Big trip for us! Amelia’s first time abroad, my second, and our first visit to the southern hemisphere. What a hectic start, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

South Africa was not in our plans or dreams, then six weeks ago our friends the Noltes called us. They know a guy that knows a guy that does this all the time. He had four openings for an upcoming trip. It would involve basically no planning on our part, the two week itinerary sounded amazing, and we could afford it. The old clock is ticking and we ain’t getting any younger, so we said yes.

The guy is Dave Johnson, Executive Director of Katie Adamson Conservation Fund. There are 11 people on the trip, and these are Dave’s words, not mine, “The four of you will be our token heteros.”

Yikes!

Tough start to the morning. Basically this meant we would miss our flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg. Atlanta was where the group was meeting so we could all be on the same flight. To shorten the story, after some stressful computer, WhatsApp and phone communications, we did 85-90 miles per hour up the 5 and 405 to LAX to catch the same flight the Noltes were on. The long odyssey to get to our first destination, Tembe Elephant Park, went like this:

• Frantic drive to LAX
• Longterm parking and shuttle stress
• Four hour flight to ATL
• Three hour layover in ATL
• 15 hour flight to Johannesburg, or as the cool kids call it, Joburg
• Spent the night in Joburg
• Next morning, 1 hour flight to Durban
• Then a six hour drive to Tembe Elephant Park

The start of the 15 hour flight.

In Joburg

The group taking the long trek through the airport.

Woolworths! I had no idea they were still alive. Both airports we were in had one.

Nolte in secondary, about to lose his wine opener.

Someone was smart enough to bring a little cloth mat so she could do yoga stretches anywhere.

Flying into Durban. All the green with roads in-between is sugar cane.

The King Shaka International Airport in Durban had some amazing tiled mosaics.

Marketing 101

Bathroom signage at King Shaka International Airport

We haven’t seen much yet, but we’ve seen enough to know the women here are beautiful. Their accents are just the icing on the cake. We flew a small Airlink Airlines jet to Durban. It had three flight attendants. One of them had a separate tag under her name that said, “In Charge”. I got such a kick out of it. Reminded me of the good old days when Dan Fouts used to wear a hat at practice with the initials M.F.I.C.

I had visions of finding Elon’s childhood home and pissing on it, but I didn’t have time and decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

Stay tuned the next post of Tembe Elephant Park is going to be amazing!