Thankfully, the weather was perfect and we made it to NYC in a mere 44 minutes. Yup, there we were, all ready to .... sit and wait 3 1/2 hours for our South African Airlines flight!
(I have to admit: looking out the gate window at our plane made it all seem like the dreaming was over and this was really happening):
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| Loading the meals (in that giant container!) onto our airplane! |
Who was the person that coined the phrase "Traveling is fun!"..? It seems more fitting to say "Traveling is waiting". You wait to begin boarding, you wait in the boarding line, you wait to get to your seat, you wait to take off and then .. you have to wait to get there. In our case, the last wait was the worst. We had a direct flight to South Africa, so there were no stops along the way. It takes South Africa Airlines (SAA) about 15 HOURS to go from NYC to Johannesburg, South Africa. That's a LOT of waiting.
Thankfully, SAA has pretty decent entertainment offerings. Attached to every seat is a screen offering movies, TV shows, music, games, and a flight map. I took advantage of every one of these. I saw two movies (The Truman Show and the newer Willy Wonka). I sampled the music (but Young Jeezy wasn't exactly what I was looking for!). I played Chess with the computer 4 times (one win, two losses and a tie!). I even checked the flight map! In fact, I think I looked at the flight map 10 times more often than I used any of the other services. I know, it seems silly - why the flight map? OK, I am a Geography teacher and I DO enjoy maps, but NO that's not the reason. This particular flight map not only shows you where the airplane is on a globe, it also spits out statistics on how much longer it will be until you get to your destination. So, with 14 hours to go, I watched a movie, played a few games of chess, fast-forwarded through a Young Jeezy song and quickly flipped to the flight map. I knew all those exciting activities had to have taken at least 5 hours and we would 'only' need to be in the air 9 more hours. So, you can imagine my disappointment (actually, horror!) when the flight map reported we still had 11 hours to go!!!! I almost passed out (which actually would have made more time go by..!)
One other thing that helped pass the time was conversations I had with the woman in the seat next to me. She (and I'm sorry I didn't get her name!) is a native South African, having lived her whole life in a suburb outside Pretoria, close by Johannesburg. She gave me some great tips for local food that she said I should try. A lot of these I had never heard of, so she was kind enough to write it all down. Here's the list she gave me:
- Boerewors
- Bobotie
- Game meats (like ostrich, kudu and even wildebeast!)
- Desserts (peppermint crisp tart, milk tart and malva)
- Native vegetables/fruits (gem squash, papino, granidella)
[Note: I have not had the time to research what many of these dishes are, but I will soon! Maybe you, oh kind reader, could do that and post a comment below letting me know what some of these are and whether or not you would try it yourself!!]
So, I did manage to slowly reduce the time through reading, sleeping, conversing and pacing up and down the cabin (it's not good for your circulation to sit still that long). After another 50-60 checks of the flight map, the time was able to decrease to something bearable and we did get there!
By 8am on Wednesday morning (that was the local time in South Africa - they are 6 hours ahead of the US), we arrived in South Africa! As reported in an earlier post, Wednesday the 18th was Nelson Mandela's birthday, so we heard at least two pre-recorded versions of 'Happy Birthday' for him...
After going through customs and finding our bags (which wasn't so bad!), we met our driver, Mosa, who took us to our lodgings. We were ALL very tired, but we had places to go and sites to see, so we had a brief rest and then officially began the tour.
Stay tuned for what amazing sites awaited us on Day 2 (coming soon!)...
