Grand Africa Cruise Trip Day 58/96 - South Africa - From Durban to Johannesburg
We started our safari adventure today. This is the least exciting part - flying from Durban, South Africa to Johannesburg, South Africa. One country - one that we've already visited.
First, everyone on the ship, all guests, and all crew, had to exit the ship and go through a face-to-face immigration process in the port. We returned to the ship and waited for our 10:45 gathering time in The Club. The 20 guests, ten on our tour and ten on another week-long tour, all gathered with our luggage. Housekeeping took the luggage down to the buses for us. Once everything was ready, we all went to our respective buses and made the trip to King Shaka Airport.
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| We passed by South Africa's first public railway |
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| Moses Mabhida Soccer Stadium |
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| Almost there... |
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| Our air carrier |
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| Checked in and waiting by the gate |
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| Rural South Africa |
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| Starting to see more signs of civilization |
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| The outskirts of Johannesburg |
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| Landed and taxiing |
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| An interesting approach to curb bird strikes |
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| Oliver Reginald Tambo statue outside the airport named for him |
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| Tambo was a vocal anti-apartheid leader and former President of the African National Congress (ANC) |
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| Our first view of the Johannesburg skyline |
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| The difference here is striking - more modern, more money - we saw lots of BMWs, Mercedes, and even a Bentley on our ride to the hotel |
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| We spotted this possible dinner venue but decided against it |
We arrived at our hotel, 54 On Bath, and got checked in.
It is a very nice hotel, but given that it's more than a half-hour from the airport, and tomorrow morning, we're just going back to the airport, we don't understand why they didn't just put us up at one of the many nice airport hotels. Seems silly to waste an hour on the road and two buses, but it wasn't my call.
Dinner was scheduled for 7:30 but the group was successful in lobbying to move dinner up an hour to 6:30. We had some time to kill before dinner so we walked across the overpass to the mall connected to the hotel. We just did a lap around the mall and came back to wait for dinner. Here's a look at the room.
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| A single-sink bathroom |
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| The shower |
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| The large tub |
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| The closet with shelves and a luggage rack, robes and slippers |
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| A spacious room with a desk, smaller TV, two chairs and a table |
We did go down for dinner at 6:30. This is when we learned a few things. First, things happen on their schedule, not yours. While we were seated at 6:30 or so, nobody came to take orders for 20 minutes. Then, food took nearly an hour to arrive. The food was good, very good, in fact. We both had fillets that were terrific. But wow, took more than 2.5 hours. Second, when they say that they include two drinks with the meal, and you ask for a glass of water, that is one of your drinks. Seriously. The server brought out a bottle of water and split it among four of us and that counted as one of our drinks. A half-glass of water. Wow.
Tomorrow will start early. We have to be down at breakfast at 6:30 so we can eat, clean up, and be downstairs, packed, and ready at 7:30. We'll ride back to the airport to fly to Livingstone Airport in Zambia and then transfer to our hotel in Zimbabwe to start our time at Victoria Falls.
Garry - when we did a tour off of the Viking Octantis to Machu Picchu, just last year. When we landed in Ecuador, we drove to a town 4.5hours south got on a plane and flew to Lima then drove 1.5 hours arriving at the hotel at mid night and that we had leave the next morning at 7 am. We passed several excellent looking hotels that night that were much closer to the airport, than 1.5 hour drive. We found out that Viking had nothing to do with this, as all was planned by the tour agency named Akor Destination Management. I'm guessing your cruise line used some thing similar.
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