Blame it on the rain

Today is our last day in cape town. We leave for namibia early
tomorrow morning. We are planning a drive around the cape of good hope
in the rental car today. The weather has turned a bit rainy, but we're
glad we had an awesome sunny day on sunday. And it never rains in
namibia anyway!

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Cape Town!

We made it to Cape Town! And we survived our 19 hour bus trip. The bus was actually more comfortable than the plane, with nice soft seats that reclined a looong way. Got to see some of the countryside as we were going along too - lot and lots of very dry land! Even saw our first african animals... well, they were sheep and cows and goats - but they were african! Later on we saw some ostrich and some kind of Bok.

Got a glimpse of some real african poverty too - shanty-towns made of corrugated-iron houses, and only a bit further up the road (presumably) rich vineyards!

On arrival at Cape Town we had some drama, walked to the car rental office we had booked, only to find them closed! It seems they had lost our booking. But we got it all sorted in the end and have picked up a shiny new Toyota Yaris today.

Better go, time's running out at the internet cafe - but don't say I never blog!

J&J

Bring on the bus!

We made it to joburg, and luckily enough so did our luggage. We had 12 hours to kill before the next stage, so we really wanted to see the apartheid museum.

Luckily, we were able to find a place to have a shower and a rest beforehand, so we went off to museum feeling slightly more human.

The museum was amazing. You just walk through it thinking 'how could anyone think this was a good idea?'

now we are at the bus station waiting on the bus that will be our home for the next 19 hours. It's a luxury bus, but after the movies-on-demand on the plane - will it stack up?

J&J

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Halfway round the world...

We have made it to bangkok so far. I'm writing this on my phone from the airport. Now that's commitment! We're waiting for our connecting flight to joburg. I'm loving the individual screens on the plane, and movies on demand. Already watched indiana jones, iron man, kung fu
panda and speed racer. Awesome.

--
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Twas The Night Before Take-Off

Twas the Night before Take-Off
And Jason and Juliet
Were just so Excited
They couldn't get to Bed

The Bags were all Packed
The Lists Ticked Off
Just a few more Hours
And then we'll be Off!

Do you like the clever way I rhymed 'off' with 'off' there? Amazing.

So, we're all packed. And we've managed to come in at the right weight with our luggage which is nice. We have no problem with the airline's 20kg limit, as the safari tour we are going on has a 12kg limit each! Lucky we're light packers!

Our flight leaves at 1:15pm tomorrow. Helen is picking us up to take us to Auckland.

Not sure when we'll get to do a blog after that - so here's a run down of the plan:

Fly from Auckland to Bangkok. 3 hour stopover.
Fly from Bangkok to Johannesburg. 12 hours there (6am to 6pm). We only have two objectives for our time in Jo'burg - see the Apartheid museum, and not get killed. We'll let you know how we get on.
Then at 6pm we board a bus for a mammoth 19 hour bus trip from Jo'burg to Cape Town. It is 1500 kms - the same as the distance from Hamilton to Invercargil.
Arriving in Cape Town we will pick up a rental car and drive to our accomodation for the first shower in a very long time!

Wish us luck!

(I have my phone with me (Jason), if anyone wants to text).

J&J

PS: Got another email from the travel agent today - saying the airline have changed the flight time again. The day before we leave. Awesome. Just about fainted, but turned out it was only a five minute change to the departure time from Jo'burg on the way home. Why even bother to tell us that? We have to be at the airport three hours early anyway!

The Final Countdown (do de doo do, do de do do doo)

Holy crap, three days till takeoff.

And no posts here for over a month.

Shocking.

(I know, you're not shocked at all).

Strangely, I've had heaps to blog about too - just no time. That's not very promising for future posts I guess, but we'll see how we go.

I've even set it up so I can blog from my cellphone - if I have coverage of course.

So in the last month... what has happened. Hmmm.

We finished all our jabs at the doctors. I ended up having 8 jabs in total, and two bloodtests. Juliet got away with only 5 jabs and one bloodtest. We had to have the bloodtest to see if we were "rabies proof". We both got good antibody results, but we still won't be lining up to be bitten by any wild dogs/monkeys/bats/used car salesmen etc.

We went to the theatre and saw Cats with Zac. You can read about that on his blog. Oh, hang on, he hasn't posted for 5 months! tee hee hee. (Hello Kettle, I'm Pot, you're black!)

We picked up our tickets from the travel agent. We had a mild heart stoppage when we got home and found that the e-Ticket for the airline had the wrong date for travel. We had changed the dates since we originally booked, but the e-Tickets still showed the old dates. Got back in touch with the travel agent and found that the booking is actually correct - we are booked for the right days but the airline doesn't actually provide new e-Tickets. We just rock on up to the airport with the wrong date on our ticket and apparently that's OK. Riiiight....

We went and saved the environment with Jess and Frosty. Took part in the Hubbards Carbon Crusade and went for an 8km walk and planted four trees each.

We got a phonecall just last week from the travel agent - saying the airline had changed our flights. Queue major heart stoppage - seven days out from departure and all our accommodation is booked - how can they be changing flights? It was OK though... turned out to be only the very last flight home from Bangkok to Auckland that got changed. Now we are having an extra day in Bangkok (at the airline's expense) and oh deary me, have to have another day of work. :-)

Then of course there's be all the last minute organising - getting a house sitter in so we don't leave our shiny new house empty for 5 weeks ... buying up half of the stock at Kathmandu for our safari tour ... and last night we started to pack!


Lord knows how I'm going to sleep the next few nights. I'm way too excited.

J&J