Monday June 7, 2010

Casa Velha, Round Two

Yiwen and I are in South Africa (SA) … for an extra day. It all started when the British Airways staff started a strike and our original flight from the US to London and down to SA got rebooked to earlier. So we would have to spend the night in SA at a guesthouse called Casa Velha overnight, returning to the airport the next morning to catch the flight with Tiffany and Jasper to Malawi. At the airport in Houston, we ended up having to check the bags we thought we would carry on, and carry on the bag we wanted to check, so there was some packing confusion. (I left my camera in the checked bag and Yiwen had a bunch of liquids in her carry on) The flights weren’t very smooth either, very turbulent, but we made it to SA just fine.

The Casa Velha, which means “old house” in Portuguese, is run by Janine. Janine is engaged to George, and their son Bryan, along with his friend Jared, came to pick us up at the airport. The accommodations were very comfortable and after almost two days of flight and next to no sleep, I went to bed quickly. Janine, Yiwen and I agreed that we should leave at 9:30 for the airport to catch our 10:20 to Lilongwe.

Now, most of you (especially you, Mum) are probably saying just now “what were they thinking!!!” which is pretty fair considering. Im going to blame it on my general sleepiness, and maybe an underlying assumption that “things are different in SA”.

9:45 am the next day, Yiwen and I get out of the car at the airport, but realize we have left a bag with technologies in it at Casa Velha, Jarred drives back to fetch it while Yiwen waits and I run, with bags in tow, to the check in desk only to met by a lady insisting that you must check in one hour prior to departure to be accepted onto the flight. I plead, please, we have 30 minutes, we can make it, but she says no. Then I hurry dejectedly and a little panicy to the ticket desk to rebook. I learn that there aren’t any other flights to Malawi that day, let alone to Lilongwe, so I go ahead and reschedule, call Tiffany to let her know what is up and return to Yiwen.

We headed back to Casa Velha with Jarred, and are going to stay on another night, no mess ups tomorrow! Hopefully we have expended all the travelling bad luck allocated for this trip!