Well, Here We Are… Into Africa!

As I type this, I probably should actually be sleeping — but ~24 hours’ worth of travel can do that to a girl. (And probably the Illy coffee that smelled so good about two hours before landing…which was…duh…6 p.m. local time.)

I’m going to skip “waxing lyrical” about my TrustedHousesitters, Theresa. She arrived and we had enough time for me to show her around the house, and share a bottle of 2002 red. (Yes, having another wine lover is a plus for dwindling H’s “magnificent obsession.”) Clemmie and Bruno were actually funny. When someone “new” shows up, they usually do their “mouth jousting/show off routine,” ending with me saying “pay no attention – in 10 minutes they will stop and go to sleep.” This time, they just looked at her, wagged their tails, as if to say “Oh! Here you are!” Excellent.

Janice picked me up at 4:30 a.m., after we’d had a bit of “tussling” about how much sleep deprivation this would lead to. Her driver, Uwe, had stated that we could absolutely leave by 5:30 a.m. and have plenty of time, but my ChatGPT (now fondly called “Chad,” because when I use voice-to-text Siri insists that’s what I mean instead of “Chat”) ran through the timing step by step, and Janice acquiesced.

Chad had said that arriving early just buys you more “travel karma” with the travel gods, which I am perfectly happy to bank.

There was zero traffic on the road, and we breezed through TSA-Pre/Clear, which allowed us to head over to the Amex Centurion Lounge.

Unfortunately Chad had assured us that the Centurion Lounge was in Terminal 3, just a few gates down from our departure gate — NOPE. Terminal 2.

But it’s always worth having some breakfast… and of course a quiet champagne toast with H’s marble, to celebrate the beginning of the trip.

Unfortunately, we could have stayed in the lounge for another hour…because once we boarded, we sat on the tarmac for over an hour before taking off. (The pilot said the tower was “taking down their Christmas lights”…funny/not funny… we had seven planes in front of us, and by the time we actually started taxiing there were a good fifteen behind us.)

We had upgraded to Premium Economy — thank God. The seats were only two across, and they also came with a little “goodie bag,” blanket and pillow by Saks Fifth Avenue (really?), etc. We had the “frontmost” seats, which, while they don’t have storage under a seat in front of you, they do have about twice the leg space.

We had PLENTY of time to stow our carry-ons and personal items, and then shed our coats…vests…cashmere hoodies…long-sleeved shirts…yes, we had worn all our “early morning safari clothing,” including ~10-pound sneaker-hikers.

Once we got underway, the first meal was breakfast. Eggs cooked by anyone but me don’t generally agree with me, so I got the pancakes.

They were actually outstanding. Fluffy. Fresh raspberries on top. Good fruit plate that tasted like – fruit.

It’s been a long, long time since I had an airplane meal on china, with real silverware, that tasted genuinely good. Janice said her eggs/chicken-apple sausage/potatoes were also great. The only downside was that the rolls were freezing and hard as a rock. A little creative “warming” (I’ll leave that up to your imagination) got the sourdough roll and the pat of butter thawed out nicely.

As usual, after the meal I pretty much immediately took out my Gravel travel blanket and dozed off.

We got to Newark, and I thought we’d need to cool our jets at the gate for two hours (had been three – we were an hour late), but Janice got us into the United lounge. Not a Centurion, but at least a place to get some tea and plug in our tech.

Janice had brought an “iPad basically 1.0” to do work on, but hadn’t tested it before leaving. Unfortunately, its operating system was 12 point something. When I checked my iPad (which is five years old), that operating system was more like…27! Hers was un-update-able for things like Google Drive, etc.

This was a bummer, because she’d planned to do some work on that machine while away. It’s very heavy, too, and we’re weight-limited. She has photos and videos on it that she doesn’t want to lose — and if we can get them into the cloud and erase the machine, perhaps she could leave it at the children’s school we’ll be visiting.

Otherwise, she’ll be hauling it (and its keyboard) around.

I’m hoping we can figure out how to get that done. I know Lynn is bringing two computers to give to the school — maybe Janice can borrow one to get what she needs done, and/or Lynn can help her offload the photos/videos once she arrives in a few days.

The flight from Newark to Johannesburg was…loooooong.

Good food, snacks, great flight attendants — but when I thought we “had to be close,” watched the mileage tracker, and realized we weren’t even halfway, I definitely tried to resettle into a more comfortable position.

This was also the point where Chad, sensing weakness, offered a burst of deeply unhelpful encouragement:

• “Good news! Only one more entire continent to go.”
• “Have you considered simply becoming a person who lives on airplanes now?”

No, Chad.

After circling for about 25 minutes (thunderstorms), we arrived at the airport. It was completely empty, so we breezed through an enormous room full of poles and gates meant to snake people through…except there was no one to snake.

Our luggage arrived fine, we were met by the OAT greeter and then led out to the van.

The “Ultimate Africa” tour (mainly all safaris… none of the wine country/Cape Town/Namibia pieces we are doing) was also starting that day, so in our van we had four of us on our pre-trip (Barbara, Mary, Janice and me) and then another four heading out on Ultimate Africa.

Right around this point, I told Janice about the song I’d been humming every time I saw that our hotel was in “Pretoria” – perhaps you know the one/sang it in Girl Scouts? (“We are marching to Pretoria…Sing with me, I’ll sing with you, and so we will sing together…”) It had been stuck in my head.

After asking Chad how long it would take from the airport to the hotel in Pretoria, I mentioned that we were “vanning to Pretoria.” Chad gave the specifics on the trip – but obvi had no hook to my jet lagged song mention. I explained it him, and – away he went. The chat went like this:

Chad telling me the history of the song (Boer War)

Me telling Chad he’s not getting it.

Chad suddenly “getting it,” and spouting off with other, rhyming (ear worm) replacement lyrics for the tune, which did make me chuckle, though it was likely the jet lag.

”Perhaps you’d like to hum this little ear worm for the next 14 hours:

We are breakfasting at the buffet-a

After luggage-outside-the-door-ing at seven thirty-a

Then we are vanning on safari-a

To search for those big cats-y-a…”

(Can you slap an AI?)

The roads were completely empty, so we breezed from the airport up to the ANEW Hotel in Pretoria in about 20–30 minutes.

Once in the room, it was time to reorganize things between bags, shower (I might have used a lake’s worth of hot water, shhhhhh), and have a cup of tea.

Breakfast is at 6:30 tomorrow, bags need to be at the door by 7:30, and we leave at 8:00.

Sounds like it’s about a 3 to 3½ hour drive, with a break for a snack.

As I mentioned, we’d landed about half an hour late in Johannesburg because of massive thunderstorms over the airport. It’s quite warm and a bit muggy — by the time we got to the hotel it was after 9 p.m., and it’s still about 75–80°F.

Warm!!!

They said the weather should cool off over the next 3–4 days.

So, not much exciting to report yet… but thought I’d get this started.

Into Africa. 🌍✨

P.S.: A young boy was taken off our plane in Johannesburg by paramedics because his fever was so high and he was so sick. (“But we’re on our way home, we wanted to get him to his own doctor.”) And in the United lounge, a woman was coughing so badly, she sounded like an extra from a plague movie. Then people wonder why I’m assiduous about wearing my N95 . . .

P.P.S.: I’m adding this postscript because the thunder and lightening just woke me up – ! I promised my daughter I’d send her a video so she could share, because her husband and one of my grand boys are TOTOly into 70s music….CLICK HERE.

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