The Travel Tales

The flight from Charlotte to Atlanta was short with a rough landing in Atlanta. Coolest part of the whole flight was that we flew through a CLOUD!!! I was pretty darn amazed by that. We then hung around the airport for a few hours then it was finally time to board our plane and head to Johannesburg, Africa. Our flight was 14 hours and 41 minutes. Adam and Reh switched seats with people and we all ended up sitting next to each other which was a blessing. We were lucky enough to have a TV in the back of the chair in front of us and we were able to pick from this huge list of movies, TV shows, music or games for entertainment. I watched two movies and then it was time for sleep. One pro about being short, I can sleep on planes!!! I think I ended up getting about 5-6 hours of sleep. The funniest thing about this flight and I wish I was kidding about this but I couldn’t make this up if I tried. The row in front of us AND behind us was full of hunters headed to Africa. But these weren’t you’re average Blue Ridge hunters…nope…these guys were taxidermists. They had the matching shirts and hats and everything. I can’t tell you had many drinks they had on the plane nor how many they were gonna have once they were off the plane, but it is definitely safe to say that I wouldn’t want to be around these guys if they had toy guys much less guns as tall as I am! That was definitely unnerving and hilarious all at the same time. And for all you “Save the Endangered Species” people, I think they were going to hunt Kudu which is kind of like Africa’s version of the elk.

When we finally landed in Jo’burg it was freezing cold. We had no problem finding the guy who was there to pick us up and then we went to dinner and then crashed. We spent the night at this place called BIMS which is where people can stay there for very little if they can’t afford anywhere else. It was a really nice place and once my head hit the pillow I was out, jet-lag had kicked in.

The next morning (June 1^st) we woke up bright and early and went back to the airport in order to catch our flight to Swaziland. In the airport we basically got ripped off. One of the worker guys comes up to Adam and offers to help but Adam tells him that we are fine and we don’t need any. And then the same guy goes up to Reh and asks him which flight we are taking. Well then Reh starts to pull out his itinerary and before he can even get it out, the guy takes it out of his hand and starts pointing us in the right direction. So we got help even if we didn’t want it or need it. Well he takes us to the check in counter and helps us check our bags and all that stuff. Then he walks us down to security and shows us what to do. On the way to security Reh asks him how much of a tip do we need to give him. He says about ten dollars each. And we are thinking okay 10 rand each…that’s a little much. Well we get to security and Adam hands him the money and he says no give me extra, give me extra. I said 10 American dollars from each. This guy was asking for a $60 tip and we tried explaining to him that we didn’t have American money and that we normally don’t tip near that much in the states. Well he didn’t seem to understand that and wasn’t going to leave us alone so Jonathon gives him 100 rand and then Reh does too because he doesn’t see Jonathon give him his money. Basically this guy got a 260 rand tip about 40 American dollars. We definitely got ripped off, but apparently he needed that money more than we did.