Arrival Jo'burg

I got up around 6.15 to assure being at the airport on time. At that point it felt a bit unnatural to get up at that hour on a Saturday, but I would find out later during this trip that getting up at this time was almost like sleeping in. At the airport it turned out that I was only checking in 7.6 kg of luggage which must have been 10 kg lighter than the average weight of the bags in our group. Who would have thought that would ever happen?! Although, towards the end of the trip, when I realized that the weather was very good for most of the time, I figured that it would not have hurt to spend another few grams on a second pair of shorts.

Our 11 hour flight was on time and smooth for most people except the person that got showered by drinks from the stewardess’s tray. I’m sure the stewardess was even more embarrassed when the passenger sitting next to the shower was selected by the random number generator and she had to ask him to fill out an evaluation form for the flight. Anyway, since I’m a ‘destination person’ rather than ‘journey person’, I’ll skip the journey and continue with our arrival in Johannesburg, where we met the main characters of this story:

Thor and Louis, the crew. Thor was 53-year-old and an experienced guide who had a wide variety of other work experiences on his resume and could tell first-hand stories about any topic. Louis was his young(er) and extremely cute apprentice.

Annie and Yvonne, mother and daughter. They had fallen in love with Africa some years back and spend much of their savings to return to Africa again. Annie was very impulsive, which lead to funny statements and situations as her impulses were of a rather mischievous nature.

Arno and Inge, middle-aged couple. They were also in love with Africa and had already quite some travel experiences with regards to the continent.

Els, a widow in her late sixties, that had work for a travel agency and been on many trips all over the world including (South) Africa. She kept tract of the route we took during our trip.

Herman, a 78-year-old Dutch widower that lives in the US and had done so for most of his life. Herman did not say much, but whatever came out was always hilarious. When he thought something was very funny, he would produce a very loud ‘HA’, but most of the time the only thing that gave away his amusement was a chuckle. He managed to become the ‘troetel-opa’ of the trip with most of the women looking after him to make sure he got up on time, would put lotion and cream on his sun-burned skin etc. And, to my displeasure I found out that Herman gets more action than I do when it comes to dating.

Marleen and Heather, mother and her 12-year-old daughter that was hitting puberty.

Menno and Magda, retired couple. Whereas I preferred to take a few pictures of the animals we encountered and then just sit there, watch them, and enjoy the moment, Menno was a fanatic photographer and must have seen most of the trip through his lens. Magda was his wife that appeared to have some control issues.

Mieke, a Belgian bird-lover. She would get up early every morning and roam the grounds of the lodge’s that we were staying at to take pictures of any and all birds that she encountered. She even bought what must have been a 5 kg book on birds from Africa, only because it included 3 birds that were not included in any of the other books she already owned.

And finally of course there was Willem, a good friend of mine for 12 years (yes I know, we are getting old). Contrary to his girlfriend, Willem had wished to travel to Africa for a while and saw an opportunity to do so when I booked my trip and decided to join me. In retrospect I think this made my trip much more fun than it would have been by myself. Before leaving Willem and had decided to keep a low profile in the beginning as some people may find our sense of humor to be too harsh or even offensive. I received my first reprimand from Willem a few minutes after our arrival in Jo’burg already. Talking to our South African guide who speaks ‘Afrikaans’, we asked him if he could understand us when we were talking Dutch and he said Dutch was okay, but people from Belgium was a bit harder. Then I made some comment about us also thinking that the Belgians talk funny, after Willem felt the need to mention that there was a Belgian in our group, so I should shut up (he put it a bit nicer) and added: “Remember? We talked about this”.