Livingstone - Johannesburg

RANEE'S SOUTH AFRICA DIARIES: JOURNAL 7
May 23

The morning is relaxed and after breakfast, we putter around and pack and see the Victoria Falls spray from the jetty for the last time—today it is rainbow coloured and for a long while, we watch the fascinating drama of the top of the spray breaking away into clouds and then nothingness.

Then it is time for Paul to come for us at 11.15 and we are off to the quaint little airport again after picking up a few people along the way.

“International departures” has a nice lounge where we go after immigration, but the flight is delayed by an hour and a half and we have many hours to kill. We realize after a while—my husband asks the authorities where he can go to have a smoke—that immigration is not quite a one-way street. A person can walk out with his boarding pass and a wave at the lady behind the counter, have a beer, smoke a cigarette outside the airport and walk back in without being security-checked or questioned. This kind of relaxed, trusting atmosphere points to another, gentler time in the past and is not quite here and now.

As we sit in the lounge, we observe some of our fellow travelers. There is a Gunther Grass look-alike with a “jhola" like bag. This guy manages to get to the gate without putting his bag through the scanner. He’s a man in a hurry to go, but obviously, there is nowhere he can go. So he goes to the gate.

There is another Gujarati family. They have their main meal sitting in the lounge. Out come their little bags of food from a big bag of food. Out come the khakras and theplas and Bhujiyas and other farsan. The food is displayed on the floor of the lounge, paper plates are filled and handed out by the women who sit on the floor to do this. Then the family eats with gusto!

All of this makes the wait go faster and finally our plane arrives from JNB, unloads its passengers and luggage as CE202, loads our paraphernalia and us as CE203 and we walk a few yards from the gate to board it, Gunther Grass leading the way.

The flight back is just as frenetic in service as the flight in. The added treat is a superb aerial view of the Victoria Falls that gives us another perspective of the totality of Mosi-O-Tunya.

We reach Oliver Tambo two hours beyond our arrival time and rush through immigration only to idle a long while for our baggage to arrive and finally emerge to find Anthony waiting good-naturedly.

We spend some more time at arrivals going through the Dollar exchange rates—what we get ranges from 6.26 to 6.38, nowhere near the 7 we want—and going away with our money unchanged. It is about 5pm before we leave, but this time the traffic is not too bad and we are at Anthony’s before 6pm.

Jo’burg is still very uncomfortably cold and we are still under-dressed. In the evening there is much to do. We pack for Kruger, wash 2 loads and hang them out to dry and cook and eat dinner. By the time we go to sleep it is past 1am and far colder than my feet can stand. I toss and turn all night, trying to get my feet to warm up enough so that the rest of my body can sleep.