Both scientists refused point blank to take us to the airport. Scientist #1 sniffed that she needed to be "At Work" and Scientist #2 muttered something about lectures. I was a little concerned about Scientist #2 taking us anyway, what with the roadworks and Gillooly's interchange moving daily I did think he might get lost on the return trip. We were booked to fly on Kulula - given that they are a cut price airline they generally oversell tickets so you do have to book in early. What to do? A transfer service costs more than the cost of the flight in Johannesburg and parking at the airport for 3 days would probably cost us a month's bond repayment at least. Then I remembered the new long term parking facility. This required hours of research (well, at least one Tweet) to find out about the long term parking at OR Tambo. I downloaded maps, briefed Bob the GPS and committed the directions to memory just to be sure.
The flight left at 7.45 so we had to be there by 6.20am, which meant leaving home at 5 to have enough time to get lost at least twice. We managed to find it alright (Go left! No wait - try the right hand lane, oh just stay in the middle lane and hedge your bets), but when we got there all the ticket dispensers were broken. I refused to move until an attendant came - in his words "It's our problem, not yours - we won't charge you for a lost ticket, PLEASE go through lady" Once I had established his name, rank and serial number I drove in, much to the relief of the hundred hooting cars backed up behind me who were now going to be late for their flights. There is no numbering system for parking, so we assumed it would take us at least a day to find the car once we got back "Keep the boarding passes," I said to Walter, "we'll need them as evidence when we try and leave so they don't charge us the lost ticket fee of R250/day"
The bus trip to the airport works fairly well, and we booked in early enough to buy a HUGE breakfast for ourselves at the Wimpy PLUS leave enough time to find the boarding gate. We read the boarding passes wrong so got sidetracked looking for Gate C20 (it doesn't exist) but we did find all the fancy lounges as well as lots of interesting shops so it wasn't an entirely wasted experience.
Boarding was an interesting exercise - we went through the tunnel to the aircraft then out a dodgy little side door, down open steps onto the apron, around the aircraft and then up other open steps to the rear door. Strange.
The next point of concern was landing at George airport. At the moment this is only allowed in clear weather, although I'm not sure if that's because of the equipment or the runway and there isn't a ready answer anywhere on the web.
I researched this quite thoroughly - apparently the CAA is baffled by the overshoot - but I would urge them to fly into the airport seated in the cockpit so they can see exactly what the problem is. I figured it out straight away.
George runway is a little shorter than our driveway. I've seen longer bush strips - and we were in the new B737-800 which is, obviously, a jet. When we joined the circuit for our approach I looked at the runway and was glad I wasn't having to stop a jet 3 feet after touching down, perhaps they should consider a passenger version of the Hawker Harriers that can just descend vertically?
We hopped into the transport to Oudtshoorn and set off over the Outeniqua mountains for the Klein Karoo
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