July 6 - Airport Delays

The flight from Livingstone was very late, and I was fairly concerned that I would not make my connection in Jo'burg. I had to go through passport control, collect my luggage, go through customs, and find my way to the domestic gates in about 20 minutes. Some very nice people from the plane let me cut in front of them at passport control, and, as I was chatting with them, the woman in front of me said she was on the same flight to Cape Town and hoped they'd hold it for us. (It turns out the delay in Livingstone had been caused by passengers delayed in customs, so, we thought, tit for tat, right?)

Naturally nothing went as it should have. We were waved down to lines that looked short but were unbelievably slow, our luggage was coming on two carousels, and so on and so forth. I thought I would have an escort, as I had on my way to Livingstone, so I exited customs with my baggage, in a tizzy, looking for someone with my name on a large sign.

I came across Colleen, who had met me before. We exclaimed! She introduced me to her boss, who was very nice. But they weren't waiting for me. I couldn't figure out who was, but Colleen's boss flagged down a porter and instructed him to take me to check-in and to make it snappy. The porter grabbed my luggage and led me off on a merry chase.

I have no idea how porters work here in the States. In South Africa, though, they are "official" and have special privileges. They can, for example, butt ahead of everyone else in line if they have a traveler in a hurry. I cannot see this happening in, say, New York airports....okay, I can see it happening once, maybe, but it would never be repeated.

So #17 and I flew through the mess that is the Jo'burg airport, running up escalators, running down corridors, flying through crowds of anxious travelers, and we pulled up to the check-in desk a mere 7 minutes later.

"I'm on the 5:00 flight to Cape Town," I wheezed, handing over my passport. The agent checked. She checked again. "I don't have you on that flight," she said. Twice.

"British Air to Cape Town, 5:00," I said, trying to straighten up but still panting a bit.

"This is South Africa Airways."

Ahhh. We flew over to the BA desk, where we were greeted by a vedy snotty beyatch, who said, "Oh, that flight's delayed 90 minutes. If it hadn't been, you would have missed it."

Okay, fine. I was checked in, and I had my boarding pass, and my bag was checked (because it was too heavy to take on board), and I looked at Porter #17 and thought, "Crap. I have no cash."

I explained that I was giving him all I had, a total of R30, I think, and he looked at me as if I'd just ripped the hearts from his 27 children. He had been very helpful, I agreed. I had no more cash. And, no, I had no American. I did not explain that in all airports in SA there are regular announcements that only authorized porters are to be trusted with your bags and that the fee is usually R10 per bag.

He nodded a grudging thanks and went in search of the woman who'd been with me in line. I went through security, bought a bottle of water, and found the gate.

About half an hour later, the woman from passport control wandered in, and we started wondering how long the delay really would be. She left her bag with me and went to find an outlet, so she could charge her camera. I kept reading my textbook.

About half an hour later, one of the gate agents was talking on her walkie, and I heard her say something about the gate for our flight changing. She mumbled something and started to leave the area. I inquired about the gate and was told that the plane would be leaving from another gate at the other end of the terminal.

I grabbed my friend's bag and found her sitting on the floor near the lone outlet in the airport. We discussed the gate change and went to find our new perch.

Heather is a financial adviser from San Francisco. It turns out, however, that she grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, just spitting distance away from where I grew up. Her mother teaches at Greenwich Academy. Small world.

She and her sister had just been on safari in Botswana, and they had decided to spend a couple of days in Livingstone before they went their separate ways. Heather was heading back to Cape Town for one night, then back to the States. Her sister is a med student, though, and she was staying behind to do her interning in Africa. The city where she is in school (and I can't remember if I asked where this was) has plenty of medical care. The med students end up just being in the way. So the school sends them to Africa, where they can administer meds, diagnose, and help out where much help is needed. I was impressed.

They had had a terrific time on safari. Their guide was one of the only women guides in the area, and she had been doing this for 20+ years. The guide had stories galore and was very careful of the people in the group--including the idiot man who kept standing up and exclaiming or shouting back to Heather and her sister. The worst thing you can do in an open safari vehicle is to stand up--it's not only dangerous for you, but the animals, I guess, interpret this as a predatory move and react, shall we say, adversely. Elephants will charge, lions will attack, and so forth. So this guy was a dope.

Their guide also explained that she thinks the African buffalo are the most dangerous. If you shoot one, you'd better kill it, because, if you don't, it'll hunt you down and kill you. Apparently she was charged by a wounded buffalo and does not remember if she stepped aside or if it veered off, but it was clear he was looking for his attacker.

I have no idea if any of this buffalo lore is true, but it's certainly interesting, and we pass the time pleasantly, chatting about this and that. Heather had an epiphanette on safari that she did not want to be in financial advising anymore, but she wasn't sure what else to do. We talked about career changes. I told her to go to law school. She laughed pretty hard.

The delay gets longer and longer, and I'm beginning to wish I'd remembered the phone number of the Boogie Bus guy who was supposed to pick me up. In SA airports, you really don't want to hail just any old cab. And when Boogie Bus guy had dropped me off, he'd asked to be paid for the ride home in advance. Being a nice gal and a very soft touch, I agreed. But now that the flight was delayed and delayed and delayed, I began to wonder if he was keeping track of it.

The flight was called, though, at last, and we boarded. Heather was just a couple of rows back, and I was stuck next to some woman who had nothing to say to me or to her husband, who sat on her other side. Amazingly, one of my roommates was on the flight, too--she was with the Missouri program, and they had had their safari break that weekend. So the whole lot of them were going back to Cape Town on that flight.

When we landed, I collected my luggage, waved buh-bye to Heather, and found my ride. He was not just there for me, though: The Missouri students had hired him to pick them up, too. So, the money I'd paid him in advance? Well, he and I had something to work out later on. I arranged for him to take me to the airport for my trip to Kruger that Tuesday.

My roommate and I walked in to what we thought was an empty house, chatted for a few minutes, and then went to our rooms. It wasn't until the next day that I heard about Brooke breaking her leg and found Julia suffering from a wicked case of food poisoning. It had rained all weekend, no one in town had done anything fun, and spirits were fairly low.

Janice and a couple of other people had gone on a drive to the Eastern Cape in a car Janice had rented. When she returned the car, they found a small scratch on the driver's door. Little did we realize that this small scratch would lead to an epic battle with Avis's Cape Town office.