Cape Town International Airport - a chilly winter's morning
Bye-bye, Table Mountain
Bye-bye!
Our departure from Cape Town went smoothly, with the "cherry on top" being the bagging of a window seat, even if not the best in relation to the wing, after checking our luggage all the way to JFK. Due to congestion we left about half an hour late, but managed to get to OR Tambo Airport within reasonable time, not that any delay was critical for us at that time. After a "good old-fashioned winter" with plenty of rain, Saturday 16th dawned sunny and beautiful.
The views of the Boland mountains were specatular, and made us appreciate the beauty of our country all the more - spotting familiar landmarks and fond memories of peaks we had climbed.
A different view of Milner Ridge Peak to when I was last here ...
A smidgen of snow on the Matroosberg
Some fascinating agricultural landscape design.
Centre point irrigation systems along a tributary of the Orange River
On arriving at OR Tambo we took the "scenic route" to International Departures and were greatly relieved not to have to bother with our baggage. Customs and Immigration went smoothly, leaving us a little time to have some juice before boarding.
We flew the long legs of our trip on the Emirates airline, and I must say that we were very impressed with the service and in-flight entertainment. Take-off from OR Tambo was delayed due to conjestion. The flight offered plenty of opportunity for catching up on much needed sleep, and when we eventually arrived at Dubai nearly 40 minutes late. We were well up to the rigours of going through 4 security checks, and had just enough time to allow the whole flight to board, without losing too much time, and only a short delay. Favourable flying conditions, however, eventually resulted in us reaching JFK about 50 minutes ahead of schedule! Fascinating was the realisation that our flight path took us directly North from Dubai over the "hottest" Middle East areas, Turkey, Poland, Scandinavia, scraping south of Iceland and Greenland, and eventually overflying Newfoundland before being treated to a view of Manhatten (not good for us, in middle and aisle seats) - but at least enough to give an impression.
Northern Long Island
Our first stolen glimpse of USA
Great relief when our baggage appeared on the carousel, and we were reunited with our possessions again after last seeing them in Cape Town. All went smoothly with speedy processing through Customs and Immigration. Then our learning curve took a steep upwards turn, as we learned about navigaing JFK terminals and the Airtrain - an immensely useful service for ferrying passengers around.
We eventually found out where we had to be for our connecting Delta Airlines flight to Salt Lake City, only to discover we were too early to check in our baggage. So, another opportunity to kill time till we finally sent our baggage on its way, with anticipation of welcome change of clothing this evening at Provo.
Having another 5 hours to kill before the next leg of our journey, we decided on following the advice of one of the staff at the Delta check in counter, to take the subway to Manhattan and visit Time Square.
So another adventure began, with exposure to the Subway system - rather more tatty than the London Underground. A very friendly fellow passenger gave us some good advice, and we hit Time Square mid-morning. A truly tourist area - but fascinating to see and briefly be a part of.
Tourists taking pictures of and for other tourists was common
No one was in the least embarrassed by acting like a typical tourist here!
Broadway
Our return to JFK took about half the time, so we were in good time for boarding - only to discover that the flight to Salt Lake City had been cancelled! OK - so what now? We eventually managed to get ourselves booked onto a flight tomorrow via Baltimore tomorrow - but what a pain having to change flights yet again. The Airline would book us into a hotel, and provide us with meal vouchers to see us through the next 25 hours of our delay.
Anyway, our great concern was getting a message to Andi, who was scheduled to meet us at Salt lake City, about our cancelled flight - so we tried to get hold of Kip Christensen as the only person in Utah we knew of, who might have Andi's contact details - unfortunately we didn't have a mobile number for her at that stage - that we only managed to get after settling down in the the hotel and found she had e-mailed it to us after our Cape Town departure. After checking in to the hotel, we discovered to our relief we had free wireless internet access - oh the joys of modern technology - especially when it works!!!!
After sending a couple of emails to various friends and family around world, we discovered the email with Andi's mobile number, so we finally got hold of her and were able to let her know of our predicament. What a disappointment not to have met with her today already.
However, this delay gave us the opportunity to download our pictures, and catch up with some correspondence, and some Skype chats all over the world - Uli in Japan and Stuart Mortimer in UK, Steve in Columbus and Nick in CT.
It's now it's time (2am SA time) to catch up on some "legitimate" sleep - hoping our biological clocks won't be too stubborn about waking us at some ungodly hour in the morning, and hoping this unplanned delay will assist with getting in sync with the new time zone, so that we can get most enjoyment from the Utah experience.
