South Africa Bound

Today is the day we finally depart for South Africa after months of planning and preparations including updating Jane’s passport, vaccinations, obtaining anti-malaria prescriptions, making arrangements with our intrepid cat- and house-sitter (Will),  installing eSIM cards in our phones, etc.

This adventure promises to be a unique, diverse, and interesting one for us. We’ll start by visiting our friends, Paula and Fikret, in Pretoria. Fikret is on a year-long sabbatical from NCSU at the University of Pretoria’s Future Africa Campus. After there, we’ll spend five days on safari in Kruger National Park and Sabi Sands Game Preserve. Then, we’ll fly to Cape Town for a day and a half of touring. From there, we’ll fly to Victoria Falls along the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia, where we’ll rendezvous with Fikret and Paula for a few more days of sightseeing before we head back home. 

This morning has been full of the usual last-minute hectic-ness of preparing to leave and at the same time, having the house fit for occupancy. Around noon, I turned on the television to watch the NCSU vs Notre Dame football game. (ABC wasn’t available via Spectrum due to a dispute, so I tuned in using the over-the-air signal.) However, a fierce thunderstorm blew through the area, the power flickered a few times, and the football game was eventually postponed. 

Finally, around 1:30, we were ready, and I called for a ride to the airport via Uber. We yelled our goodbyes down the hallway to Zorro who was hiding under the bed as we shut the front door to wait for our ride on the porch. The rain had subsided but part of the ride to RDU was slowed due to traffic from the delayed ball game. At the airport, something unusual happened, we did not have to wait in a line to check-in, we had a friendly attendant, and passing through security was a breeze. It was as if we had passed through a wormhole back to the days when air travel was a reasonably pleasant experience.

The flight to Atlanta went smoothly, too. We change terminals there and managed to find a decent dinner with a beer at a TGI Friday restaurant. After boarding and taking off on schedule, the crew offered another dinner that we refused (but we were given a cookie that the flight attendant said was the best part of the meal). Jane watched a movie (her first of three) while I read some and eventually began nodding off as it was past my usual bedtime.

 Sunday, September 10,  2023

We passed from Saturday to Sunday while sleeping somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, Somehow, I managed to get about seven hours of relatively undisturbed sleep. Upon awakening, Jane and I enjoyed tomato sandwiches with potato chips that she had prepared and carried aboard. The plane lighting remained off nearly all of the rest of the flight until a little over an hour before landing to allow us to eat a light breakfast (even thought is was nearly 6 pm at our destination). Seems most airlines follow this scheme of little light exposure and the incorrect meal so as to worsen the effect of jet lag on their passengers. Sigh.

After, disembarking in Johannesburg, we found our place in the passport control line. The queue was long and while waiting, I managed to get my eSIM card working and texted Fikret of our situation. Our line moved excruciatingly slow until the booths for locals with South African passports were opened and some of our line was rerouted allowing for faster processing. Finally, we were in! We had to ask directions to the correct carousel but found our luggage waiting there for us. We quickly rolled our bags into the arrivals area and found our pre-arranged EZ Shuttle driver waiting for us in the crowd holding up a sign with our name on it.

The shuttle ride from the Jo’burg airport to Pretoria went smoothly but because it was already dark, it was hard to see much beyond the highways. We texted Fikret as we passed through the first Future Africa campus gate and as our driver pulled up to the third campus gate, there was Fikret awaiting our arrival! We rolled our bags on sidewalks around a few building before arriving at his on-campus house.

Paula greeted us at the door. It was great seeing them both again. Their abode for a year is a relatively new building with three bedrooms & baths, a kitchen/dining area and a den plus a brick patio in the back. We enjoyed sitting around in the den for awhile catching up on news before weariness overtook all of us and we headed to bed.