character "Simba" on the back, which Lynne was very envious.
We settled into our seats and were relieved to find that there was a good selection of films and television programmes to watch during the upcoming flight. We both watched Woody Allen's latest film Matchpoint which we both thought was excellent, I then surfed around the channels, stopping on anything that was of vague interest to me. The only interruptions were from the excellent cabin staff who always seemed to be dropping off drinks, meals and snacks. By now the schoolgirls had realised that they could get away with ordering alcohol, so we watched them consume a large amount of beers and spirits. I restricted myself to a mini bottle of white wine and a mini bottle of red wine with each of our main meals. Although I suppose getting blind drunk is one way to get through a fourteen hour flight.
If I had have passed out though, I'd have missed the chance to look out of the window and see us flying over Antarctica. Due to our flight plan today we flew across Australia and then curved south, so we ended up flying over Antarctica for a good couple of hours. Fortunately it was light at this point, so we were able to see the huge stretches of ice below us. It was pretty amazing to see and I never thought that I'd ever get to see Antarctica with my own eyes, even if it was from 34,000 feet.
After many hours on the plane, we finally arrived at Johannesbury at 4pm (African time) but since we were still running on Australian time it was actually midnight for us. As usual we picked the very slowest customs queue and as a result it was almost 5pm by the time we were walking into the domestic terminal, so we could check in for our British Airways flight to Cape Town. Fortunately this went very smoothly, otherwise we might have been in real danger of missing our flight. I slept for the majority of this two hour flight, well I did manage to force down another meal as well. Thanks to studying the back of my eyelids for 120 minutes, it felt like no time at all when we were touching town at Cape Town.
We picked up our bags and were met by the airport shuttle driver, as we had arranged when we were in Australia. Lynne nervously drew some money out of a nearby cashpoint, so we had some money to pay her with. We'd read in our guidebook that using a cashpoint in South Africa can sometimes be a bit of a risky thing to do, but it went without a hitch. Climbing aboard the minibus, we were taken on a high speed and rather hair raising ride through the streets of Johannesburg. It was only about a twenty minutes journey and we were soon pulling up outside of our hostel (A Sunflower Stop). After getting through the massive security gate that they have outside the front of it, we were shown immediately to our room by a member of staff who must have kept the front desk open especially for us.
In our room we put our beds on the floor and collapsed on our beds. It was 10pm African time, but for our weary bodies it was 4am and we'd almost been up for twenty four hours. Surprisingly enough neither of us had any difficulty falling asleep.
