Getting home

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Sunday in Cape Town I had sort of planned to try and get up Table Mountain.
But, the cruise had provided us a tour of that the day before.
And, driven us by the castle and cathedral, both of which the locals said weren’t really great for random tourists.
(They apparently have yoga lessons and sports events there. So, not so much you’d get mugged as they aren’t really set up for historically interested tourists.)

The hotel did have a shuttle down to the big shopping complex by the waterfront that is a big tourist trap with a Ferris wheel and stuff like that.
But, it’s where we had lunch the day before and neither of us was big on the idea of going to a mall.
And, the shuttle left you there for 6 hours. That’s a lot of times around that Ferris wheel…

So, we just hung out at the hotel, repacked our bags, had a leisurely lunch and then headed to the airport in the evening. An afternoon nap might have occurred, I’m not sure as I was asleep at the time…

Our flight was at 11 at night. So, we headed over to the airport about 6:30, checked in our luggage and had dinner at the airport.
They had extensive gift stores there too. With the important sign of “all our items are in compliance with international export laws with the United States”.
The leather hat they had there wasn’t quite as fancy as the one on the street corner of Richard’s Bay, but was still nice and well within my price range.
Even adjusting for the difference in currency, most things there were about half price from home.

We were the first to go through the extra security needed for flights to the US. The woman who checked in our bags had been very helpful and said “If you want any beverages for the flight, buy them at the duty free store and have them delivered to the airplane. If not, they’ll take them away at security.”
So, we bought some bottles of water and had them delivered. We had our water, I heard several other people complaining they had theirs taken away.

Getting on the plane they were making announcements of “please take your seats quickly, we are hoping to leave early.”
Everyone sat down a good 10 minutes before the scheduled departure.
But, we didn’t go anywhere.
And, waited.
And, waited.
After about 15 minutes they said: “Some folks have elected not to fly with us tonight and we must remove their baggage before take off.”

After about another 10 minutes, the flight attendants came and talked with a man in the center section of the plane. Exactly what was being discussed was not clear. Something about him handling money at a bank. They had South African accents and he had a very pronounced French accent, so it was a bit hard to follow.
Finally the chief flight attendant came over.
“Sir, you are not solving anything here. We need you to discuss this with us off of the airplane as it will NOT be resolved here.”
Words were said with more intent and stronger accents. He was quite mad, but it still wasn’t quite clear why.
He and the woman with him left the plane.

15 minutes later they closed the door and we left. They had not returned to their seats.

I normally don’t sleep well on planes. But, taking off at 11:40 at night seemed to help. I certainly managed to sleep the first few hours.
It was more than a 16 hour flight. But, it didn’t seem too bad. Certainly no worse than the 14 hour flight there. We did fly north farther west over Brazil and the Caribbean, rather than down the center of the ocean we had on the way there. I assume due to the winds.
Despite 16 hours in the air, we landed within 3 minutes of the estimated time at take off, and 3 minutes early at that. So, whoever was doing the navigation was very good.

Getting through customs and immigration was the easiest I’ve ever encountered. No forms to fill out. Show the passport and a quick scan and be on your way. Even 10 months ago when we were coming back from Europe we had to do forms and answer questions. And, that was from Heathrow, which has a US office there, South Africa didn’t.

I did see them come up to one guy, ask him for his passport and take him away.
So, maybe it is just all with 3D scans of the bags now and they don’t need to ask folks.

It is good it was fast as our gate was on the other side of the airport and by the time we got there they were already pre-boarding.

The flight to Boston was very crowded. And for some sort of “weight and balance” reason, they couldn’t gate check people’s carry on bags. So, getting them in an overhead compartment was much more of a challenge than normal and some folks were unhappy about it.

The cruise included a ride to and from the airport, so there was a car waiting for us when we got to Boston. The guy drove very fast and close to other cars. And, I say that as a Boston driver…
The snow began about half way home and wasn’t super bad, but bad enough.
I did give him a bigger tip than planned for going through the snow with us.

We got home about 2:30 and the first thing I did was start laundry. I got all from the trip done before the travel caught up with us and we went to bed early.

Despite the snow, while the laundry was going I ran off and got us Chinese food for take out. There used to be an Irish Pub we used to say we were home, but they’ve gone downhill since the founder retired. So, now it is Chinese food marks being home.

Today I’m back and work and that’s going to have to be another whole entry…