Off to Namibia!

Off to Namibia

Excited for the start of my tour, but sad to see Ghana go, I headed to the airport via taxi early in the morning before sunrise. Little did I know that this was going to be a stressful day of traveling.

When I got to the airport I found out that my flight had been delayed for an hour. In the end we were delayed an hour and a half and finally took off for Johannesburg, my first stop before connecting to Windhoek, Namibia. As my flight landed in Johannesburg things started to get crazy. I had about an hour before my flight was scheduled to depart. I rushed to find that I had to go through a passport checkpoint despite this being a connecting flight. It was madness as hundreds of people were trying to get through the line to catch their connecting flights. Finally, at the urging of an airport employee, I pushed through the crowds of people to a specific line where I got through, though not without some dirty looks. The head of a group of about forty high schoolers voiced her anger because they had a flight leaving soon as well. I was given specific instructions so I didn't feel too bad, plus one of me was much more likely to be left behind than the forty of them on one flight.

Once I got through that checkpoint I then had to go through security to get to the departure terminal. When I got through security it was about 7:10. My flight was scheduled to leave at 7:30 and the gate was supposed to close at 7:10. Not knowing what else to do I started sprinting towards my flight gate. Easier said than done considering that I had the misfortune of my connecting flight on the opposite end of a huge terminal. As I ran by a sign that said it was an 8 minute walk to my gate, a voice came over the intercom saying they had an urgent announcement for anyone on my flight to Windhoek that hadn't boarded because they were about to close the gate. I ran faster yelling to workers that gave me strange looks as I ran by that I was on the flight to Windhoek, hoping that someone would call and tell the gate that I was coming as fast as I could. When I finally reached the gate I breathed a sigh of relief as I was allowed to board. I scrambled to my seat, flustered from the entire affair, huffing and puffing for a good five minutes both from the running and the anxiety of almost missing my flight, but I made it so I was relieved.

About 10 minutes later five more people walked onto the plane with no sign of exertion on their faces. They obviously had not made the same sprint I had. Oh well. I guess I got some exercise.

As I relaxed into my short two hour flight to Windhoek, I began to get excited about my tour that was going to leave in about 36 hours. I thought that I had it made once I made my flight to Namibia.

However as soon as I got through immigration in Windhoek, I found that neither of my checked bags had made it to Windhoek. This meant that I had to stand in line for over an hour to fill out a missing baggage form so that they could search for my luggage. When all of that was over, I got a ride to my hotel, which luckily came into the airport looking for me and didn't just leave without me. I checked into the hotel at about 11:00 at night. The hotel said they only had me booked for the next night though I had booked for two nights, but luckily there was a room available, so I was finally able to collapse on a bed.

There is a happy end to this tale, however. Though most things went wrong that could have, I found that I was able to handle it a lot better than I thought I would. Additionally as soon as I got to my room, I took my first hot shower in a month. I didn't have hot water at all in Ghana, so that shower really washed away the worries and stress of that day. Then I slept for about 10 hours because I had a free day before my next adventure began.