~ Sod's Law: What can go wrong, will go wrong. ~
The fact is that South Africa is truly a long way from England. It took me from ridiculously early on Thursday morning until late on Friday night to get here. I could vividly recall how long the journey took the last time and so had psyched myself up for it, telling myself that I was perfectly capable of going until 2pm on Friday without any proper sleep. But in the event, Sod's Law took hold and I didn't arrive until even later than that.
So what went wrong? The coach ride down to Heathrow was boring but went off smoothly. It started when I had successfully navigated the maze that is Europe's largest airport (helped a lot by the many yellow signs) and presented myself proudly in front of the Swiss Airway's check-in desk. The helpful, smiling lady told me that my flight from Zurich to Johannesburg had been postponed until 7:30 on Friday morning. She had no idea why the flight was postponed. She was terribly sorry, but Swiss Airlines couldn't pay for my flight from Joburg to Durban because it was booked separately. She wished me a nice day.
Thus ensued a whole hour of telephone calls and rearrangements, including going to the South African Airway's desk and asking to rebook my flight, but all flights on Friday evening were full. To top it off, my flight to Zurich was also delayed, although only by half an hour.
However, that's quite enough whinging. What I have discovered during this whole adventure is that things going wrong does not necessarily mean things being worse. For starters, the part of the journey I was dreading most was the sleepless Thursday night spent sitting upright in my plane seat, until I would sell my soul for the ability to lie down horizontally. What I got instead was a complimentary night in a swanky executive room in the 'Hilton Zurich Airport' hotel. This room was large, had an armchair, a sweeping glass desk, a proper swivelly chair and an enormous wide-screen television. Unfortunately during my short stay the only facility I had time to appreciate was the white, soft expanse of my double bed, in which I was able to catch a precious and blissful five hours' sleep.
Another advantage of having your plans abruptly derailed is being thrown together with your disgruntled fellow travellers. There is nothing like a common wrong to serve as a conversation starter. At the free buffet dinner provided at the hotel, I sat with Anna, a Polish translator living in Paris, who was going to spend three weeks in Kruger National Park; a retired Orthodox Jewish couple - she was from Israel, he from South Africa - who couldn't take the postponed flight because by the time it arrived on Friday evening their Sabbath would have started, and they would be stranded at the airport because they would be forbidden to drive anywhere; and a young South African man who was continuing his studies in the U.K., but was going back to visit home.
And then there was the rare opportunity of a daylight flight right over Africa. For much of the trip I simply gazed out of the window. From 30,000 feet the waves of the Meditterenean looked as small and still as the pattern of grooves on a wooden table. The Sahara really was a dusty golden-brown and took more than two hours to cross, even going at nearly 600mph. And I have never appreciated the huge variety of cloudscapes there are, from low-lying separate blobs casting their shadows onto the land below them to completely joined-up blocks of cloud, stretching out into the distance like a fluffy ocean of cotton-wool.
Finally, my dilemma of how to cross the last few hundred miles to Durban was solved for me by the crack-team of Logan and, in particular, Rajes (the people I am staying with this weekend). Rajes just happens to run her own travel-advice business, and spent all day constantly checking websites and ringing people until she managed to snatch the one remaining Economy seat for me. And to complete my run of good luck, I got upgraded to Business class. :o)
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