Date Sent: Thu, December 23, 2010 9:10:47 PM
Subject: I'm still alive... at least as of right now...
Guten morgen,
I'm back in South Africa, after going to Germany, South Africa, Zambia, and
Zimbabwe over the last 5 days. I've been in wilderness all along, and just now
caught up on all your emails!
For the 2nd time in 1 year, I had booked my ticket on an airline that was not
affiliated with American... My flight was on Lufthansa from SFO-Frankfurt last
Saturday, then Frankfurt-Johannesburg on Sunday night. I'm sure many of you
already saw this on the news but last weekend was not a good time to be
traveling through Europe! London had almost all flights canceled, and Frankfurt
had more than 50% of flights canceled, and 100% were delayed. My
Frankfurt-Johannesburg flight was delayed from Saturday evening to Sunday
morning, and Lufthansa put me up in a hotel in Frankfurt overnight. That part
was fine with me, but it meant that I had to go out of the airport, and I wasn't
really prepared for European winter -- all I had was a thin wind-breaker jacket,
and I was standing in that outside the terminal freezing for 5-10 minutes
waiting for the hotel shuttle.
The bus was completely full and there was a lot of ice and snow on the roads --
saw a few cars that had slipped into the ditch and were being towed out. The bus
took about half hour to reach the hotel but couldn't go all the way to the front
lobby door because of the standing snow there. It stopped on the street outside,
and we all walked the rest of the way through about 4-5 inches of snow to the
hotel. I was 5th person in line to check in, with about 30 or so people behind
me! When I checked in, I told the clerk I wanted to get back at 5am, and she
said the first shuttle is at 6am, but there was one person who had asked for a
taxi at 5am, and I could go with her and split the cost.
The next morning (Monday), I had to be at the airport at 8am. I was awake early
and in the hotel lobby at 4:30 -- to find about 20 people waiting there for
taxis at 5!!!
The cabs came on time (there were 5 "van" taxis) and we each got on one and were
at the airport by 5:30. The good thing was the hotel paid for it.
The flight to Johannesburg boarded on time at 7:15am and we were airborne by 9!
This overnight delay was a blessing in disguise -- I got to sleep in a bed on
Sunday night, and got to see the Swiss and Italian Alps, Sicily, the huge Sahara
desert across Libya... and Congo, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana, and the Zambezi
river at sunset -- a gorgeous and scenic daytime flight all the way down to
Johannesburg!!!
I had an airport hotel booked on Monday night in Jo'burg, and my trip would
begin Tuesday morning to one of the 7 natural wonders of the world and a UNESCO
world heritage site...
I'll write more about that amazing spectacle later. Some of you may be wondering
about the subject line of this email, that's an inside joke with some people.
I'll be seeing a lot of wild animals on this trip (have already seen zebras,
monkeys, 1 baboon, lizards and dragonflies twice the size of my palm, plus one
really big and scary-looking wasp). Hopefully none of the wild animals I'm about
to see in the next 3 days will eat me :-)
Soooo until the next email, adios and Happy Birthday,
-me.
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| Dec 19 | Contents | Dec 21 |