 |
| Erin's South Africa Journals - 11-21-02 & 11-22-02 Our journey to Australia began with an early morning in Port Elizabeth. I woke early, but didn't get up till my alarm went off. I knew, no more beds for 2 days! Finally I got up and dressed, had breakfast, and was ready to go 15 minutes before the cab arrived to take us to the airport. We luckily got our last postcard addressed and sent before leaving - last trip, we'd had some Spanish-stamped postcards to be re-stamped in France as a result of bad planning! The airport was a joke - hardly any security at all! We could have wandered out onto the active runway with no problems! But we made it to our regional flight to Jo-berg with no problems, and were in Johannesburg by 10:30am. We looked up our buddy Kevin, and agreed to meet for lunch around 12:30, figureing we'd have time to kill after check-in and tax forms. Wrong! It took almost 2 hours to check in at Emirates airlines, and the tax refund line was a joke, since we'd already mailed our stuff home. I guess they want to see the stuff, but we weren't exactly flying straight home where it would be easy to carry everything with us...so we forewent the $15 we could have had refunded in taxes and went to lunch with Kevin. We had some great fried food and even better conversation with Kevin before boarding our flight to Dubai. This was an 8 1/2 hour flight, of which I spent 7 hours watching movies. When we arrived, it was 10:30pm body time, 12:30am Dubai time. This airport was one big shopping mall! We only looked for about a half hour before slumping near our gate, though, and they announcing boarding very early. We were checked in over an hour early, and boarded the flight by 1:30am body time. We took off an hour later for the 10 hour 20 minute flight. This is the longest flight segment so far in our trip!!! I watched 2 1/2 movies in between naps, but was pretty tired and napped for almost 4 1/2 hours! Finally we landed in Perth at 5:50pm local time, about 30 hours after we'd left Port Elizabeth. Exhausted, we entered the lines for customs. We had recently visited a farm (ostrich!), and we had animal products in our bags (ostrich eggs we couldn't fit in our box home), so we had to go to the longer line. They told us we'd have to have the eggs treated, which cost $15 Australian Dollars (ASD), and Glenn told them to go ahead and do it. By now, I was ready to leave those damned things - they'd only cost us about a buck each, and now they would cost almost $5 US to clean?!), but we picked up some Australian cash and paid for them to be cleaned. By the time we left customs, Ken was waiting for us. He and Adele, Glenn's 2nd cousin, once removed (I think), had offered us a place to stay after talking to the parents, so we were extremely lucky and glad to have friendly faces to talk to after such a travel ordeal! Ken introduced us to their home, and Adele promptly fed us a hearty lasagna dinner before we crashed hard! |
| Erin enjoys the colorful parrots native to many parts of Australia |