So, for some reason when I scheduled my tour I thought it would be a really good idea to get to Windhoek, the departure point, as early as possible the day before the tour left. I thought it would give me time to see Windhoek or something. Unfortunately, I once again forgot to factor in the fact that this meant I would have to leave the airport as early as possible (6:30) and would therefore have to get up really early (3:50ish) to head to the airport, the car rental place, etc. This resulted in me getting only about 30 minutes of sleep on my last night in Durban. With a lack of direct flights I had to make a stop off in Jo-Burg. I tried to talk to someone at the VAT Administrator’s office but it was crazy busy and they were crazy slow, so I just grabbed a pamphlet and headed toward my gate. This was all good until, about ten minutes before we were supposed to board, the departure board said we were supposed to be at a different gate in a different wing of the airport, so I hauled ass over there, only to be told by the woman at that gate that she had no idea what I was talking about, so I went back to the original gate, where the departure board now said that we were supposed to be at a third gate. Well, I didn’t fall for it that time and, sure enough, a couple minutes later, just in time for us to get on the plane, the board finally switched back to saying that we were supposed to board at the original gate. Gotta love the accurate South African signage.
After arriving in Windhoek I took a lengthy cab ride to the hostel with my ten tons of luggage (because I planned to fly straight home after the trip without going back to Durban, I had to take four months of stuff with me). I was hoping to explore Windhoek afterward, but when I checked in I was told that the guides from the tour company might want to meet somewhere sometime later to discuss the plan for the following day, and I realized I wasn’t sure what to do in Windhoek anyway so I stuck around. After a few hours of nothing happening I opted for a nap. There was another guy already napping in the hostel dorm, and when we both woke up again we realized that we were both joining the same tour. With nothing else to do Marcos and I went out to see the town only to be faced with some rare rain (Namibia is a desert) and the fact that there’s really nothing in Windhoek. The town’s a little interesting because there’s a German influence and it really doesn’t seem like an African town, but there didn’t seem to be any people in it and the town itself was really small and lacking anything to do (the whole country only has about 2 million people, even though there’s a decent-sized chunk of land there, so it’s sparsely populated and it’s largest city is, in reality, not all that large). After our boring outing we met up with the tour group and our two Zimbabwean tour guides: Joel, responsible for driving our massive overland truck, and Lissom, an upbeat natural intellectual who has been forced by his circumstances into acting as a cook for tourists. It turned out that most of the group had been traveling together for a week already, and only 6 of us were newly joining the trip in Windhoek. At dinner we got to know each other over giant sticks of bush meat which included kudu, crocodile, zebra, and something else unusual. The food was...interesting.
The next day we loaded our stuff into the truck (named Freddy), then loaded ourselves into the truck, where the new folks quickly got removed to the “bad seats”, since all the people who were there before had claimed particular seats and had been rotating daily. The first day was filled entirely with driving, except for a few stops to buy liquid and snacks and a stop for our roadside lunch, prepared and served on the side of the truck. We managed to see the Parliament building and its gardens before leaving Windhoek, but the rest of our path through Namibia was fairly dull (most of the cool stuff in Namibia was in the opposite direction). We made it through the border posts and into Botswana in the middle of the day and arrived at our campground as night was falling. That night I had a tent with a broken zipper, which meant that it took me 5 minutes and some major abuse to my fingers just to be able to get into my tent. A rather annoying start to the camping. In order to keep the day from being a strictly driving day, we had adancing/singing performance by the Bushmen (a group which still lives very traditionally off the land) scheduled for the evening. A group of three women and two men came. The three women sat in row on the ground and ululated while the men stood and stamped around the campfire, making rhythmic noises with rattles wrapped around their legs. While not similar to Western music, I found this to be exceptionally good background sounds to zone out to.
The next day, in order to avoid a day with nothing but driving, I opted to wake up early and join the walk with the Bushmen. The walk convinced me that I’m not ready to live off the land. The Bushmen, through interpreter, identified footprints and dung, collected berries, told us what plants could treat headaches and how, and located and dug up a giant edible tuberous root, to demonstrate their “Survivor”-worthy skills. I still can’t identify footprints or plants. After we got back from the walk I returned to our temporary version of semi-roughing it and had my first go at taking down my tent (I had gotten a tent to myself and the taking down was much easier to do by myself than the putting up.) Then it was back to the truck for a bunch more driving (although Marcos and I got to move to the supposedly “good seats” for the day, which meant easier views out the window). After many more hours in the truck we got to our campground for the day, near to the Okavango Delta, re-pitched our tents (with more functional zipper this time for me, yay), visited town, and dropped off the people who wanted to take a flight over the Delta, which I was too cheap to pay for. Instead, I opted for a running rotation of shower and pool, both of which were nice since it was a scorcher outside. I also had to do some major repacking since we could only take one small bag into the Delta for the upcoming two days, and my stuff was spread out all over the place.
The next day we again woke early (getting to be a routine), this time to take a short drive to the edge of the Delta where we would all hop in mokoros (dug-out canoes) to get pushed through the shallow delta gondola-style to our isolated island for a couple days of really roughing it (read: no showers, a hole for a toilet, a ban on soap which would supposedly damage the ecosystem). Along our driving route to the edge of the Delta tons of kids ran along and waved to us, we had to honk at some donkeys to get out of the road (I’ve decided that donkeys are strangely beautiful), and we got fried by the sun. When we arrived we had to load our stuff out of the truck until mokoro polers started to claim pairs of people to get in their canoes. I was adopted along with a South Korean guy named Moon by an older woman – one of the only people who could not speak a lick of English. The mokoros are down really close to the water, and ours had shallower sides than most. This means that you feel somewhat unstable as you get pushed along and are even closer to the sun’s reflections off the water. I hadn’t put any sunscreen on my legs and was unable to request it out of my bag since it was by our poler, who didn’t understand much of anything I said. So, I ended up with really awesome burn-lines across my legs, which are sure to remain until my legs see that much sun again...which might never happen. After arriving on the island, we again had to pitch our tents (this time with the added complication of limited space) and then we got the grand tour, which consisted of a swimming hole and a hole for other purposes. Due to the heat almost all of us proceeded to the former. It turned out that our island wasn’t really all that isolated. At least one other tour group was staying just around the corner and sharing our swimming spot. There I ran into the first Americans I’d seen in quite a while (I was the only American on my trip. 17/23 of the people on the trip were from Europe, 3 were South Koreans, 1 was from New Zealand, and one was a South African who’d spent the last 7 years in London) although they were surfer-types from California, so they were practically still foreign to me. We spent the afternoon languishing in the heat. I opted to read a book I’d borrowed from the discarded book rack in the front of the truck; with all the driving I’d already finished the two books I’d brought with me to carry me through the whole week. It was only 170 pages or so into the book that I realized that a chunk of pages was missing from the middle of it. Perfect. I had nothing else to do, so I finished it anyway. In the evening we had an actual activity, a game walk through the island, although we were told that in this area we likely wouldn’t be seeing much game, but would instead learn about plants and such. We started the walk with a safety talk: if you see a lion, stand your ground, a buffalo, run away downwind in a zigzag, a leopard close-up just, don’t look it in the eye, etc., etc. Then we started walking and saw lots of plants. And some zebras. And wildebeests. Okay, so not the most exciting, although it was cool to see the environment, which is pretty different, and to marvel at the giant termite mounds and beautiful sky. Plus we did get an entertaining traditional tale on why the hippo sprays its crap (you will have to ask if you want a recap). There is amazingly little to do out in the middle of nowhere, so I didn’t make it for too long after dinner, which was fine since - you guessed it - we had to get up early the next day.
The following morning we were going for a much longer game walk a little further away. It was about a 20-minute mokoro ride to where we started. The guy who pushed our mokoro that morning somehow had the bad luck of ending up with 4 of us, which I’m sure was quite exhausting. We started while it was early and cool, so it was quite nice out. We soon saw more zebras and wildebeests. Same ol’, same ol’. After that we saw some kind of new antelope off in the distance. Then it was more zebra and wildebeests (they often stick together. I think the official explanation was that the wildebeests are bad at noticing approaching predators, but zebras are better, so the wildebeests stick by the zebras so that when the zebras run, they know that they ought to do the same). And then lots of grass. And more grass. And more zebras and wildebeests. And more grass. And then our guide pointed out a buffalo. He led us over in front of it, noticed it was running at us, waved his arms around to try to let it know that we were there and it should shift, and then he yelled RUN! and led us back from whence we came, much faster than we had come originally. And then our other guide yelled FAST! It’s amazing how you’ll find another gear when you have a buffalo running at you and someone implying while yelling at you that what you thought was fast is not fast enough. We all aced the zigzagging and direction, but apparently we were supposed to do this in a single file line and we did it more like a handful of bouncy balls which have just hit the ground and scattered in all directions. Oops. Anyway, after an energizing dash we all made it off safely to the side and the buffalo continued running on past us. None of us got good pictures since we were too busy crouching and trying not to get crushed. You’ll have to ask me this story again in a year...in a retelling then the story might involve me getting a bullhorn in the butt and having to climb a tree to avoid being gored.
The rest of the walk was fairly uneventful. We saw more of the same until it got really really hot and we still had to walk the whole way back to the mokoros. I hadn’t brought any water since the only water I’d brought to the Delta was in a 5 liter bottle and would’ve been a bit too heavy to carry. Plus, I’d hoped to join a wussy group, but I of course ended up in the group that decided to walk longer than any other. Thankfully someone saved me with a few sips of water, so I made it back to camp in one piece, where we again had a lot of time to take a swim and do nothing. That evening we went out in the mokoros to look for hippos. We got some awesome views to begin with, although the hippos must get a kick out of being difficult to photograph. Each of them would stick their head up just long enough for you to see and raise your camera, and then they’d go back underwater, resulting in many pictures of water sucking downward as opposed to pictures of hippos. After a few minutes they decided they wanted nothing to do with us and snuck off into the reeds where we couldn’t see them, so we sat around doing nothing. While we were doing nothing some of the polers made amazing (if short-lived) jewelry out of the plants growing in the water. Then we went back to camp to eat and the guides told us they’d sing for us later...on the condition that we’d sing for them...oh boy. The guides were the best of the “traditional” singers I heard the whole trip, perhaps partially because they didn’t put on old outfits and act in a way other than they normally did. They had beautiful voices, sang in harmony, and were enjoying it, not just doing it because they got paid to (we were told that if they didn’t like us, they simply wouldn’t do sing, so this was not a required thing for them). It was hard for us to decide what to sing during our turn since we were from numerous countries and weren’t familiar with the same songs. We decided to sing Frere Jacques in a round in our native languages, which is when I realized that for some reason I didn’t know that one in my native language; I only knew it in French, so I had to quickly learn the English version and the round turned out pretty well. Then the Irish sang some beautiful songs as only the Irish can. The countries which were represented by multiple people had their national anthems sung. The rest of our group then tried to get us loners to sing our anthems, but we managed to escape. Everyone’s protestations that they all knew the melody of the US anthem and it should be easy to sing just made the prospect of having to sing it even more daunting since I’m sure whatever came out of my mouth wouldn’t have sounded right. With little else that we all knew, we eventually resorted to kids songs like the hokey pokey and some of the guide guys joined in, which was pretty funny.
The next day we woke up early again and our African-style gondoliers pushed us back to the put-in/take-out point. We then drove back to our campground where we all, feeling quite gross after sweltering in the sun for two days with no showers, practically ran to the campground’s showers. Then we loaded the truck and went for a drive. Our endpoint that evening wasn’t near anything exciting, but we did enjoy the sizeable pool at the campground. Surprisingly, every campground that has signs up telling you to conserve the limited water nonetheless maintains a pool. Most of them, however, are fairly small. This one was massive. Also that evening we enjoyed more singing and dancing at the bar. The giant baobab trees also added to the appeal of the campground.
Guess when we woke up the next day... early! We went for another long drive, with Chobe Game Park being our destination. We arrived early in the afternoon. Those of us who opted to go on the game drive managed to get out of pitching our tents. Those who stayed behind had to do it for us. It was almost worth paying for the game drive just to get out of pitching my tent again. I was getting so sick of pitching my tent by this point. I don’t know how people manage to go on the 50+ day camping trips, having to put up and take down their tents almost every one of those days. I didn’t mind the camping itself, but constructing the tent was getting annoying. Anyway, it turned out that despite its incredibly short duration, the game drive was also probably worth it for the game viewing. We didn’t see many animals that I hadn’t seen before, but we did see them in different ways. I saw an adorable baby hyena (or at least young...speak to my sister if you want an age estimate), a bunch of baby warthogs, hippos up wandering out of the water and groups of elephants doing all kinds of stuff. Plus I did see one new animal, the sable antelope. Unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries about 20 yards into the game park, so I didn’t get many pictures other than the inexact ones I was able to get by flipping my camera on for 2 seconds, snapping, and turning off. Eventually the camera wouldn’t even let me do that much.
After our short game drive we rejoined the group for a boat cruise. On this we saw an amazing number of crocodiles and hippos. Since it had been a cool and rainy day many of the hippos were up and out of the water, which was cool. Others were clustered in groups in the water. Some started play-fighting by biting at each others faces. We also saw some elephants crossing the river. There were two tall ones and a younger one. While the two tall ones stayed above water, the young one sank like a rock. He held onto the one in front of him and occasionally bobbed to the top. It was really cool to see. Then when they got to the other side, one of them was scratching a major rear end itch on a tree while another struggled to step over a felled tree. Though quite destructive, elephants are really fun to watch. I also enjoyed just looking at the sky. There’s nothing quite like the endless African sky above an open grassland. It’s like there’s a sheet of clouds over the land and out far away on the horizon the sheet connects to the ground. Believe me, if my camera was working, I’d have some cool pictures.
The next day was the day for our departure from Botswana, and since we had to make a lengthy stop at the Zimbabwean border to pay for visas, we once again had to leave early. Zimbabwe is in a major economic crisis and it’s not as a result of the rest of the world’s economic crisis. It’s as a result of Robert Mugabe, the bastard leader who won’t step down, who has allowed cholera to break out in the country, who intimidates and abuses opposition parties, and whose economic policy has led to inflation at a level which is barely quantifiable but which topped 200 million percent as of a couple months ago (one article I read said it’s the second worst hyperinflation in world history, worse even than the hyperinflation that drove the Germans to support Hitler between the World Wars). The country constantly has to reissue cash, placing expiration dates on all the bills, and lopping off 6 or so zeroes with each reissue. $100 billion bills can be bought on the street as a souvenir for about US$1. Foreigners cannot even legally pay for things with Zimbabwean dollars. Nor can they use local ATMs to withdraw Zimbabwean dollars, or at least it’s not recommended. Nor can they pay with credit cards, as the insanely large number of zeroes throws off the credit card companies and the locals won’t accept them. So, we all had to enter the country with large wads of cash. Somehow, even though Zimbabwe has no money and is really poor, we found that it was the most expensive place to which we’d been. This left us at the end of our few days there asking whether we could pay for things in some combination of pula, rand and US dollars. One must be very good at mentally calculating exchange rates in order to work in Vic Falls.
But, first things first. As we hit the border, the rain started hitting the ground, and it wasn’t a weak rain like we so often got in Durban, it was borderline downpour. We got to Victoria Falls, the town on the Zimbabwe side of the falls, and I was surprised at its small size. After a quick tour around and a stop at the adventure activity center where I signed up to go rafting the next day, we went to our accommodations, which thankfully didn’t involve a tent! Yay for hostel dorm rooms. The only problem with the room was the lack of space in which to hang our large amounts of wet clothes. The problem got worse since we then went as a group to see the falls. Most people get damp at the falls from the mist coming out of the falls. We got soaked because the rain was still coming. The signage wasn’t that great so we all went first to a strange side view of the falls. Only on the way back toward the entrance did we see the sign to head toward the main falls. Then there were a series of lookout points which got more and more and more impressive as you went along. The falls were really amazing, although I spent the whole time battling with myself over whether to take my camera out to try to get a picture (most of which weren’t that great due to all the water) or to keep it shoved inside my jacket, trying to keep it dry. While it would have been nice to stay all day and stare at the falls if it was nice out, we instead all decided we’d had enough after an hour and a half.
The rest of the day we didn’t have much to do. There wasn’t any food at the hostel, but we’d brought some from Botswana to have cooked for us since we were told it would cost $30-$55 to get dinner out in Victoria Falls and bringing it from Botswana would be cheaper (again leading to my confusion over Zimbabwean costs). I was disappointed to find that it was once again beef. Lissom had done an amazing job all week of preparing edible food on the side of a truck. The only issue was that he endlessly made beef and, well, I don’t eat beef. I made myself eat it on the side of the truck, but the cooks at the hostel were not of the same standard as Lissom and I was so sick of red meat that by that point I couldn’t force much down anymore so I ate a $12 meal of mixed vegetables and potatoes. This was again accompanied by dancing and singing, which probably follows directly behind the mokoro guides in terms of my favorites. In addition to songs I’ve never heard before they mixed in the original song that led to the popular “In the Jungle” and sang a traditional prayer/former protest song, which now forms the start of South Africa’s National Anthem and which is hauntingly beautiful. These guys also wore head garb which they placed on random audience member’s heads. I ended up with a headband holding dangly furballish things on top of my head, which made me feel slightly ridiculous and threatened to hit me in the face with furballs any time I turned my head too quickly.
The next day was what I was looking forward to the most when I signed up for the trip: white water rafting on the Zambezi River, billed, I think correctly, as the best 1-day raft trip in the world. We started with a safety talk (try to stay in the raft or clinging to the raft, avoid the rocks, don’t worry about the crocodiles, they haven’t eaten anyone yet...) and then drove off to the side of the gorge, where we had to walk almost vertically downward to the put-in spot. After some paddling practice in which we quickly learned that there were a couple people that couldn’t follow directions or pull their weight with an oar, we were off to the first rapid. The first few were easy, but by rapid 4 we’d dumped almost half the raft. It was apparent to me that this was the most water and the biggest longest rapids I’d seen on any river I’d rafted, and I’ve rafted a bunch. On rapid 9 we had to get out and walk around since the rapid is unrunnable for all but the guides, who took the rafts through empty. On one of the rapids after that the other raft flipped. Soon after that it began to rain, just in time for us to stop for lunch, which I ate ravenously, since it involved chicken and I was so excited to white meat, even if it was mixed with rain. My raft had made it safely through the morning and we continued our relatively clean run through the first couple post-lunch rapids, but then on rapid #13, we flipped. I ended up not only under the raft, but under one of the middle tubes, meaning I had a tough time breathing until the current and my underwater grasping for the side rope finally got me out, where I opened my mouth to take a big breath of fresh air...and sucked in a whole bunch more water from the wave that then slapped me in the face, and the next one, and the next one. Oh yeah, and you’re not supposed to drink the unclean Zambezi water. Oops. All 8 of the people from my raft ended up clinging to this poor safety kayaker once we reached the end of the rapid. He was probably worried that we were going to flip him and hold him underwater as he soon started directing us “go to the raft. Go to the raft!” We all ended up unscathed and the rest of the run, all the way to the final rapid, #23, was clean. We only swam through rapids when they were small and we did so voluntarily. In summary, the river was awesome. It’s the first time I’ve flipped or fallen out while on a guided trip, and while I’m not eager to do it again, it did make me feel like I finally got my money’s worth (I’ve done what’s probably the hardest river on the East Coast and I managed to stay in even while the guide fell out. It was really time that I go dumped). The size of the rapids was excellent. I’m ready to do it again, although I think I might have to fight harder for a seat in the front next time.
After we finished with the river we had to climb back up out of the steep gorge which was exhausting. We were rewarded at the top with pop and Zambezi beer, which we were encouraged to drink to kill the Zambezi water we’d just accidentally chugged. We also ran into someone selling his wares, and learned of Zimbabwe’s barter economy. This guy, and just about everyone else, is as happy to trade for shoes and t-shirts as they are to sell for money. I bought some stuff in return for my sleeping bag, which I’d wanted to get rid of anyway. The reason they do this is because it’s hard to get anything in Zim. It was only later, talking to a guy who’d stopped in at the local grocery store, that I learned how bad it is. Apparently the store was mostly empty, with laundry soap and one or two other items being the only things on the shelf. The sad state of modern Zimbabwe is especially frustrating given that it’s so lush and green, it has natural resources, it has intelligent hardworking people (like our two guides) and it used to be a gem on the continent.
The next morning I had to head to the airport where - thankfully, since I was out of cash - they overlooked the fact that my luggage weighed twice as much as it was supposed to. There were no direct flights to Bloemfontein, my destination for the day and departure point for the US due to the original screwed up scheduling that I described at the start of the trip. This meant that I had to go through Jo-burg again, as did a number of other people from my group who were flying back to Cape Town. Flight #1 was not bad, although the caterers had gone on strike, so we didn’t get any of the food which SAA, unlike US airlines, still normally serves. When we made it to Jo-burg, though, things went crazy. Jo-burg, unlike the rest of the country’s airports actually enforces the weight limits on baggage, but they have the least efficient system I have ever experienced. So it took me 5 people, $35 (lower than I should have had to pay since the baggage-weigher gave me a break), and over an hour to pay for the extra weight. In the middle of that fun I realized that someone had cut the lock off of and rifled through my bag, and was told by one of the many people in the bag payment process that security doesn't search bags so it must have been someone else. I didn't have the time then to look to see if anything had been taken but figured it had been because I'd heard tales about entire companies of baggage handlers being fired at the Jo-Burg airport due to theft.(Turns out, thankfully, that nothing was gone because my dirty cloths and souvenirs aren't that exciting, but someone definitely went through my stuff). By the time I dealt with all of this I’d lost the other people from my group. I then spent 45 minutes waiting in line for lunch. Then I went to my gate, where I soon learned that my flight was delayed. Of course, the delay never made it onto the flight board, which indicated that my flight departed on time, and which didn’t even show my flight by the time I had to actually board. Thankfully the delay allowed me time to search out and say goodbye to some of the others from the trip. Unfortunately, the delay in the airport wasn’t the whole delay, though, since, after we took the shuttle out to the side of the airplane, someone decided that that airplane was also no good and we had to take the luggage off and move to yet another airplane. By the time I got to Bloem, I was sooooo sick of sitting around and waiting and all I wanted was to get myself to the hotel and collapse. I figured this wouldn’t be a problem. On my last trip through Bloem there were taxi drivers waiting at the airport. This time the info booth guy told me that I’d have to call a cab myself and gave me two numbers. I dialed the first number and was told that the driver was on his way. When I asked how long it would take his response was just that he was on his way. “Five minutes or half an hour” I asked. “I’m on my way now”, was the reply. After half an hour with no driver I called again, only to find out that he’d already come to the airport and obviously picked up the wrong person. I’m pretty sure I was the only one in Podunk, South Africa with an American accent, but he apparently hadn’t noticed. No problem, he said. I’m on my way back now. “How long” I asked again. Again he refused to give me a straight answer. After an hour and a half of fuming and pacing in front of the airport, which was slowly closing down, and answering everyone who asked me if I was okay (many of them asking in Afrikaans and forcing me to admit my language stupidity), and making at least one more phone call to the cab driver, who again refused to give me a clear ETA, I called the second cab company and then called the first driver and told him not to bother. Of course, he showed up about 2 minutes before the second cab driver would have and with puppy dog face pleaded with me to let him drive me since he’d already come all the way there. I finally gave in, on the condition that he let me use his phone to call and cancel the other cab, since my phone was dead at that point. Of course, then I felt bad for canceling on the more reliable cab company that would have actually shown up in a reasonable amount of time. I officially hate Bloemfontein, and this just confirmed how right I was to be thrilled at having been able to work in Durban, and escaping Bloemfontein. The only benefit of the cab fiasco was that he charged me about half of the normal rate.
After a pleasant sleep, a giant breakfast, and a morning spent killing time in the local mall (where the woman at the drug store, scanning my insect bite anti itch cream told me with near-pride “The Free State has giant mosquitoes” - reminding me again of how lucky I was not to have not ended up there) I thought I might be ready to face the hassles of the airports again. Haha, yeah right, that didn’t last long.
I mentioned that I had grabbed a pamphlet on VAT refunds while in the Jo-burg airport on my way through the first time. I read the pamphlet and stupidly believed everything it said. I decided to follow the instructions by having a customs agent in Bloem stamp my receipts and process the refund for me. When I got to the airport I had the info guy call the customs guy. The customs guy arrived and told me I was the first and only person who’d ever asked to have my receipts processed there. Though I got him to stamp the receipts, he said he couldn’t do anything with them after that and said I should talk to someone else in the customs office who might be able to do something. It was at this point that I realized that Travelocity forgot to inform me that my flight was leaving 40 minutes earlier than originally scheduled and I had very little time left. He said I had plenty of time, so I went to the customs place, which ended up being back in town. There, I was told that they wouldn’t do anything for me either and was sent back to the airport, with very little time to spare. I made it back just as they were calling for us to board, with little to show for my trouble.
The only benefit of the early flight was that I made it to Cape Town early enough to talk to and try to get a refund from the VAT Administrator there. Of course, at first, they refused to accept my receipts because they were stamped in Bloem (as the pamphlet told me they ought to be) rather than Cape Town. When I talked her into accepting the stamps I had she then moved on to another problem and told me that she needed a letter from my employer to state that I wasn’t returning to work any more. This was never stated in the pamphlet, was basically impossible since she said she needed it within seven days after my departure and the entire legal system goes on vacation over the holidays, and basically serves as a punishment for me getting the correct visa before entering SA. So, I’m likely not getting my VAT refund, which would’ve been pretty sizeable, at least to a broke person like me. After a frustrating and again unsuccessful attempt to get my money back I had to hurry through security, passport screening, etc. to down to my gate on time. I decided I had just a minute or so to spare, so I stopped at a shop to buy a couple pops to hydrate and caffeinate me during the journey ahead. I then found that there was a big line at the gate as there were more security guards checking everyone’s bags by hand. When I got to the front I was told that I couldn’t take any liquids on board, even though I’d just bought them on the “safe” side of the security screening. This meant that I had to leave the cans of overpriced pop that I had purchased literally 2 minutes before, or chug them. I hate being wasteful, so I opted for the latter. Though I was feeling pretty irritated by this point, the security guard got my sympathy by admitting that it made no sense to him either. No doubt, this stupid rule is made and enforced only by airlines flying to the US.
After all of this I was almost (but not quite) ready to get out of South Africa. I was certainly at least ready to get out of its airports. But of course, I was leaving the hell of the airports and being moved to the new hell of being trapped on a plane for over a day. This turned out to be made worse by the fact that I spent the entire flight from Cape Town to New York sick (possibly the Zambezi water attacking yet again?). And then we were late into New York, which meant that I and everyone else had to push our way through customs in record time, and the people with the flights ten minutes before the rest of the plane were insistent that they should get to cut in front of everyone.
Man! I want to go back to South Africa! But, then again, if I have to get back on a plane anytime soon I might go insane. (Too bad my parents have planned a family vacation in Florida only a day and a half after my return, meaning that I only have 36 hours before heading back to the airport...)
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