Four flights and a taxi.

March 22, 2022

When we became nomads just over six years ago one of our friends gave us a little wire bicycle to carry with us on our travels. The Little Wire Bicycle (that's what we call it) hasn't gone on all our tours but Leigh decided it was time for it to travel again. So she organized a Schengen visa for it as well.

The week before our departure was spent in a rental apartment in Port Elizabeth but we decided to spend the night before our first flight at the Road Lodge at the Port Elizabeth airport to make getting to the airport with boxed bicycles as stress free as possible. The Road Lodge is only two hundred meters from the entrance to the departure hall and this means we could enjoy a leisurely breakfast before strolling across to catch the first of our four flights.

The first flight was on a local carrier so we couldn't book our luggage through to Malaga but needed to collect our it at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg and go through the process again. I had expected that we would need to do it all again once we arrived in Madrid but the Qatar Airways ground staff member at OR Tambo assured me we it would be checked all the way through to Malaga.

Posing with the statue of OR Tambo. He was Nelson Mandela's partner in their law practice in Johannesburg during the 1960's and was the president of the ANC during the final struggle years. Leigh's mask is off only for the purposes of the photo.

After an eight and a half hour layover we boarded our next flight to Dohar where we had a short layover before the flight to Madrid. The layover here was also short and our biggest concern was whether our luggage would be booked through to Malaga or not. A member of the baggage handling staff assured us that it would but that didn't take away the lingering doubt.

Passing through passport control was quick and painless and Spain's health check cellphone app made it easy to provide our vaccination status even though our certificates were provided by a non-EU country.

The rain in Spain falls mainly on the 'plane.

On our arrival in Malaga it was a long and nervous wait until the first of our two boxes of gear appeared on the carousel. That gave us confidence in the assurances we had received in Johannesburg and Madrid but there was no sign of our bicycle boxes. Eventually they appeared and we easily found a taxi to our digs in central Malaga (a minibus for 30 Euros - good value in my opinion).

We are spending three nights in a very nice little loft apartment just off Calle Victoria. After almost two days of traveling and with all the rain forecast it should give us time to recover, shelter and settle in. We're not sure yet where we head to from here but the general route will be to Seville via Grenada and Cordoba.

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Scott AndersonHey, hop on over to Catalunya! I think this is the first time we’ve ever been in the same country at the same time. Or maybe not - Catalunyans aspire not to be a part of Spain, so it depends on your perspective.
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2 years ago

Jean-Marc StrydomHi Scott, it seems that we're three months out of sync. - we fly out from Barcelona on June 17th.

We bumped into a group of Catalunyans cycling through Malaysia a few years ago and they were adamant that they weren't Spanish.
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2 years ago