Day 0: SCAMS AND DELAYS

It was about 7am when we arrived at the airport from the Mercure Hotel. We were waiting for a 9:50am flight but when all was said and done, we ended up getting delayed twice and didn’t leave Sydney until about 1:30pm (i.e. over 3.5 hours).

Once we were on the plane, we were pretty much on a long haul flight going backwards in time. So even though we had landed in Johannesburg Airport at 6:45pm, it was really over 14 hours of flying.

Needless to say we were tired when we arrived, but then we had to deal with an hour-long queue in Customs, and then another 1.5-hour wait for our luggages to show up. Unbelievable!

Once we got our luggages, we were then trying to find our way through the airport towards our transport for the Hotel OR Tambo Southern Sun, which was supposed to be very close to the airport.

That was when a tall guy was telling us where we should be going and he even walked with us to make sure we were going the right way. I actually never asked for his help and assumed that he was just being friendly.

Of course that was until we got outside the airport and insisted that we pay him for his “services.” I wondered what would happen if we just refused, but he was only asking for a buck or two and we didn’t want any real hassle knowing we still had more of the trip to go.

Eventually, we got into our transport vehicle, but we were then delayed in the car park because a truck was blocking traffic. So we had to take a longer way around to get out of the airport.

When we showed up to the hotel finally at 9pm, we saw that the room rate was 1150 Rand when we had been charged 1600 Rand. Were we scammed on this as well?

Inside the room, the power went out briefly at around 10:30am, but it eventually recovered some 15 minutes later.

Indeed, it had been a trying day. Tomorrow, we were to fly to Livingstone, Zambia to see Victoria Falls. We were eagerly anticipating that visit so despite all the delays, we sure hoped it would be well worth all the trouble…