Road from Joburg to London

Having sent 115kgs of Cargo through to London 2 days earlier, we didn't expect our rucksacks to be overweight at check in. Rightly so, we weighed in with 2 whole kgs to spare...ha. Knew we should have packed in some more golf balls. So anyway, we said a final farewell to Steers with a healthy yet well greased day-breaker breakfast with Gump, Tanya, Matt and John...thanks for coming to see us off guys. So hand in hand, with a tear or 2 in our eye, we got on the plane with high expectations of being in a seat with extra leg room as requested at checkin...who were we kidding?!? We were giving the very back seat of the plane which at first glance looked nice enough for our 8 hour flight to Doha...and then we heard the toilet flush...about a metre to our right. Bless. We did however have a window seat with an excellent view of the wing so it wasn't all bad...cos we're really interested in wings.

Despite our worst fears, the flight wasn't too bad...at least we didn't have to wait too long in the toilet queue. After 3-4 bad movies, we touched down on Doha, Qatar, at about 11 at night. As we stepped out of the plane, we were hit with the 35 degree celcius heat that constitutes a cool evening in the desert - brought back memories of camping at Mana over Christmas. Wow, bring on London. Our stay in Qatar was pretty uneventful until we got back onto the bus which was due to take us to the plane... we were about to get going until some official runs out, stops the bus and requests to get on. Mini panic...there must be stowaway or criminal on the bus...or worse a Zimbabwean. Major panic...he comes straight up to us in front of everyone on the bus and demands our passports. Without headbutting the official, we handed over our passports with everyone giving us the 'go directly to jail without collecting R200' look. Luckily for us and the official, who left with his nose intact, we passed whatever check it was and were never told what the problem was. It did however make it hard to sleep for the next 7 hour leg with recurring mini heart attacks every time we caught someone looking at us funny.

We eventually left Doha at about half 2 in the morning and were happy to have normal cattle class seats. The school kids next to us looked pretty harmless and were well engrossed in their selection of about 100 movies on the inflight entertainment system. It was probably about 4 in the morning when the kid 2 seats down from us decided to get sick all over his feet, and the chair in front of him with no use of the vomit bag at all. Made for a very pleasant 4 hours. The two kids on either side of him continued as if nothing was out of the ordinary - it was hilarious... they should have at least high five'd him!

Anyway, we eventually got to London at about 8 the next morning and were pleasantly surprised that we were not shouted at or arrested for being Zimbabwean. Got the stamp and went through to baggage where we spent the next hour and a half looking for my guitar. Never found it...maybe it's a sign? Tried to locate our 115kg's of cargo too and never found that either but we weren't too bothered...at least we were in. Eventually found out that the cargo missed the flight and would only be arriving a day later so we still haven't got it yet. Have since found out that it is waiting for us somewhere...we hope. So anyway, we got picked up by Chris and have been spending the last 2 days with them in their lovely little 5th floor flat looking over a million other people in their lovely little flats. Man, this place is huge...we're so lost. What's even more crazy is that at 10 o'clock at night its still light! We have however had some lovely days since we've been here and the sun has been shining constantly with really warm weather - things are starting to dry out at last!

We are leaving tomorrow arvy for the next leg of our journey... the Czech Republic, for Jen's cousins wedding. Really really looking forward to it.