Long Flights Are Usually Worth It

So Monday finally came and I was super pumped to leave, but not to leave Duke, easily the worst part of the trip.

Aw Duke

The sad thing is that he obviously has no idea I won’t be back for ten weeks. And of course I have to see dogs at the Cape Town airport.

My first of two flights on my way to Cape Town from JFK was to Zurich on Swiss Air. Holy shit was that a nice flight. First off, they feed you like Americans on there: I’m talkin like three different meals, unlimited fresh (somehow) rolls, food that actually tastes good. And they had this video screens on all the seats (even coach) where you could watch movies that actually weren’t all that old, random TV shows (yes Dad, I watched HIMYM), and play time-killing video games (won $32,000 on Millionaire, kindofabigdeal).  And, to top it all off, the flight was like 30% full. I chose to stay by the window since I like the views, but a bunch of people just sprawled across the middle rows (the 3 in the 2-3-2 seat setup) and actually slept in a fully horizontal position. Not exactly safe but whatever. On both flights, I had an empty seat next to my window seat, which was super convenient for putting all my shit there.

Speaking of the views, they were straight bananas. We flew over Paris at night/early morning which was really cool. Also, we were flying like in the stars, so it was so awesome to just look out the window and see all these stars that seemed really close. I thought about trying to take a picture of it, but realized the flash would probably wake up the German (Swiss?) lady lying down across the aisle. The only negative of that first flight is that I was kinda unsure as to sleep or not, since I left in the evening (our time), arrived in the morning (their time), then had an eleven hour flight after that to arrive in Cape Town at night. But I mean, if that’s the only negative I’d consider it a pretty damn good flight. Oh there was one stereotypical crying baby too, damn did that kid need a drink to shut him up.

I see me

The second flight was kind of annoying, but not because of the time; the 11 hours went by faster than you’d think. Since we left from Zurich, all the flight attendants must’ve assumed I also spoke German. And since the flight was operated by Edelweiss Air (I probably slaughtered the spelling of that, I think Swiss Air owns them), we got fed like every hour (exaggeration but it sure felt like it). So every time they came to offer me some food or drink, they’d spout out like a paragraph in German, just so I could look like a complete idiot and say “English?” Every. Fucking. Time. There was also a lot less to look at, and the screen was a lot smaller and dinkier. Flying over the mountains in Switzerland was pretty sick though, we could’ve been onea those planes you see in the ads where it’s flying over the Alps or something, except our plane was a p.o.s. and wasn’t flying over the Alps. But I digress…

I coulda sworn I had ones when we were actually over the mountains but whatever

Finally landing in Cape Town was surreal. That (not the previous eighteen hours I spent in an airplane or additional five-ish hours I spent in an airport) is when everything finally hit me: Holy fuck, I’m in South Africa. Getting off the plane was crazy: in Zurich, you could see your breath when you walked through that tunnel thing; in Cape Town, I ripped off my jacket as soon as I could (only to spend the next two minutes struggling to find space for it in my carry-on). The dude at customs was kind of awkwardly chill about his questioning. I don’t if he just didn’t see me as a threat, but just asking “Are you carrying any weapons?” and stuff like that and just trusting me to be truthful without looking is pretty…interesting. After that we waited for everyone else to get in, and then made our way to the hotel (http://www.ikhayalodge.co.za/).

If you can’t tell already, the hotel we’re at now is awesome. This is the view off our balcony:

View outside my bedroom, almost dropped my camera for this one

These are the first of many Table Mountain pictures to come, just prepare yourselves

We got there and checked in around midnight, so everyone was just so spent after travelling for so long and we all just generally felt gross. That shower (which I took sitting down (oddly comfortable), thanks for no shower curtains) was easily the second best one ever, right after the one at the end of ORION.

I was excited for the next day because we were going to Robben Island. I’ll post about that sometime later when I sort through all the pictures I took.