Flight

This is the first time around.

The flight was long for me. DC to Jburg through Dakar, then a short domestic flight to Cape Town. It was something around 19-20 hours total flying time. The coolest part was taking off from Dakar with the sunrise and seeing all the fishing boats shove off with the sun. The weirdest part was the disinfectant they sprayed all through the cabin prior to take off from Dakar. The worst part was that they wake everyone up from sleeping, turn on the lights and make you move so they can clean and re-stock the plane. At that point I think everyone except for Business/First Class feels gross and doesn’t want to be woken for any reason.
I sat next to a rugby bloke from Pretoria who went to college in Tennessee and currently resides there and operates a contracting business. He was a really nice guy and gave me a list of his favorite foods and drinks. SSA is awesome with beverage service and have a lot of wines and are not at all stingy with drinks. The guy I say next to introduced me to Castle and we had several over the course of our 20 hours together. I watched Ice Age 2 and Up for my movies and finished a book on the flight. It was a new Airbus and had a good entertainment console with a lot of old movies, nothing new at all.
Let’s see, I spent something around 3 or 4 hours at the Jburg airport and walked around a lot, read all of the World Cup advertisements, and had an expensive drink at the terminal bar that equated to $3. Still the most expensive drink I have had in this country.
I arrived in Cape Town around 11:30PM local time, but unfortunately, my bags did not. The good news is they arrived in the evening of the following day and were never lost, just stuck behind on the tarmac in Jburg. I didn’t get a 24 hour stipend, but I was happy enough to have a towel, soap, and clean underwear after three days of being in the same clothes.
That’s it for now, the trip in a nutshell minus all of the boring parts on the plane.