A Reunion In South Africa At Shoestrings Lodge

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Geo: -26.1951, 28.0339

Wow, we slept until almost 7a.m. because there was no early morning sun or monkeys and birds chattering about. We were both a little under the weather so we spent most of the day resting, sleeping and doing some work on the Internet.

Got everything packed up and had ourselves one of their very nice omelettes with filtered coffee. The taxi arrived early and off we went to the airport.

Glad we got there early because the computers were down and they were having to check everyone in manually. Some of the passengers waiting to check in were not very patient and so we had some entertainment as we waited.

We had noticed on our tickets we were booked in business class and so we were anxious to see if we really would be checked in as such. Not to worry, our luggage was checked with "priority" tags and we were booked business class which gave us access to the business class lounge. Our tickets had also said there was no food being served on the flight from Llongwe to Johannesburg so we had ordered some smoked chicken chipatas from Mabuya camp to tide us over in case we got hungry.

Not to worry! Got to the business class lounge and besides the comfortable chairs, and free wifi they also had a meal you could order. Following the rule of always eat when offered when you are traveling we ordered the lunch of chicken, salad and chips. We visited with two gentlemen who happened to be on the same plane as us and we joked about following them around.

The plane was 30 minutes late but we were in row 2 and there was no one in front of us and we had plenty of room for our carry on luggage and more leg room than we are used to. Plane takes off and guess what, another meal was served! We could have had all the alcohol we wanted but we held back and just had water, and coffee.

Arrival and stay in Johannesburg

Arrived in Johannesburg with no problem, collected our luggage, changed money, went to the MTN shop to get more data and then to the car rental place. The car was very small but we got everything in and thanks to my directions I have saved, we made it to Rob and Tabitha's no problem.

Jerry, Tom, and Margie were all there and we had a great time catching up on news from each other. We had some great discussions on a myriad of topics and it was great to see Margie again. Robert was under the weather and had to go to bed early and none of stayed up to late because we were not sure if we were going to be leaving in the morning.

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