Arriving in South Africa

We left for our holiday in South Africa on Thursday, March 29.  Little did we know that the Lagos Airport would be undergoing much construction and computer systems would be down. Let’s just say that a usually “headache” situation escalated to a severe migraine.  There were fights in the check in lines because people were “cutting the line”. I had to laugh when one man had passports in his hand and kept trying to convince other people in line that he was there on a diplomatic matter. “For who and what??” People would ask, and he had no answer for them at all.  It took two and a half hours to get checked in at the ticket counter and another hour to get through the security line. Guy and I couldn’t believe how well the kids did, and we were more ready than ever to go on our South African holiday.:)

 We finally got on the plane and we were just waiting to take off….two and half hours behind schedule…

When the plane finally took off (and our armpits started to dry out because the air conditioning wasn’t working at the airport) we felt like our holiday had finally begun!!!!  We landed in Johannesburg at 6:45 a.m. and our connecting flight to Port Elizabeth was leaving at 7 a.m.  Needless to say, we missed our flight because of the late take off in Nigeria.  We weren’t panicking until one of the supervisors for South African Air told us that Friday, March 30 was the worst day we could have possibly missed a flight because all flights to Port Elizabeth that day and on Saturday were completely booked, and we were going to have to go on stand by!!!!!! We had already paid for our safari and it was supposed to start that night!!!  I got the supervisor back to the counter and asked him if there was anything he could possibly do for us at all to get us to Port Elizabeth that day.  I left to take Elizabeth to the bathroom, and when I came back, Guy was holding 4 tickets for the 1:10 p.m. flight!!!!! I asked him what happened, and we looked at the tickets and the supervisor had put us in business class!!!!! Woo hoo!!! Our vacation was saved!!!! The supervisor was nowhere to be found, and I actually wrote him a thank you note to be delivered to him.:)

We finally made it to Port Elizabeth at 3 p.m. that day!!!!!

Ready for our safari!!!:)

So, we can now say that Elizabeth has been to Port Elizabeth!!!:)  It was also Guy’s first experience driving on “the other” side of the road…and he did great!:)

The Indian ocean…first time we ever saw it!!!:)

After about an hour’s drive from Port Elizabeth, we arrived at our camp for our safari!:)

And, there was even a rainbow!!!! I knew that was a good sign!!!:)

It occurred to Guy and myself that we had never been anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere.  From what we can see so far….the Southern Hemisphere looks pretty good!:)  We can’t wait to begin our “Once in a lifetime trip” in South Africa!!!:)