BEGINNING OUR TRIP TO SOUTH AFRICA—Friday-Monday, February 20-24, 2014

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ATLANTA TO NEW YORK—Friday, February 20th, 2014

Shantrice, our roommate, dropped us off at the airport which was real nice of her. We spent more time before getting onto the plane than we did on the 1 1/2 hour flight to New York. Arrived here at foggy, foggy JFK airport and took a shuttle bus to the Sheraton Hotel.

The flight wasn’t too bad--with a storm predicted for today we thought for sure we would have lots of turbulence. Had some, but most of the bumps occurred in the ride on the shuttle bus between the terminal and hotel as the streets are really full of potholes, most likely a result of all the snow they have had. Snow was about 2 inches deep all over the ground, but it was not terribly cold out.

Valerie has walked down the street to get some drinks and sandwiches for lunch. Our plan was to relax all day as neither one of us slept well last night and we got up this morning at 5:00 am. We thought we might go back to airport for dinner as the prices in the restaurant here are unbelievable. This room is certainly not worth at all what we paid for it coming a day early. With the unpredictable weather this winter and the resulting flight cancellations we were concerned about not making the South African flight early on Sunday morning.

Valerie’s foray found two gas station/convenience stores down the block. One had a Subway store in it so Valerie got two 12' long sandwiches to have half for Friday lunch and 1/2 for today's lunch. No refrigerator is in the room, but there is about a 3 inch gap/shelf between the inside and outside room windows so we have the goods to be kept cold in the gap. This works real well as cold as it is.

We each ate a granola bar for breakfast with the tea she got along with her diet cokes. We went down to dinner at about 6 last night and found about 10 of our group sitting at 2 tables. We decided to “bite the bullet” and eat in the restaurant here as it is yucky out with heavy fog and the sidewalks are slushy/icy. Room service tacks on a 20% gratuity and a $3.00 delivery fee on top of high prices ($18 for a hamburger, $14 for a chicken sandwich). We looked at the serving size of other diner’s meals and decided to split a meal of mixed seafood with rice. It was surprisingly good and very much enough for the two of us. This was a significantly cheaper way to go even with the added charge of $3.90 "service fee" for my empty plate.

We came back up to the room and watched the Olympics for awhile as there is no PBS station on this cable network so went without our favorite BBC TV show, "New Tricks.” I think we were asleep by 10:30 last night.



Sheraton Hotel near JFK--Saturday, February 21^th, New York



We chilled in our room until we attended our first meeting with the total group at 4 today. After handing us a thick 1” tour guide book we went over some of the next few days of travel. Everyone introduced themselves and we have a total of 24 people with 14 rigs including the mechanic who will travel along with us.



JFK to Johannesburg, to Cape Town, South Africa--Sunday, February 22^nd



We were up early to eat a buffet breakfast and have our suitcases in the lobby for the shuttle bus to the airport.

Once we were boarded, we read and snoozed while Valerie watched movies and snoozed. We were fed three fairly decent meals, for airline food throughout the flight. This airline also has sandwiches, drinks, and snacks in the back that you can request at any time.

Fifteen loooonnnnggg hours later we landed in Jo’burg and had to walk down stairs to get to waiting buses. The buses then dropped you off at the terminal. There I got a wheelchair and for some reason they loaded Valerie into one also saying it was better that way. So, off we both went and then waited by the baggage carousel with everyone else on the flight. We were glad to see our bags had not been molested as we had been warned that was a frequent problem at this airport. Went through passport control and customs and then we were deposited in a room set aside for people using wheelchairs. Valerie went down to a lower floor and bought big chicken schnitzel sandwiches for dinner when we got to Cape Town.

When it came time to load us onto the domestic flight the wheelchair pushers collected us and a couple others and loaded us all onto a special van/truck and when we got to the plane the whole back end lifted us up to a side door on the plane. They reversed this procedure when we landed. Really different contraption but useful as many can’t go up and down those stairs. Valerie and I remembered somewhere they put Dad on a board and carried him up onto the plane because he couldn’t handle the stairs--this was much more pleasant.

A big tour bus met us at the Cape Town Airport where the wind was really blowing strongly. Because of this, the Cable car up Table Mountain was closed so the tour guide took us up to Signal Hill to look out over the city. We drove us around a bit and then went to the lovely Tsongo Sun Waterfront hotel by 4:30-5:00. Completely beat, we ate the dinner that we bought and crashed.

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