Going home

After another good breakfast in the crisp air, everybody loaded their luggage into the truck (or had somebody else take care of it) for the last time. We drove through the Golden Gate Park to vulture restaurant where we had one last walk after which we moved on towards Pretoria, for our farewell dinner. Turned out that some comment I had made during the trip about being able to put my whole fist into my mouth, really got stuck in some people’s minds. I figured however that (like many other things, including dancing on bars/tables) enough people had witnessed me do this already and that now that I have hit 30 I should stop doing stupid things (in public). Sorry dude – you are still young, you’ll understand when you’re my age (also, take it from me that when you do hit that age, you still hate to be patronized like that, but you will have lost control over the urge to do it to others (hahaha)).

At the airport we were quite surprised to see Mieke and Herman check in together and we started thinking we missed some romantic developments during the trip. Later we found out however that Miekes luggage officially was a bit too heavy, so her strategy was to check in together with somebody that was carrying a bit less weight. Apparently it worked. What did not work was for Willem and me to sit next to each other, so I was sandwiched in between two other girls, and of course I did not get any sleep.

After being herded around like cattle and being yelled at multiple times at airports in the US and after more friendly but still annoying security checks in Europe, I was pleasantly surprise by the Hakuna Matata – style security check at Jo’burg airport. When putting my toiletries in my carry-on luggage that morning I remembered thinking that I had to take out the 50 ml tube of toothpaste at the security check. Information and signs at Jo’burg were similar to other airports I’ve seen so far, but when I was taking out my toothpaste the lady told me that was not necessary: "don’t worry". Belts and shoes did not have to be taken off and the coins in my pocket could stay where they were. Later I realized that in addition to the toothpaste, I still had 200 ml of sun cream in my bag as well as 200 ml hand sanitizer - the latter I’m reluctant to admit as I am strong disbeliever of the effectiveness of this stuff, but anyway neither of this seemed to be a problem. So big thumbs up for SA! In addition to making all air-travelers feel like criminals until proven innocent, the effectiveness of the stupid 100 ml rule has never been proven (in fact it has even been disproven), yet nobody seems to have the balls to be the first to discontinue this rule except those brave security officers in Jo’burg.

When arriving back at Schiphol, the grey skies, drizzly weather and 13°C temperatures were working hard towards killing any holiday feelings that survived 11 hours of folded up flying. It did not work well enough though, because the days after returning I would still regularly look at the pictures that we took and that I received from other people of our group as well, a selection of which can be found at:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151104138099056.526996.706114055&type=3&l=d74dd1c8a4