Saturday at Heathrow was very smooth! The taxi ride (no traffic) check in (already done) bag drop (easy) security (even easier) - maybe Saturday afternoon is the time to travel - meant that we had loads of time at the airport and got thoroughly bored!

The flight was good (seats comfortable) and on time and immigration (dead easy) - meant that we had 4 hours to waste at JHB before the Windhoek flight. As the bags were checked all the way through and we didn’t need to collect them (which saved even more time) we (ADO) thought we would go out of the airport and have a relaxing breakfast in the Intercontinental hotel. Which we did. Although LMA thought we might be breaking the rules by not going directly to check in! Anyway, we had excellent salmon egg benedict, coffee and juice in comfortable surroundings and then sat on settees and read for a bit.

Then we decided to go back across the road to the airport. We already had our boarding passes (issued in London) so we didn’t need to check in and could go to the gate. Except we could find which gate on the boards! We did find the row of check in desks but there was a long queue but we reckoned that it was going to be the gates nearest the check in in B terminal. However, fortunately there was a BA desk just before the gate (it was a BA/Comair flight) so we asked and the guy said we should go to A terminal (which we did). However in A we couldn’t find a check in desk or a mention of our flight on the board (we were possibly too early) so we decided to go back to B terminal.

Arriving back at the check in desks in B the queue had now subsided so we asked which gate and explained that we didn’t need to check in bags as that had been done in London etc etc. They
Told us the flight was going from A terminal (aaaghhh) and that our bags would not have been put on the flight. (To be honest this didn’t make sense as we had seen them put an international transfer tag on them and label them for Windhoek (but it did serve to make LMA even more fraught and she said
she wouldn’t smile again until we actually saw the bags in Windhoek 3 hours later!!).

Anyway, we walked back (again) to A, found the gate, had to go through passport control again (another worry for LMA since we had told the guy who originally stamped the passports that we would be in SA for a week) but needless to say, this wasn’t mentioned!

And so to the plane and a 2 hour flight to Windhoek. Immigration took an hour of queuing but was finally done and then to the luggage collection .......

..... and there were our bags (which ADO had said would be there all along!!!)

Anyway we were met and briefed and then taken to Avis to complete the formalities for the truck. Apart from the usual forms we then had to have a road safety talk and slide show about how dangerous it can be to drive in Namibia and ‘please don’t roll the vehicle because that messes a lot of things up!’

Finally, two hours after landing we drove away in our almost new Toyota Hilux Twin Cab 4x4 and made our way to the guest house. This was very nice although the bedroom was made of polished concrete - floor, bath, shower, bed base, pretty much everything bar the toilet!

Went out to dinner in a quirky restaurant we had read about and had an excellent meal with beautifully cooked and tender meat.

And there endeth the first day!

ADO & LMA xx