We are 35000 feet over a cloudy Atlantic and as far as we are concerned it is 13:00 SA time inside the plane however the 6am mid Atlantic sunrise suggests differently! A normal sunrise takes the sun10mins to complete it took 5hrs as we are zooming along at 800km/h in the opposite direction! I presume and hope with all hopes we will get food soon whether its lunch or more break fast I don’t care and I’m sure my rumbling stomach wont care either!
Departure day turned out to be hectic and I arrived half an hour later than I wanted to mainly due to my own my fault as I forgot to add all my Outlook mail contacts to my G-mail account and only remembered this vital bit of info as I was getting into the car! However a quick bolt back to my office and with a few swear words aimed at a dinosaur printer I was on my way again!
Richard was waiting for my imminent arrival and I knew this from the “dude im thirsty” SMS I received while on the way to the airport! I found him in the domestic departures check in area after a quick howzit we made a bee line for the shortest check in queue, unfortunately Murphy was by our side and we ended up with the stupidest check in clerk! We did our best to exercise a good dose of patience and suppressed our urge to reach over and klap the moron! No point in getting excited about moron check in clerk especially the first of many to come!
With our boarding passes in hand we proceeded up to the Spur for a last decent bit a food before 36hrs or Airline cardboard!
The flight to JHB was boring (and firmly set the tone for the rest of the trip) to say the least.
Construction of a new terminal at OR Thambo airport made for a long walk to International Departures, and obviously our check in desk was No 89 of 100 and we entered the terminal at desk No 1. more walking. Once we finally found the Delta airlines desk we were subject to another security check in which we were informed that no canisters or bottles over 100ml are allowed on the plane, Richards sun cream was 125ml so he had to donate 2 bottles to the Detla Airlines security official! I have decided that there is a small consolation in that he was black and would find no use for his new sun cream!
(Real time update: still no food, but the view became infinitely more interesting than a vase blue expanse of ocean when we passed over a Container Ship, sad I know but work with me here I’ve been stuck in a pressurised tube for 15 hours!)
(Real Time update: My battery died just after the last paragraph and I couldn’t charge up in Atlanta. We have made it to Jamaica and have just got back from the Hardware store from buying a plug to charge the laptop)
JHB International departures terminal is boring, only interesting thig was a set of new HD TVs that thad the Sport Illistrated swimwear shoot showing, HD TVs are COOL!! Everything is in a visable 3D, the TV actually has depth to is, so the bikinis looked great!! We went to our gate and sat to wait for the plane to start boarding and met a SA dude on his way to belieze which is near Mexico on the Caribbean side. He had a relative that worked for Delta Ailimes so he gets free tickets but the poor bastard had to fly from Cape Town to Jozi to Dakar to Atlanta to Newark (NYC) to Houston to Belieze!!! And we were compatining about a meazly 36hrs!! We also had our first taste of a Redneck who had been on a hunting trip to SA and was pissed, reeked of alcohol, had a loud mouth and when he bumped into us all he could say was that his hunting trip was interrupted when the Safricans wanted to watch the cricket on tv, damn right!
The plane was rubbish. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was the oldest trans Atlantic 767 in the Delta fleet! I was looking forward to my own seat mounted LCD tv kicking back and watching a few good movies, there was no individual LCD TVs. And the only movie was Marie Antionete. Unamused. AND the bloody main projector kept turning off! I came to the conclusion that our projector was sharing a plug with the kettle in the galley. Idiots. For some reason the Flight Attendant thought his fist would fix it. Idiot. I was fast forming an opinion for the inhabitants of the Deep South! We managed to sleep for 7000km or till we were about an hour out of Dakar, Dakar looks a bit like the Aladdin movie, minus the purple genie and the princess. When we landed at 4:17 am it was 35’C. as I said the TV was a balls up but at least the play list was ok, Springsteen, Areosmith and Deff Leppard making an appearance.
Refuling took about an hour along with a security seach and taking on a few straglers. We promply fell asleep afer take off dreaming of a breakfast trolly that we hoped would be making an apperance shortly!
About an hour later I was woken by a hostess offering me Grapes or Almonds, FYI if you are ever woken and offered food make sure you ask at least 3 times before you make the choice, I only asked twice. In my drowsy sate of confusion I was highly confused as to wht they were offering me Grapes or Almonds for breakfast, Im not a fan of Almonds so I went for the Grapes. It was with bitter disappointment that I found out that I had just been served CREPES . Richard chose the Omelette. Bastard.
We slept some more and spent most of the rest of the flight reading, admiring the ocean and watching bits of Night at the Museum, at least when they weren’t using the plug for the kettle that is.
ATLANTA:
Atlanta Airport is huge. One terminal is bigger than CT International and JHB International put together, when we were on approach I could see another 4 planes around us as well as on alternate landing approach on parallel runways, once we had landed and taxied of the runway another 747 landed just behind us with another 4 in line behind it on landing approach. I was suitably impressed. We collected all our bags because we had to clear customs, I have come to the realization that Richard must be a dodgy looking chap to the men at customs, this time he had ALL his sun cream removed from his main bag, along with shave foam and deodorant. If they think he looks dodgy now they should wait for the return trip when hr will be lobster read from the sun, have a beard and smell off! To make it worse we later found out that we were supposed to check our main bags back in before customs! So we had to do a U-turn check our bags in and clear customs AGAIN! At least Richard had nothing left for them to take! The baggage handler was fascinated by our “Official Drinking and Pillaging Team” Shirts and wanted to know what we would be drinking at the competition, he thought it was a serious Team shirt!! So we told him we drink rum like water, his eyes looked like saucers! Ahh… the simple people in life.
Atlanta International transfer lounge is boring, this seems to be the theme for all transfer lounges worldwide. The only cool bits were the piano, the toilets, the taps in the hand basins and the rubbish bins, they were all automatic! The piano was playing all on its own, the toilets flushed as soon as you stood up, the taps turned on as soon as you put your hands under them and the bins have built in compactors! That kept us amused for about 10mins of our 5 hour transit.
I wanted to charge the Laptop so I found a plug in the Food court only to discover that the techie at back up did his job wat to well and swapped the taped on 2 pin plug for a proper 3 pin plug, which would be great if I was in SA but the 3 pin does not plug into my USA/Carribean plug adaptor! So you have had to wait extra long for this post because we had a beer instead. I could have bought a fancy adaptor from the electronic shop for $120 but im sure you understand why I didn’t!
The food court had crap food so we found a pub that slod food and ordered a burger and beer, there was more confusion with the language bariier when it came to ordering the optional sides it took a while to decipher the “wouldyalllikedafriesbrocoliorslawwithdat” to the English version of “would you like chips, broccoli or coleslaw with that” somehow we ended up with the broccoli.
The plane ride to Montego Bay felt like a snap of the fingers compared to the rest of the trip so far. The descent into Mobay was pleasant as we had a nice view of Jamaica all the way in. Customs was like Chalk and Cheese in comparison to the USA, if they were any more laid back they would be lying down, so we retained our last bit of sun cream which was just as well because today is awesome, blue skies, white sandy beaches, palm trees and sunbathers.
After customs we were met by our Hotel transfer dude, whos first words were (insert Jamaican accent here) “Hello ok you going to Negril, stand here, do you smoke the good stuff? You should buy some before you go it’s the best time of year” we hadn’t even left the airport yet!!
Transfer to Nergil took a bit less than 2 hrs, and of course our driver was a staunch West Indies supporter, which let to an amusing verbal battle as to who had the better team!! The American in the shuttle with us wanted to know if the “World Cup” was a big event. I had to bite my tongue at let the driver answer him.
Our estimate of 36hrs door to door was bang on, we arrived at 7pm local time, or midnight for us, and checked into our room. This is a nice hotel and bit more like a motel I spose, we have a kitchenette, bathroom and a bedroom with two beds.
That’s it from me, Richard will update you for the next post.
Its Rum time!!
