I departed rainy old enfield at 2:15 to head for heathrow! I deliberately made sure we left with plenty of time as I have the memory of a goldfish and the family nickname of 'dangerous Brian'. All family goodbyes apart from the Cawdery household was done and dusted and it was finally time to head for Cape Town!
We headed towards the departure gates at about 4:30 after checking in and having a soppy old goodbye! Aaaaaaanndddd that's where my reputation didn't let me down. I somehow had persuaded myself that we had a matter of 10 minutes to get to the boarding gate B33! Me and Jeff cracked a sweat on running with 8kg bags in our hands breaking our neck to get to B33! Only to realise that the gate closes 20 minutes before the DEPARTURE time of 18:05 and NOT the BOARDING time of 17:05. In short.. Me and Jeff will be using the baby wipes I put in my hand luggage for our armpits seeing as we'd just sprant for our lives to get there for a time which was more than ample (16:45). To top it all off, the drinks vending machine swallowed 2 pound of mine when I went to purchase a bottled water. Great start.
I arrived on to the plane with the greeting of 2 air hostesses saying 'ehhhh it's Justin Bieber'. Not amused. I settled into my seat which was typically allocated next to the toilets. This didn't really bug me much but I was sitting next to jeff and that was the priority! I watched two films on the plane,Both sequels of films I was dying to see! Grown ups 2 and Kick ass 2. Both were hilarious and I'm sure I would have annoyed a few people with my laughing. Ahhh well! Within an hour I was given the option of having lamb or the vegetarian option as my meal. There was no hesitation on my part to go for the meaty option, however Jeff told me he was a vegetarian which came as a pleasant surprise, fair play to the lad.
I Decided to watch history boys in the second half of the flight, whilst dozing in and out of sleep. I was awoken by the option for breakfast of either scrambled egg or continental. The continental option was very average to say the least. So of course.. I went for the scrambled egg option. Within a few hours of jeff telling me he was a vegetarian.. He had broken it! His excuse was that he was 'sooooo hungry'... Poor show! Gradually it was becoming lighter outside and this only meant one thing.. We was finally close to being in South Africa!!!!
We arrived at around 7:00, way ahead of schedule according to the pilot, which was great news! We walked out of the plane through a tunnel and headed towards passport control! The cue was Minuscule for the 'other passports' line in comparison to the 'south African passports line' which was Great for us!! Everyone so far that we have met has been extremely nice and showered us with compliments and celebrity look alikes. We had gone through passport control and were subsequently on our way to baggage reclaim! Despite our previous clumsiness (much on my part) we had good luck in terms of delays etc. Within 5 minutes of getting to baggage reclaim.. we had our bags!!! Now it was time to head for the 're-check in' area! No hassles there either, Simple stuff!
We had successfully reached Johannesburg in one piece with all our belongings..Miracle!! We had plenty of time to spare and were quite peckish so we decided to knip in to the a fine cuisine selling the best burgers.. known worldwide as 'Wimpy'. It was fair to say the Burger was rancid. There was heaps of staff in Wimpy, too many to be honest! But they were all lovely and once again complimented our hairstyles and referred to us as Drake and Justin Bieber. We gave the waiter a 50rand tip which she was over the moon with and this consequently had made her day.. Her words not mine! Still thinking we had loads of time.. I nipped to the toilet only to be interrupted midflow to say our departure Gate was closing!!!! Despite the board saying we had plenty of time, I think it must have been the last bus transporting people to the plane! *Cough* Another nervous Neville moment but that's all part of the experience! As me and my mates back in Enfield would say.. 'Its all fun and games at the end of the day'.
The flight from J-Burg to Cape Town flew by, mainly because of the many naps I took. My eyes felt so tired though, there was no 'eye juice' for them to keep blinking, they were so bloodshot! We made our way to the front baggage reclaim with ease and eh again our bags came within a very short period! It was crazy to see what a cosmopolitan area Cape Town is..So many ethnicities,languages and religions!
We were greeted with a communicare sign, a warm welcome and a very strong handshake by Lourens and Joe. The guys seemed great and were full of jokes and information on the way to our place of residence. We will be staying at Berghof Retirement village, which is owned by communicare who sell flats and apartments to retiring adults looking for a more of a chilled environment after a long career! Our main contact at Berghof will be Monique, who came across as a young and really bubbly person! Jeff and I were invited to the dining area just for quick chat about the few months ahead. Cape Town itself was beautiful and exceeded my expectations hugely. The scenery is something else and such a contrast to what we would get in enfield and even London!
We headed back to our room and had another chat with Lourens and Joe about the near future but also about details like bus passes,trains and SIM cards. After that, it was time to unpack !! Jeff and I mutually decided to just plow through it rather than let it build up as a chore. I was all finished, organised and cleared up within 15/20 minutes where as jeff was more particular about his way of folding clothes, almost OCD like!
We had our wifi codes given to us and so consequently went down to the dining/relaxing area (the only place we can get wifi) within about 20 minutes of checking the twitter meltdown about me leaving, Monique came over! She asked us would we like to go for a welcome drink with her and her mate Stavros, who was a really nice guy! They bought us a couple drinks and overall it was really good to just chill out and have an ice cold beer in the sun after a long day!
We went back to the wifi area after being dropped off by Monique, just to relax and converse with a few friends! But both our bellies started to rumble. We bought 2 large pizzas in a takeaway for 199rand, about 6 pound each! Which is pretty reasonable.
It was our first walk alone trying to find our way, but we managed just fine! The pizza was nice but our eyes were bigger than our bellies and obviously couldn't finish it, tiredness also taking part.
After such a long 24 hours with minimal sleep it was time to go to bed, about time!!!
All the best,
Luke
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