We left on Tuesday. At two pm we squashed our luggage into
our daughter’s car and left for the Gautrain bus station at Damelin. I still
had a Gautrain card from my PE trip and we had bought another one from the
Caltex garage the day before. Lo and behold, I did not have enough funds in
mine. (I had twelve rand and I thought that was enough but the bus fare seems
to have gone up to eighteen rand.) However, the driver was very accommodating
and we did get driven to the Sandton Gautrain station. The handle of Brian’s
bag ripped off in the loading process.
Because we had booked on line, the bag drop was quick and
painless and we had plenty of time to waste so we had cappuccino and a giant
muffin at Mugg and Bean while I watched the loading of food onto a Kenyan
Airways plane.
First the catering truck manoeuvred close to the plane |
Then it was raised by an enormous hydraulic system and
repositioned right up against the door.
|
It was raining in Sydney. In fact, according to the news,
it was the heaviest rain they had had in three years, causing flooding. Only
one run way was still operational, which delayed our take-off and caused a lot
of trepidation as we took off into the leaden, glowering clouds. The turbulence
was the worst we’d ever had and left us feeling distinctly queasy. The flight
attendant gave us ginger ale (to settle the stomach) and it seemed to help.
We were almost an hour behind schedule in Auckland. The
customs and passport processes were much easier than we had feared, especially
as we were taking goods for other people in our bags. We landed at close to one
am on Thursday morning, New Zealand time. The
plan was to collect the rented car we had booked at five, but when we
phoned the shuttle service half an hour before, they had no knowledge of our
booking. We are now waiting until business hours at eight to phone them and
sort out the problem. (Hopefully) We
still have another twelve or fourteen hours left of the day which makes it a v e r y l o n g day.
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