The Red Eye to Cape Town

We’re on the red eye to Jo-burg, and then Cape Town. We had arranged with the driver who took us from the airport yesterday to pick us up at 4.45 am. That would get us to the airport by 5. Windhoek airport is a very small one. We checked in on-line last night, and only travel with hand-baggage, so it was just to go through security, and then immigration. No need for a birth certificate today, she said she could see the resemblance to Jan.

Namibians don not seem to have warm jackets despite it being so cold here in winter. They do wear woolen hats, but the women wrap themselves in fleece blankets in various ways. Basically all female staff at the airport had blankets wrapped around them, around the waist, and even over their heads.

Our first flight to Jo-burg was about two hours. Our transit time for our connection flight was roughly 1,5 hrs. Unlike Windhoek Jo-burg is a large hub, thus the que for immigration was very long, taking a very long time. When we only had about 30 min to our next flight we asked an airport staff if we could pass in the queue. She let us pass the barrier, then another staff person, were telling people they couldn’t pass and told them to go back in the queue. We kind of rounded her, skipped the line by coming around from the outside. A porter outside customs saw we were in a hurry, took us on a short-cut to security, and found out our gate. Probably saves us 15 well needed minutes, and he got a well deserved tip. We arrived at the gate for boarding just in time to catch the bus.

Had we waited in the queue to immigration, we would have most likely not made it.

Alex has been enjoying playing with the seat that turns into a bed, there’s also a nice massage function. We have upgraded to Business on this flight – too bad it’s only two hours!

We’ll soon be landing and are embracing ourselves to be hit with the big city buzz.