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| Farewell to beautiful South Africa - we'll be back! |
| Glenn's Journals 11-21-02 & 11-22-02 Port Elizabeth, South Africa to Perth, Australia Thursday and Friday are pretty uneventful as we are changing time zones by hours as well as flying for 20+ hours. We arrived at the airport around 8:00 am for a 9:15 am flight. We were well ahead of schedule as the security system was very limited (almost scary). The first flight was a domestic to Johannesburg and arrived pretty much on time. We had a 3+ hour layover so we took the time to track down Kevin (a friend that we had met on safari and works in the airport at Johannesburg). He was nice enough to join us for lunch, including picking up the tab. (We look forward to repaying the favor when he visits us in the states.) Our next flight would be 8+ hours and would drop us off in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates just after midnight with a 2 hour layover. We watched a few movies (3) during this flight. We also had dinner and worked on journals for a while. The airport at Dubai was quite nice including plenty of duty free shopping, even at this time of the night. Luckily for us our layover was shortened when they announced boarding for our flight more than an hour before the departure time. We arrived at the gate and checked in only to sit at the gate for more than a half hour before we boarded. Our flight was delayed for more than a half hour due to fueling delays but finally a little after 3:00 am we were off. The flight to Perth was 10+ hours and included meals and more movies (4) if we so desired. Erin and I chose to sleep as much as possible while intermingling journal writing with movie watching. We arrived into Perth a little late but that was expected due to our late departure from Dubai. Upon arrival we made our way through passport control and customs. At customs we had to declare the ostrich eggs that I was carrying including the fact that we had been in Africa within the last 10 days and on a farm within the last 30 days. We had all of the above. The ostrich eggs required some special cleaning which cost us $30 Australian (Erin did not seem to happy to keep the eggs). While we waited for the eggs I went through the exit to an ATM to get Australian dollars to pay for the eggs. While I was outside I located Ken and introduced myself. I told him that we were just finishing up with customs but that we would be out shortly. Once we had finished with customs we exited and found Ken where I introduced Erin to him. We left the airport and headed off to Ken and Adele's house where we were warmly welcomed. We were treated like family from the word "go". Adele had prepared a wonderful dinner and we spent the rest of the evening sharing stories about travels and family. My parents called around 10:00 pm as they knew that we had planned on staying with Ken and Adele. We chatted for quite a while before we called it a night. Jet lag finally took its toll and Erin and I crashed for the evening. |