The
kids stayed home from school today to see us off. Neither Eric or I was
feeling very well this morning when we woke up, so we took it easy and
spent the morning packing up all our stuff. We still needed to get some
photos of the house before we left, so that was Eric's job after breakfast.
We loaded up the car for the last time and headed for the Blue Route mall.
Veda needed to go to the bank, so we took the opportunity to pick up a
chocolate and sugar grinder and a huge jar of Marmite at Woolworths and
grab some lunch at Ocean
Basket. I got the fried fish and chips special to settle my stomach
and Eric had a baklava-like dessert and a Sprite spiked with fruit juice.
The
last thing left on our must-see list was the Two
Oceans Aquarium, so that was our final stop before the airport. Courtney
and Cody went in with us while Veda had an espresso and relaxed in the
café. We saw the predator tank feedings, a beautiful view of the
kelp forest, more penguins, a few giant spider crabs and some playful
otters. Many of the tanks are filled with real ocean water that is allowed
to move with the tides. I was expecting a bigger place, but I'm glad we
saw it, nonetheless. After an hour, we were back on the road to the airport.
We
got our boarding passes and checked our large luggage, then snuck back
out to chat with everyone before our plane started boarding in 2 hours.
We agreed to come back as soon as we could and hugged everybody goodbye.
We made it through security with no problems and arrived at the gate just as they were bussing folks to the plane. We had much better luck with the movies but the food wasn't as good on the way back. We watched 'Something's Gotta Give' together and tried to doze a little before our stopover on Isla do Sal, a tiny island airstrip off the west coast of Africa. Strangely, we were asked to remove all carry-on luggage from the overhead bins and sit with them on our laps while they did a security walk through. I was not amused as it was 2 am at this point and all I wanted was a little sleep!
19
hours after leaving Cape Town we touched down in Atlanta, tired and in
a time warp. We decided that once you are on a plane for more than 10
hours, you lose sense of time and it's been too damn long anyway. Even
though international flights into Atlanta are a pain, we made it out of
the airport in an hour and a half and because of our early arrival, we
were able to take the 9:15 am shuttle back to Athens instead of having
to wait for the 11:45 am departure.
Glad to be home and sleeping in our own bed.
Epilogue: We never received that postcard from the Postcard Tree and the missing cheese is still a mystery. And I wish I snuck some biltong home with me, I'm going to miss that stuff! Thankfully, we managed to recover many of the photos off the 128MB card that died on the fourth day of our trip. Sandisk is sending us a replacement card soon.