Made it!

Well, I made it in one piece anyway. Her I am, sitting in my hotel room at the bottom of the world (well, not quite the bottom, call if a few km from the bottom of Africa so). Man, what a trip! I've said it before and I'll say it again, whoever said "getting there is half the fun" obviously never had to connect through Heathrow!

The first leg of the journey out of Dublin went uneventfully, and then when the transfer from Terminal 1 to Terminal 4 went off without a hitch I started thinking "wow, this looks like it'll be an easy one". Bad mistake! I got to the terminal in plenty of time (nearly 2hrs), and it just so happened to be Rugby weekend, South Africa (my destination!) were playing Wales in Cardiff. Mindful of what happened me on the beijing trip where i list track of time watching the rugger and had to run for my gate, I told myself I'd only watch the 1st half and then get to the gate in plenty of time.

And here's where things started to go awry.

I got to the gate with hages to spare (35mins maybe), and was waiting around until 5mins before we were supposed to be boarding, an announcement was made that they'd discovered some electrical fault on the plane and so were replacing it with another one, which had to be cleaned and serviced, at least an hour's delay. I could have watched the whole of the rugger had I known! :-(

Eventually we took off, 2hrs late, and started the trek down the Dark Continent (well, via France and Spain). This meant I was now getting in at 8am rather than 6am. I knew that this trip would be screwing up my body clock anyway, as normally if I have a 10-12hr flight then my destination is about 8hrs plus or minus what I'm used to , which I'm used to acclimatizing to. This one tho was an 11.5hr flight to end up only 2hrs out of whack with back home! Not used to it at all! As a result I wasn't feeling the cleverest when I got into the taxi.

And here's where things get even more fun. We make it to the hotel, and they tell me they can't find the booking. Lovely. Turns put that originally Alan was supposed to be flying out earlier on sat so he'd be getting in sat night, so the room was booked for the 24th to the 16th. Seems no-one had told them I'd be on a later flight and so getting in this morning, so when I was a no-show last night they cancelled the booking! Took about 30mins to sort that out with the manager and all (ended up paying for it on my plastic despite the fact it should be covered by the cust). Then, to make it worse, after that they told me that check-in time was 2pm so they couldn't let me have the room til then. And this was 9:15am! So, I dropped my bags in the left luggage room and headed out to see Cape Town. As I said tho, I wasn't feeling the cleverest so I got on the open-top bus tour (the same type of red bus that have in Dublin), forgot I'd left my sunblock in the check-in bag and ended up a few shades redder than I was when I woke up yesterday morning!

All in all, not the best of journeys!

(oh yeah, I finally got the room at 2pm anyway)