So much for a good night’s sleep. A mere three hours after we drifted asleep, the Godfather of Soul once again screeched us awake at 12:30am. We grabbed a stale croissant and a cup of Nescafe in the lobby, hopped a cab to Terminal 4B of Kigali International airport, and checked in with a friendly, clueless, and rather weary Kenya Airways ticketing agent, who learned something new that morning—Windhoek is in Namibia. After we corrected her mistyping of our South African Airways connection a couple of times, we cleared not-so-secure-ity, and boarded our 2:50am flight to Nairobi, set our clocks back an hour, and munched on our second breakfast before the clock struck 3:45am. We arrived on time and waited wearily for our connection to Johannesburg in the under “des”-truction Nairobi terminal, which makes LaGuardia look like the Lufthansa first class lounge in Frankfurt. The pre-flight boarding process was more exciting than usual, as a bipolar Aussie vigorously and profanely defended his right to rest a heavy-booted foot on the shoulder of the kind young African man seated in front of him in the gate area. After some unpleasant exchanges with the gate agents, Nairobi airport security escorted Mad Max out of the gate area, perhaps headed to Oz for a new brain.
More airline food was served to us on the 4-hour flight to Johannesburg (back to Rwanda time), where we tried to catch a few ZZZs between episodes of Just Gags (Quebecois for Candid Camera) and blogging the Rwanda leg of our vacation.
The agent in the South Africa Airways lounge in Jo-Burg was kind enough to admit us based on Rick’s Premier Exec status, where we were able to check email, post to the blog, and enjoy our fourth (and best) meal of the day. The short flight to Windhoek included a light snack and arrived a little early. Up to this point, we were VERY impressed with the quality of our KQ and SA. Alas, that was all about to change.
Rick’s duffel was amongst the first to arrive on one of two carousels unloading our flight, as we set our clocks back an hour to Namibian time. Unfortunately, after around 25 minutes, Anne, Rick, and a very anxious Indian woman were the only passengers remaining, both sans baggage. The service representative assured us that Anne’s bag, with all of her clothing, toiletries, lenses, and medications, would arrive on one of the next two flights that evening, and they would deliver it to our hotel before our 6:30am pickup in the morning. As we exited customs, the local tour operator, Leander, was less optimistic, as he plotted out our contingency plans on our way into town.
When we arrived at the delightful Olive Grove hotel for our Windhoek overnight, we met up with Nancy and Dan, to discover that Dan’s bag was also MIA. Apparently, the Jo-Burg airport is renowned for its leakage. Speaking of leakage, Dan inquired about Rick’s underwear stash, just in case. By 6pm, the four underbathed, underclothed, mildly pungent, and intrepid travelers decided on dinner at the hotel, which was quite tasty and enhanced by the news that Dan’s bag had arrived and Rick’s tidy whitey’s were safe from invading barbarians. Unfortunately, no news was bad news as regards Anne’s bag, which was lost in transportation, despite the best efforts of kindly Karin at the front desk.
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