Travels to South Africa (Part 3)

After an 11 flight to Cape Town, we arrived late. A long line at passport control began to assure me that I would miss my next flight. When I finished with passport control, I had about 25 minutes to get my ticket from the ticket counter and make it to the gate.

Before I could do that, I had to report my bag lost, so they would have the address of where to send it. Fortunately, they were already expecting me, so that went quickly, but cut into my time remaining.

After going to a ticket counter, they told me that I was in the wrong terminal, and I needed to go to the Domestic terminal. Laughing they said I would need to run around the airport and would not make it. When they said around, they meant that as in I was on one side of a circle and needed to run around. It took about 10 minutes.

The guy at the ticket counter told me he could not check me in because it was too later, to which I responded that I did not have any bags to check. That changed everything but I had to go to another counter to get a ticket number. After about 10 minutes, it was discovered that I already had that and just go back to the counter. We killed another 2 minutes or so figuring that out, which hinged on the fact that he count not find a return flight through Cape Town, which was good because I was not coming back through Cape Town. With this, he gave me my ticket and said they were holding the plane for me, so hurry!

After security, another run through the airport, I arrived at the gate, got on the bus and waited about 5 minutes. I guess there was not too much of a rush to leave right away. 100 meter drive took us to the airplane. Sitting in that seat was a wonderful feeling, knowing that in 2 hours, I would finally be in Jo'burg and I would be done. Thankfully, that was not a curse of a thought, since we arrived about on time after an uneventful flight.

The only bad news left was that, since I was supposed to arrive that morning, no one knew when I would not arrive and no one was there to take me to the hotel. After a quick call, it was determined that someone else was arriving in about an hour, so I just needed to wait for his ride to arrive and I could go with them. The driver arrived and we headed to the car. I kept asking about the other person arriving, which he assured me that he would not arrive for a while and someone else was picking him up. That turned out to not be true. Sorry about that! He ended having too wait an hour or so for the next group. I feel your pain, but at least my trip was now over. I slept during the 30 minute drive and it felt great!