Marking time: A guesthouse near the OR Tambo Airport, Johannesburg
The past two weeks have been boring, busy, breath-taking and be-devilling, not necessary all at the same time.
A fortnight ago we drove to Cape Town from Port Elizabeth to join the almost 2000 other birders on the MSC Sinfonia which sailed 200 nautical miles into the southern ocean where we were blown away by what was described by some of the world's top sea bird experts as the best pelagic birding experience they have ever had. We picked up seven lifers (Soft-plumaged Petrel, Wandering Albatross, Grey Petrel, Dark-mantled Sooty Albatross, White-headed Petrel, Antarctic Prion and Northern Giant Petrel). Every birder on board got lifers, if not world lifers then at least new birds on their southern African lists. All in all a great organizational effort by Birdlife South Africa. We had driven down to Cape Town thinking that the boat trip was just another thing keeping us from starting our cycling tour but it turned out to be a fantastic experience.
The trip back to Port Elizabeth turned out to be less than perfect. We left at about six am on Saturday morning but an hour an a half out of Cape Town the Landy's headlights failed - a switch problem that had occurred before. Then ten kilometers outside of Mossel Bay the Landy's alternator siezed. Normally this would mean only a few hours delay but because it was a Saturday on a long weekend (Monday was May Day, known as Workers' Day in South Africa), we only got out of Mossel Day on Saturday afternoon and reached Port Elizabeth that evening. Of course, by now our confidence in the Landy was flagging so we had to delay our departure from Port Elizabeth until after we had the vehicle checked out by our trusted Landrover specialist, Savoy Motors, who confirmed that the repair of the alternator seemed to be acceptable and also fixed the headlights and a few other issues.
We finally made it to Johannesburg late Thursday afternoon and are staying at the Aerotropolis Guest Lodge (who thinks up these names ?) very conveniently located near the airport, bike shop and laundromat where we are finalizing our preparations for the flight to Japan on Sunday. Our time here will be a mix of finishing off work matters, boxing bikes, packing and waiting.
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