I just missed my last sunrise by 10 minutes. Shame. By the time I wandered in to the lounge at 6.25am the sun was casting a gorgeous red/orange glow into the room. I couldn't get back to sleep so I stayed up. G&M had to pop out to sort something out with the bakkie, and Gail arrived to see us before we left.
It was a beautiful, hot sunny day. We had breakfast and then sat in the garden chatting all morning, interspersed with bits of packing here and there. I am determined not to exceed the luggage allowance of 20kg each, and so I'm throwing away all sorts of clothes that we won't use again and leaving all my leftover sunscreen etc. with the family!
Before we left I gave Dad's little journal of his time in SA to Margaret, and asked her to pass it on to Gordon. I didn't want to give it to him directly as I thought it might all get a bit emotional.
We left the house at about 2pm for the airport. We had a clear run and G&M parked up and came in to see us off after check in. However, we encountered a big problem at check in. Whilst we had paperwork confirming our South African Airways (SAA) flights from Durban to Jo'burg and then on to Heathrow, the BMI agent who booked the flights for me had not properly ticketed them - so the check in girl was missing a ticket code for the DUR-JNB leg. Without it, she could not issue us boarding cards. She'd already tagged the luggage and sent it through.
After much faffing, she came back from the SAA office and said her manager was dealing with it and was trying to contact London to get the code. In the meantime we'd have to wait. The next update we got was when she told us that is was "highly unlikely" we'd be on our flight to Joburg (due to leave at 15.40). But that she'd be able to put us on the 16.40 (provided that London sorted the references out) and we'd still make our Heathrow connection. In the meantime she was going to have our luggage taken off the flight and brought back round to check in.
Ok, we sat and waited. Time marched on (we'd told G&M to go before the traffic out of Durban built up) and still no answer... then I saw a guy bring a piece of paper to her and say "this is what you need". So I assumed she'd be calling us over soon. She didn't. Instead, she disappeared for a very long time and was last spotted hovering at the stand by desk. Maybe the flight was full and she was struggling to find 2 seats for us? It was by now 10 minutes before the 16.40 flight was due to close and I was getting really anxious. I went looking for the check in girl and found her in a small office near the main SAA offices. She looked at me and said "Oh". I said that the 16.40 flight was about to close and what was happening.... another girl dragged her away by the hand and they were giving each other sly looks!! She turned and said to me "I promise you'll be on that flight". NOW I was getting worried.
I went back to Roy, who was waiting by the check in desk. She came back and started to check us in, but was making a complete hash of it. Eventually her supervisor came along and helped out but I could not relax until I'd seen those boarding cards print out! Just at the last minute, I noticed our cases trundling away on the conveyor belt with JNB labels on them. I asked her "have you checked those bags through to Heathrow?". She said "Oh shit" (no kidding) and ran after them to put the proper LHR labels on. I guess the only good news about today was that our bags weighed in spot on 40kgs!
So we then hot footed it through security and pretty much straight on to the flight. We weren't sitting together but it was only an hour flight so not too bad. I read the in flight mag, had a much needed glass of white wine and watched my last African sunset just as we landed in Johannesburg. A perfect red ball falling below the arc of the earth. Wow.
Joburg Airport is hideous (think Heathrow but with hustler) and we had our last tourist sting of the holiday happen! Our own faults for standing about looking confused as to how to get to International Departures. A smartly dressed guy came and asked what we were looking for and before we knew it was showing us the way and politely demanding a "nice tip" for his trouble!
Ah well... soon enough we were in the Baobab lounge and relaxing for a short while. Unfortunately we missed the early boarding call for Business Class passengers and ended up in a HUGE queue to board the flight.
We ate dinner and then tried to sleep. It was SO hot though, and I did not sleep well. Watched a movie (Juno) and tried to sleep again. Not much joy. I thought the drama of today might have exhausted us!
We landed on time and had enough time (but not much spare) to collect our bags and get through to the domestic terminal. The walk to baggage collection was about 3 miles long. Don't you just love international airports? I was a bit worried about whether our bags would actually have made it through - the one place you don't want your bags going missing is Joburg! Most of the SA passengers seemed to have their suitcases shrinkwrapped in cellophane for security reasons!
So we stood at the carousel and waited. And waited. And waited some more. Ever the voice of doom, Roy decided that our bags were lost. But then, just as we'd given up hope, out they came. Leaving us now quite short on time to make the connection, and we were tired and irritable. So getting to domestic check in, we thought it would be quick and easy as we'd checked in online and printed boarding passes at Margarets the day before. But a nice "jobsworth" security man was determined to hold us up (he'd seen us trying to sneak through a "no entry" section of the BMI area) and made us go to a separate set of scales to have our luggage weighed. When we got there, the woman looked at us and said "why are you hear, just go to the bag drop". We explained that we'd been trying to but got stopped. Grrrrr... as we passed the guy again he just smirked at us.
So finally we were in Leeds. We booked a taxi and were home at last.
The end.
