The Penguin sends his apologies. He is asleep in my backpack and won’t be moving for awhile. IN fact we are still in transit. We have been travelling since yesterday, 11:00 am Australia time. That is about 30 hours ago.
We arrived at the Hobart airport, boarded our Virgin airline flight to Melbourne only to be told after half an hour of waiting the plane was leaking hydraulic fluid. Only a one in a million chance that would be a problem but would we mind disembarking until the the problem could be sorted. Into the airport we went. To make a long story short, amidst chaos at this small airport with the bad food and no Virgin lounge for Business class, a new plane was sent from somewhere in Australia with a crew who came in on their day off to fly to Hobart. Our flight from Melbourne to Perth was lost and we feared we’d miss the connection to Johannesburg. Virgin, to their credit did get us booked on another flight out of Melbourne to Perth. We arrived in Melbourne at 8:30 pm instead of 2:30 pm and had less than an hour to catch the flight to Perth, which we made. It was a very pleasant flight with good entertainment and food and staff were lovely. I watched the film LBJ which I really enjoyed and Mr. Penguin caught up with Three Billboards which I had seen before and loved.
Arriving in Perth we had one hour to get the flight to Johannesburg. Virgin staff in both Hobart and somewhere else along the line, I forget, told us to pick up our baggage in Johannesburg because it is the first point of call into Africa. We arrived. We went to baggage claim and after waiting for everyone else on the plane to get their bags ours were nowhere to be seen. A ground crew woman told us go here, here, do a you turn, end of hallway, by carousel 13. No such place. Finally found an office for baggage enquiries with no one there but rounded up some people who came to help us and a few others in the same predicament.
Turns out as we are only transiting through South Africa we do not claim our baggage. Our cases were checked to Windhoek, Namibia and that is where they probably are.
Now 30 hours into this journey we still have another hour before going to board our 2.5 hour flight to Windhoek.
On the bright side the airport here is easy to navigate and everyone is so friendly. I went into an electronics shop to get an adapter and three people were dying to serve me. We don’t see this in Hobart, so I was impressed. Staff everywhere and everyone wanting to help while smiling at the same time.
Hopefully our bags will be in Windhoek when we arrive. The tour only has 12 people on it and the guide will meet our plane. We have managed to get some Rand and found the South African Lounge. I know, I know…we’re spoiled by flying business class, but hey, we never had children and we both worked 40 years. You save a lot of money that way for things you want to do once retired. No school fees for cats and dogs.
I might add we also have a welcome dinner tonight to attend after a few hours rest in our hotel. I’m going to use this blog as a bit of a travel journal for us. If you’re interested, please feel free to follow along. If you’re not interested, that’s okay and I’ll be back to talking about books and other things in April. Stay tuned…. or not….
Travellin' Penguin 