Goodbye Europe, Hello Africa!
And with that, we were done with Europe! We'd been in Europe since early January, so it was time for a change; yet it was bittersweet as we'd really enjoyed our time there.
We flew from Athens to Istanbul, where we'd catch our Turkish flight to Johannesburg. While at Istanbul, we finally got a chance to check out the flagship Turkish lounge! That place is massive - 2 floors of luxury. There was a wall of TVs where you could get wireless headphones and listen to any programming you wanted; olive bar featuring like 12 different types of olives; RC car racing track; multiple PS4s sprinkled around; play pen for kids; golf simulator; showers and suites; and best of all, self-serve luggage lockers!
I'm jumping the gun a bit though. We were taking a red-eye to Joburg at 2 AM and our flight from Athens landed at like 9 PM. However, we checked our backpacks from Athens to Istanbul to avoid bag drama (sensitive from our prior Dubrovnik experience), so we had to actually exit customs in Istanbul, get our bags, and go back through security and passport control. It all worked out fine though since we already had Turkish E-Visas and the airport wasn't too crowded, so we made it through with hours to spare.
Once we made it to the lounge, we checked everything out and tried a bunch of food and activities! One silly part was when I was asking about using the suites and got totally judged by the worker lady as not being eligible, even though we were almost eligible. There are a million rules to use the suites and the only one we didn't hit was being in between two Turkish flights. I didn't need the extra judge-y sass, lady, just because I was schlubbily dressed at midnight in an airport lounge. Also, it was kinda disgusting the number of people sticking their bare feet on table tops as they were relaxing - so gross.
Our flight to Joburg wasn't very eventful. The service on our flight was yet again lackluster at best, not sure if it's because of the late night red-eye (i.e. let customers rest) or just Turkish service. The more we fly Turkish though, the more it seems to be the latter. Food wasn't memorable and we didn't sleep as much as we should have (so many movies to watch since we hadn't flown in a while!). The flight was about 10 hours without a time change, which was nice since we'd avoid jet lag at least.
And as simple as that, we were in Africa! Our hotel in Joburg (African Rock Hotel, where we'd stay 3 separate times) was super nice and the food was great. We also constantly stashed bags there in between our travels which was very convenient.
Driving from the airport to our hotel was an interesting experience. We drove through areas that were predominantly black, with lots of cheap looking housing and many people out in the street with signs looking for work (or begging). As we got closer to our hotel, we saw more and more high fences with barbed wire and signs for 24/7 armed security. Finally, we reached our hotel which had its own high fence while being in a gated community with a manned security gate. It felt very segregated and very dichotomous to see the differences between areas.
We'd come to learn a lot from speaking with Afrikaaners (people who descended from the Dutch settlers who took land from the bushmen and turned it into farmland and pioneered many of the businesses/industries that run the country) in South Africa and Botswana about views on the political climate and changes in the country over the past 20 years since apartheid, which we'll share about more in future posts. We didn't know a lot about the background and current struggle going on in South Africa, so it was a good opportunity to see first-hand the current state of affairs.
Our general schedule in Africa was as follows:
- Joburg served as a central transit point in between regions, but we didn't plan to really sightsee too much in the city itself
- Victoria Falls on the Zimbabwe side as the first stop
- 3 night safari stay at Chobe Elephant Camp in Botswana
- 2 night safari stay at Kadizora camp in the Okavango Delta in Botswana
- 2 night safari stay at Deception Valley Lodge in the Kalahari desert in Botswana
- Back through Joburg to get to Kapama Game Reserve, next to Kruger NP in South Africa
- To relax after our time on safari in the bush, a week in Cape Town on our own
- A final swing back through Joburg to check out the Cradle of Humankind before heading to South America
Logistically speaking, we ended up booking the majority of our itinerary with the help of Annekie at Catz Tours. Lishan had used Catz on her prior trip to South Africa a few years ago and had a good experience, and Annekie really helped tailor a trip that worked for us and our budget. We're really glad we used Catz just because there are a lot of logistics to get around Africa that that we wouldn't have known and it was nice to kick back and realize everything was all set. OK - to be fair, Lishan did a bunch of work before we left with Annekie to set this stuff up so I got to kick back ;).
Get ready for lots of safari pictures! We took a ton, so prepare yourselves loyal readers :)
Real time travel update
We are on US soil right now! We flew from Lima, Peru to Houston just now on our way to Tokyo, which will be our final stop before returning to Seattle. As you can see, our blog is just at Africa so we are 2 continents behind - eek! Finishing the blog and organizing things to help see our whole trip at a glance is high on our priority list when we get home to ensure that we finish it before too much time passes.
Side travel note - it's really silly that in Lima, there was an extra liquids check at the gate so anyone who had water bottles had to chuck them (I think duty free was OK to go through, but we didn't really see much around us). They also went through all of our carry on bags, did a body pat down, and a thorough shoe examination. Yay, American security?
