Getting to Cape Town

This is the first instalment of our five weeks of adventures in Southern Africa from late March to the beginning of May this year. Others will be added as we find the time to write them.

We live in the Southern Hemisphere. It should be easy to get to Cape Town. But of course it isn't. Over the years we had collected many Qantas air points. Did we have enough to get there?

First of all, Qantas doesn't fly to Cape Town, so a reward ticket will only get us as far as Johannesburg. For some reason we could not get a reward booking from Nelson, even though Qantas's horrible subsidiary, Jetstar, does fly from Nelson to Auckland, so the main booking would only be from Auckland to Johannesburg. Then the Qantas computer tried mightily to persuade us to select a route flown by Emirates, which would have involved changing planes in Dubai as well as Sydney and a journey of more than 30 hours. We had enough air points to get there, but not back.

Reluctantly the computer confessed that, at least on some days, we could fly all the way on Qantas, changing only in Sydney. This was much quicker and also cheaper. We had enough air points for return tickets.

Notice that we have not called it a free flight. The taxes and “charges” have to be paid in cash, and we were levied more than $900 to be able to enjoy our reward.

We booked as soon as the flights were open, a year in advance. In that year Qantas changed the booking 5 times. Three of the changes were trivial; a flight departing 10 minutes earlier or arriving 5 minutes later. But two of them were significant. We were moved to an earlier flight out of Auckland. The Sydney-Johannesburg flight did not depart any earlier, so we would have to sit in Sydney Airport for nearly two more hours. Then, despite that fact that our return flight from Johannesburg was unchanged, we were shifted to a later flight from Sydney to Auckland. More hours sitting, tired and bored, in Sydney Airport. Sometime soon we will give Qantas some feedback.

Not having a single booking through from Nelson to Cape Town adds an awkward risk to the traveller. If you are delayed and miss a connection within a single booking then the airline has to arrange a new onward flight. But if they are separate bookings you count as a 'no-show' and, especially if you have selected a cheaper fare, may forfeit your fare and have to pay again. (Always have travel insurance – it will cover this horrid eventuality.) Also, you are probably at the back of the queue for seats on the next flight.

In New Zealand, to be sure of checking in on time we had to fly up to Auckland the previous evening. The flights to Australia all seem to depart at or before dawn, so even if there had been a connecting flight in the morning, we would have had to leave home so early it wouldn't have been worth going to bed. Consequently we flew in the evening and arranged dinner with some particularly friendly clients of Bill's.

In South Africa we were due to be delivered at the very reasonable hour of 5pm. We could no doubt have found a late evening flight to Cape Town, which would allow for a bit of delay and the unknown time to struggle through customs, but why make the journey an endurance event? We found an attractive and modestly priced Airbnb near O.R. Tambo Airport, and selected an economical onward flight for the middle of next morning.

How airlines are organised will forever be a mystery. The cheapest deal from Jo'burg to Cape Town was Kalula Airlines, but they fly out of the other airport in Johannesburg. For not much more we stuck to the convenience of O.R. Tambo Airport and flew with, of all people, British Airways, booked through the Kalula web site. Why is BA in the 'cheap flights' market in South Africa?

So the planning was done, and fares paid. What was the reality?

For the first time we tried checking in online. You have the 24 hours before departure to do this and, the web site promises, it will be a simple matter of dropping your bags and sauntering on the aircraft, avoiding those ghastly check-in queues. You even get a chance to select different seats. From a purely technological point of view it worked very well. But we got a shock. Despite that fact that we were one booking, and had made the reservation a year before travelling, the Qantas computer had us sitting 12 rows apart for 13 hours from Sydney to Johannesburg. The flight was virtually fully booked, and the best we could manage by selecting another seat was 2 rows apart.

The only hiccup in Auckland was that the hotel's shuttle was so slow in arriving that the clients picked us up from the airport. We had a good dinner with great company.

We set two alarms to make sure we dragged ourselves out of bed in good time the next morning. Clutching our home-printed boarding passes we were staggered to find that we really did walk straight up to a 'bag drop' desk, while long queues waited for a regular check-in. The clerk had to check our passports, but it really was very quick. “Before we go, can you do anything about the seats from Sydney to Johannesburg?” The clerk had to ask a more experienced colleague, but it turned out that, yes, she could rearrange things so that we were sitting together. What a relief.

In Sydney Bill offered Qantas a chance to redeem themselves by admitting us to their lounge as compensation for the extra waiting time they had inflicted on us by rescheduling. No luck there. The flights were regulation boredom. We both got some sleep on the very long sector into Jo'burg. The No-Jet-Lag pills seemed to work well and we arrived in Africa in pretty good shape. Customs was reasonably efficient, and the passport officer was friendly and chatty.

Our overnight stay in Jo'burg was supposed to be just a long sleep and back to the airport in the morning, but circumstances delivered some unwelcome complications. We were booked into an Airbnb private house. Our hosts had recommended Uber for getting to their house, and also advised the proper fare if we chose a 'regular' taxi. Although the airport provided WiFi, we could not connect with Uber for some reason, so we looked for a taxi. Some Jo'burg taxis are metered, but with others you haggle. Acting on our hosts' advice we haggled R200 down to R150.

When our taxi arrived the house was deserted. Like every other house we saw in the city it was surrounded by high fences and razor wire. Our phones were refusing to connect to any local network, so the taxi driver kindly phoned the contact number for us and refused to leave until the host arrived. Standing on the kerb after dark is not a safe activity in Johannesburg. For his conscientious assistance the taxi driver got his R200.

Greg was very apologetic. There had been an accident that stuck him in a traffic jam for an hour.

We then had a long, comfortable and refreshing sleep.

Our first accommodation in Africa.  Note the shadow of the outer fence.

In the morning all we had to do was summon a taxi and go back to the airport. I checked the tablet was now connecting with Uber, and downloaded a few emails. We chatted to our hostess, Gwen, and she left for work. We were alone in the house, but the maid would be here "soon". Are we all packed? Yes. Then call Uber. What's this? No Internet connection. The Wi-Fi was down. We did have time to spare, but how to call a taxi at all?

By now Bill's phone had adopted a local network and it was no time to be squeamish about roaming charges. Call Gwen. Easy, but her phone was switched off! The maid will probably be able to restart the Wi-Fi, but she has still not arrived. To call a regular taxi company we need its number. We have 2 other SA phone numbers, both in Cape Town. But if we ask nicely they may be able to look up a number for us. The first number didn't answer, but we did make contact with our next Airbnb host. Sam, bless him, tried to make a booking via his own Uber account. That didn't work but he did provide 3 numbers for local taxi companies.

At this moment Augustina, the maid, arrived. So sorry she was late. A train broke down. But she did know how to start the Wi-Fi. In 5 minutes an Uber car had arrived and we were on our way to the airport. (The Uber fare was R100.) We even had time to grab a quick breakfast before boarding the flight to Cape Town.