Another Mr and Mrs Three Dawg adventure! I added a bunch of pics to this RR which I first posted on my local advscotland.com forum, so I thought I'd put it up here. Hope you enjoy it, bearing in mind it was written for my home crowd..
So whose stupid idea was it to go to South Africa, a country stubbornly on the UK's 'Do Not Travel' Red List during the Covid19 pandemic? Er, well it was mine, but I can explain...
Actually, I blame British Airways. If some very tempting Avios (frequent flyer) redemption fares hadn't popped up as I was idly surfing the internet one evening, beer by my side, I would have dismissed the idea of travelling in 2021 as foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But there they were, two returns to Cape Town in business class exactly when we would normally be heading off on our hols, so after a very quick conflab with Mrs 3D, I hit the button and booked 'em, Danno.
To compound my stupidity (or optimism?) I phoned our friends Rob and Nicky who travelled with us to South America in 2019. Would they like to come along, we'd love to show you our favourite spots in that part of the world. In less than ten minutes they snapped up another pair of tickets, so it was game on. Gulp!
Needless to say, there were one or two problems between bagging the tickets and touching down at Cape Town International which I have detailed elsewhere, but briefly they go like this:
Eight cancelled flights EACH!
A re-route via Johannesburg.
Bikes being bumped off the ship hours before loading.
Bikes being flown to Cape Town at vast expense because they were bumped off the last ship that would get them there.
Bikes getting stuck in Istanbul.
One bike (mine) being flown on to Johannesburg, while the other (Rob's) languished in Istanbul.
My bike being trucked overland from Johanesburg to Cape Town after a great deal of wrangling with customs and arriving three days late, meaning I had to rent a bike for this time.
And...
Rob's bike arriving ten days after this, meaning he had to rent a bike for the whole trip (circa seven weeks!).
Not a good start, but what else could possibly go wrong? Well, read on...
So whose stupid idea was it to go to South Africa, a country stubbornly on the UK's 'Do Not Travel' Red List during the Covid19 pandemic? Er, well it was mine, but I can explain...
Actually, I blame British Airways. If some very tempting Avios (frequent flyer) redemption fares hadn't popped up as I was idly surfing the internet one evening, beer by my side, I would have dismissed the idea of travelling in 2021 as foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But there they were, two returns to Cape Town in business class exactly when we would normally be heading off on our hols, so after a very quick conflab with Mrs 3D, I hit the button and booked 'em, Danno.
To compound my stupidity (or optimism?) I phoned our friends Rob and Nicky who travelled with us to South America in 2019. Would they like to come along, we'd love to show you our favourite spots in that part of the world. In less than ten minutes they snapped up another pair of tickets, so it was game on. Gulp!
Needless to say, there were one or two problems between bagging the tickets and touching down at Cape Town International which I have detailed elsewhere, but briefly they go like this:
Eight cancelled flights EACH!
A re-route via Johannesburg.
Bikes being bumped off the ship hours before loading.
Bikes being flown to Cape Town at vast expense because they were bumped off the last ship that would get them there.
Bikes getting stuck in Istanbul.
One bike (mine) being flown on to Johannesburg, while the other (Rob's) languished in Istanbul.
My bike being trucked overland from Johanesburg to Cape Town after a great deal of wrangling with customs and arriving three days late, meaning I had to rent a bike for this time.
And...
Rob's bike arriving ten days after this, meaning he had to rent a bike for the whole trip (circa seven weeks!).
Not a good start, but what else could possibly go wrong? Well, read on...
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