Day 14 (cont’d) & Day 15 – The Journey Back Home

After our intense morning at Shikaya, we had no time to sit back and reflect on all that we had learned.

We had already packed our bags and brought them with us in the van to Shikaya.  Now, almost noon, it was time to head to the Cape Town airport to begin the long, almost 9000-mile trip back to the United States.

Our route had three legs:

• Cape Town to Johannesburg
• Johannesburg to JFK Airport in New York
• New York to Boston, Massachusetts

When you see it on a map, it looks about as long as it felt:

(Map created using Google Maps!) 

As we took off from Cape Town, it was such a clear day and the view was so incredible, I managed to get a few pictures:

(Cape Town harbor with Table Mountain in the background)

(Robben Island)

Oddly enough, the return trip did not seem as long as the flight down.  It wasn’t that I was used to sitting on a plane for 15 hours –  who could be?  I think it might have had something to do with all the experiences swimming around my head.  I still had many blog entries to write up, so I managed to write down about 10 notebook pages of rough drafts before I finally gave up.  That took up about four hours.  This time I watched four movies: The Avengers, The Truman Show, Men in Black, and a documentary on Nelson Mandela).  There went another five hours.  Let’s not forget five more chess games against the computer (final score: 2 wins, 1 loss and 2 draws)!... That got me through three hours.  Factor in a few long naps, about ten jogs around the aisles of the plane and, of course, two meals, and you’ve just about totaled 15 hours.

If I could pass along one bit of travel advice, it would be:  take note of flights from Johannesburg to the USA.  South Africa Airlines has a policy where every passenger is patted down and their carry-on bags are searched.  This happens as part of your pre-boarding ‘check-in’  - in other words, AFTER you go through security and right before you get on the airplane.  What makes it particularly annoying is that they ask passengers to get into separate lines, according to gender.  This was NOT very well advertised by any signs!  So, when they made the pre-boarding announcement, of course, many couples stood in line side-by-side and then were sent to the back of their respective gender’s line because they were in the male or female line together.  Lucky for me, I was warned ahead of time by Brenna, our ever-vigilant tour queen.  If not, I probably would have followed whoever was in front of me and been required to get out of line!  Just a word to the wary…

By the time we touched down at Logan Airport in Boston, made it through Customs and retrieved our bags, it was 10:30 am EST on Tuesday, July 31.  We had completed a return trip that started in Cape Town, South Africa at noon local time (or 6:00am EST) on Monday, July 30.  So, we had been traveling (in route by van or plane, or waiting in an airport) for about 28.5 hours!  

Whoa.