Flight to Johannesburg

Flight/Jo-burg

The day had finally arrived!! We were finally on our way to South Africa. Our flight was scheduled for 10:40 A.M. so our entire family arrived at about 8 A.M. or so at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport. After we had said our good byes Luke, Anders and I made our way to customs and then to our gate. Everything went as planned and we took off on time. Our first flight took us from Minneapolis to Washington D.C. and from there we were supposed to fly to Johannesburg. Unfortunately due to weather our flight from D.C. to Jo-Burg was cancelled so we had to stay in Washington D.C. for the night. We were set up in a Best Western about five to ten minutes away from the airport, as we could not fly to Johannesburg until the next day. The night was relatively uneventful except for our odd waitress at the restaurant we went to near our hotel. She was a very nice woman but just very quarky. Many times I think she would be trying to relate to our college type of mind set but it would come off as odd or forced. As we were finishing our meal she all gave us high fives because we told her we were from Minnesota. (?) To top it off after our meal instead of asking if we wanted any dessert she instead asked if we would like an after meal shot (??). While she was odd I must say she lightened the mood a little bit for us and it took our minds off our flight cancellation. Soon after we got back to our hotel we called it an early night and went to bed.

We woke up the next morning and arrived at the airport at about 1 P.M. We made our way through customs, had some lunch, and lounged near our gate until our flight left at 5:30 P.M. This was my first time flying overseas so going into it I was a little nervous but the flight went without a hitch. We travelled from D.C. to Dakar, Senegal for refueling and then flew the remainder of the trip to Johannesburg, South Africa. We got to Johannesburg at 5:40 P.M. so it was about a 17 hour flight. After we got our luggage we made our way to the car rentals so we could rent our car. We got all of our paper work done we were led to our car and soon after left to go to our backpacker hostel for the night. In South Africa cars travel on the left side of the road so that was something we immediately had to get used to. The hostel was only a few minutes away so we were looking forward to getting there. Unfortunately my poor navigation skills prevented this for nearly an hour. We took several wrong turns but finally we made it to our hostel. As we were driving around though we immediately noticed how much different things were from the United States. Every single house that we came across had a gate surrounding the property with an electric fence at the top and many of the houses had security that had armed responses. Finally we made it to our hostel met the owners, soon after that we went to bed.