We had a lazier start to the day with breakfast and then went for a walk round the area. We had excellent views of a Stork, found a group of pin-tailed Whydah and came across a skulky pair of thrushes which took a while to see clearly and didn’t give good photos. We walked down to the Golf Course for lunch, avoiding the gun toting guards, and then returned to finish packing and head for the airport for a 3.15 flight to Johannesburg with connections to Zurich and then onto London. We had spent some time filling in the Locator/health declarations for Switzerland and London.
Check in went smoothly and we went through into departure. Watching the display and our flight was delayed but due in in time for us to catch the connecting flight to Zurich and onto London. The arrival time got later and later and it became obvious that we would miss our flight. An announcement came over the tannoy asking us to return to the check in desk, urgently. As David had gone to the loo it was a bit of a fraught few minutes trying to find him. We then went back through security to the desk. ‘You’re going to miss your flight’ was the comment! We were then offered a direct, British Airways flight later in the evening, which we accepted, returned back through security and watched the arrival time of our flight get later and later. Eventually it became obvious that we weren’t going to catch the BA flight either. We returned back through security to the desk where there was a queue of customers all missing connecting flights. One couple were on a flight to Miami for a cruise, one was a worker on a cruise ship and had to get to Italy to catch his ship.
In the middle of all this was a man who had come to collect his wife who was on the incoming flight so she was texting him the situation with them sitting on the plane for 4 hours and eventually being taken off and put on another plane.
Our luggage was brought back to check in and we were given the option of booking into a hotel in Durban and flying out the next day, or going to Johannesburg and booking in there. We chose to stay but we’re then told there were no rooms available so we had to rebook onto the flight and we were told we would be met at the airport and taken to a hotel for the night. They also said we were booked onto a direct flight to London the next day.
We eventually left Durban around 11.30 but not before the airport Security had to be called to remove a couple of drunk men who were sitting behind me, and managed to hit me on my head several times with the flying fists and arms.
Arrival at Johannesburg was around 1.00 am on the Saturday. There was no one there to greet us and no idea where we should go. We managed to find a kiosk and demand help, they said they had phoned upstairs and promptly closed the kiosk! Finally a man showed up and escorted us to some mini busses which took us to a nearby hotel where we eventually booked in around 1.45. We were taken up to our rooms and… one of them hadn’t been cleaned! We had to go back downstairs and re book in. We entered our rooms, I changed into my pyjamas and fell into bed at about 2.00am.
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