Tuesday 2 June.
The weather was wild when we got up this morning, lashing rain and gale force winds. Our plan was to take the bus to the airport, we travel free on our pensioner's bus passes but it involved three changes to get there. Moira phoned the local taxi company and the price to take us to the airport was £27 so we decided to 'hang with the expense' and booked to be picked up at 1:30 pm, our first flight, to Heathrow, wasn't until 4 pm so that gave us plenty of time for checking in and getting through security.
We had breakfast then finished tidying up the house and unplugging all the electrics. We had lunch just after mid-day and we're all ready when the taxi arrived just a few minutes late. The rain had gone off but the wind was still strong, we could have managed by bus after all but the taxi was quicker and less hassle. At the airport we just had to check in our bags, all the way through to Jo'burg, and have our boarding passes printed out; Moira had already checked-in online and had seats allocated to us. This time going through the security check was a breeze, I took all the electronic stuff out from our daypacks and put them in a separate tray. There were no queries about anything.
As we strolled through the duty free area we stopped to look at cameras in Dixon's. One of the salesmen who was very helpful and knowledgable showed us a Panasonic Lumix camera only a little bit bigger than the Soni I've got. It had a 30x zoom, 20 mega pixels, sideways and up and down panoramas views, WiFi, GPS and many more features. It cost £235 and was as good as the bigger Canon models like the one Suzy has but more compact and much lighter. I was very impressed with it but first of all I wanted to check the price on Amazon. We went to the departures' lounge and connected to the web using our dongle. The Amazon price was exactly the same so we went back to Dixon's and bought the one there. It did come out a bit more expensive after I bought a case for it and a spare battery. I was hoping that the batteries I have would have fitted but they are too small. Fortunately the memory cars I have are suitable, they seem to be standard. When we left the shop we spent the time before departure putting the camera together and I took a photograph to try it out.
The plane was half an hour late in leaving due to the high winds that had caused a backlog in flights taking off. The flight itself was drama free and we got a bag of nuts and a beer to keep us going. There was another bit of a delay at Heathrow and by the time we landed it was nearly 6 pm which left just an hour before take-off for Jo'burg. Fortunately we were on the other side of security there, so didn't have to have our bags rechecked and had our boarding passes that were issued in Glasgow, so it was just a matter of getting to the gate. This involved getting on the shuttle train then another long walk to the boarding gate. We got there with plenty of time in hand and used it to download the new camera handbook and a Panasonic app for connecting with the Camera WiFi.
This time the plane took off on time and we were on the last leg of our journey to South Africa. They seem to have made the seats smaller as I felt cramped most of the time. After an hour they gave us drinks then it was a further hour until dinner; no choice but a lovely chicken curry with a potato salad to cool your mouth after the hot spices. We had a nice red wine to go with it, not South African but from Chile. The meal was finished off with a trifle for dessert. By airline standards it was a very good meal. After that I tried to watch a movie, 'The Theory of Everything' a biopic of the physicist Stephen Hawking. It was good but the sound quality from the video system was poor and the noise from the jet engines also drowned it out. If it comes on TV at home it will be worth watching. I didn't persevere to the end but as the lights had been dimmed and everyone else was getting sleep I tried to join them. I didn't manage very well and only dozed on and off with a bad headache keeping me awake. Moira gave me a couple of paracetamol and I eventually managed to drop off about 1 pm.
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