CAPE TOWN

En Route to Cape Town

As I write this post we’re on board our FlySafair flight from Johannesburg to Capetown. This flight was actually an 11th hour change of plans because the train that we wanted to take was completely booked up. I think this was actually a good thing. It is allowing us to get to Cape town a day early, thus getting us into a Saturday Regatta aboard the local GP-42 Vulcan. All will be very good!

 

As far as our current situation: three days of travel has left us pretty tired, but we keep on grinding. We got some sleep on our 10+ hour flight from Frankfurt to Johannesburg, but another successful day of getting things done in Joburg has also left us pretty tired.

 

The day started out with a little surprise, and not the good kind. We arrive in at O.R. Tambo Intl. airport and make it through customs and the ebola screening (for real) with ease only to see one of our backpack compartments had opened up and spilled its contents onto the carousel. We moved quickly to recover the cliff bars, quick dry towel, hammock slings, ‘worst case survival handbook’, GPS and sleeping pad; but ultimately left without the hammock slings, towel and GPS. We never saw the GPS and figured that it was gone prior to the bag hitting the conveyor, but I watched the hammock sling come out and never saw it after that. Welcome to Africa…

 

Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton Neighborhood of Johannesburg South Africa

After we get our things settled and learned our way around the airport we locked our backpacks up at the bag port for 140 Rand and took our roller bag into the Sandton area where we were hoping that our hotel connection would keep up their end of our agreement to store our bag until we stay in April before departing to Madagascar. We got off in Sandton Gautrain stop and made our way thru the Nelson Mandela Square to the Intercontinental Sandton Towers hotel. Sure enough they were great and stored our bag in their secured storage area, no questions asked. AWESOME! We also used this time to do some exploring and load up our travel phone with a SIM card and some airtime.

 

 

We returned to the airport to catch dinner and wait for our evening flight. It is suppose to be sunny, warm and breezy in Capetown tomorrow. I am especially pumped that we get to hit it running with a yacht race around Robben Island. Till then, stay tuned for updates and most likely a sweet grand prix yacht video!