The title of this post may be too extreme. We did spend 14 hours on a plane and that plane did experience over 10 hours of turbulence, but we were not ground down entirely. I will rewind back to the 21st of September. We allotted 3 hours to get to Newark International from South Jersey. It only took us two hours to get to the airport, so we only had 5 hours to waste. What better place to waste time but the first class lounge. That was not a problem for seasoned travelers like us. We had some food, drank some beer and wine and relaxed. We have never been the type to sit around a wait before we leave or the airport. The NJ Turnpike can turn into the NJ Parking Lot at a moments notice, so dawdling was not an option. We left early, arrived early and we were able to enjoy our lounge access early as well. We flew on the United flight from Newark to Johannesburg because it was a non-stop flight. The 14 hour flight was a bit daunting but the lure of business class "pods" were enough to ease our fears. The flight started out like a normal flight but soon we hit a pocket of turbulence so intense that the arm holding my wine was fully outstretched above my head. I did not want to spray wine all over the cabin so I tried my best to keep it in the glass. The pilot made an announcement "All flight attendants must go to your jump seats". That is how bad the turbulence was. The pilot made that same announcement eight more times during the flight. It was never as bad as the first drop, but it did not let up either. I think my phone mistook the shaking of the plane for aerobic exercise, so even though I did not get more than 4 hours of sleep, I somehow met my steps goal. We landed, got our luggage and breezed through immigration. We knew it would be a hard flight so we booked a stay in the hotel across from the terminal. Best decision ever. We walked to our hotel, got some dinner and fell deep asleep. We left our breakfast order on the door and the breakfast delivery doorbell woke us both up. We ate, showered and walked back to the airport for our flight south to Port Elizabeth. Only two hours flying time, thank goodness!
Made it to Newark
Exploring the wine selection
The sun is going down on NJ
Good bye USA!
We are settled in the pods
Nelson Mandela statue
It is a shame that its is too early to start drinking
Very varied landscapes n South Africa
The iconic flat topped mountains
Rhinos and elephants are down there somewhere
Snow capped mountains
The beach!
A huge expanse of sand piled up in dunes
Bottom right is out AirBnB look for the green roofs
Andrew meets us with a smile
Yummy. We stopped off for supplies
We have arrived!
