I could not sleep, so got up early and finished most my packing, had a bath then went taking some photos before breakfast, it was unusual to have nothing to do, apart from sit around and chat, breakfast was, as usual, a pleasant experience, our ranger Evan I’d offered to let us have copies of his photos, whilst waiting for him to do mine. We chatted about photography, I had not realised that it was Evan the Rangers last day, but he was moving on to a new job after this day, some of these photos were quite stunning, after we had something to eat, then off we went after saying our goodbyes for the trip to Johannesburg, we had a short drive until we reached the transport to take us there. Interestingly, the ride in the vehicle was worse than the four-wheel drives, we were travelling around in during the Safari, it seemed a long trip with only a short break for the toilet and a snack, it took nearly 4 hours, part of which I slept through.
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When we arrived at the airport it seem much more disorganised than Heathrow, with poor signage, eventually I found my way to the desk, but this time it seemed to take a long time in the queue, on the seem to be some problem with the conveyor. For reasons I do not understand I was told I could no longer have the seat I wanted, so was offered another one, on that particular row, it seemed that none of the three seats had been booked, so I could choose which was most convenient for me. I mentioned that I could cope without assistance at this airport but would need help at Heathrow, so this was logged, I then went through security and passport control, then up to the lounge to relax. There were problems with my card, but I was surprised at the lack of efficiency at this particular desk, I mentioned wanting a shower so was given three packets wrapped in polythene and pointed in the general direction, quite different to that at Heathrow. I had my shower, then relaxed in the lounge with a drink and snack, then went to board the plane.
There seemed to be a long disorganized queue waiting to board, eventually it was my turn, and I was directed to my seat, I now understood why the people did not want to see it in the seats, this was because they were immediately next to the toilets, I decided I would sit in the middle seat, which seemed to be the most spacious, when a flight attendant came along, he said he could move me to a better seat, which also would have more legroom, so I took advantage of this. Yet again I struggled with the sound system and then gave it up as a bad job and had a read of the paper. The evening meal was pleasant and afterwards I settled down to go to sleep, I slept for a while, but then found for the rest the flight I had brief periods of sleep and wakefulness.
Finally we arrived at Heathrow the rest of the passengers disembarked apart from those of those who needed assistance. They seem to have a crazy system to get us to the exit, it consisted of a wheelchair for part of the trip, then an electric vehicle to take me on the next leg of the trip, finally and another wheelchair through to the baggage hall, unfortunately at passport control, there was some sort of problem, at the two passport desks, there seemed to be some sort of difficulty. So we waited for nearly quarter of an hour before finally passing through, my case was ready for collection. So I set off to find the vehicle to take me home, it was a different driver and vehicle to on the way out, not quite so luxurious this time, but the driver was pleasant enough, it took about four hours to get back home, so in total. I’ve been travelling for over 20 hours, first task was empty the case and do some washing, then check my mail, yes the holiday was finally over.
