It was 14 hours straight from Sydney to Johannesburg but it went relatively quickly, lots of movies and a fair amount of dozing with the added benefit of an aisle seat with no one next to me. So not only could I get up whenever I liked, nobody had to climb over me either!
I was a bit nervous about landing this end - I'd made the mistake of reading a few horror stories about Johannesburg airport. But everything went smoothly - in particular my luggage appeared looking exactly as it did when I checked in, thank goodness. I was a little surprised by customs - New Zealand is so strict with bio security but here you just walked straight out. There was an 'items to declare' lane but I'm not sure what the motivation would be to go into it - everyone just walked straight out the green lane without talking to anybody official!
Much to my relief once I got out the exit I quickly saw my name on a card :) The people here at African Dreams are just lovely, they've looked after me very well including feeding me a delicious dinner last night and they'll drop me back to the airport in a few hours where I'll be picked up by the people from the cheetah project.
I haven't see a lot of Johannesburg, but it was pleasant enough to drive through. I couldn't help but notice the bars on windows and doors and a lot of security gates, and I was pleased to be in the capable hands of a local. But my short stay has been a positive one so far :)
It's still only early here, I'm a bit muddled with my time zones. I did at least manage a decent sleep and hopefully will settle into having my night and day back to front quite quickly.
I'm looking forward to getting to the project now, can't wait to share some cheetah photos soon!
Brilliant to hear that all is good so far and that there were no weird occurrences at the airport! Will be very excited to hear about the centre.
ReplyDeleteMuch love,
Anna
xx