Departures and Arrivals

Departures and Arrivals   …   Monday 27 May - Wednesday 29 May

We dropped Ali and my mum back at Dulles airport, Washington at about 2.30pm on Monday afternoon. It was sad to see them go - we really enjoyed the two weeks we spent together. They had a long wait at the airport but Gloria and I also had to make the 260 mile drive to New York. As it turned out the traffic was horrible, probably due to Memorial weekend, and it took us 7 hours to get our hotel near to JFK airport. We managed to re-pack our gear, get some decent sleep and were checked out by 7.30 am. We weren't sure how long it would take to work through paperwork at Enterprise as a result of the ding to the right rear door. In fact it all went pretty quickly and we were on our way to the airport in no time at all. The 15 hour flight from JFK to Johannesburg went better than we expected. We watched a bunch of films and then managed to get some sleep. The connection to our follow-on flight to Cape Town was a little tight on time because it took so long for our checked baggage to come through, but we did make it. A 2 hour flight and 15 minute taxi ride brought us to the Carmichael Guest House - our base for the next week. This is a lovely two story Victorian building - we have a very nice large room and it's only 100 yards from the house Tasha is living in. After a quick cup of tea to revive our flagging bodies we went round to meet up with Tasha. It is fantastic to see her again, she looks great - remarkably so considering she just pulled an "all-nighter" to finish up her last course work! We spent the afternoon walking around the University of Cape Town which has a nice looking campus in an impressive position under Table Mountain. We met Pippin who has been Tasha's advisor during her semester at UCT and then walked up the initial slopes of Table Mountain to a memorial of Cecil Rhodes and a cosy tea shop. It seems that there is a lot to see and do in Cape Town and we are looking forward to visiting Tasha's favorite spots.

Mike