We mamaged to get ourselves organised in time ... barely. An extra hour or even a day wouldn't have hurt. However, the situation would probably have been the same. We are always packing and organising till the very last minute.

They almost did not let us on the plane. When we showed up at the airport 50 minutes before the scheduled departure, they had allready closed the check-in. However, since our electronic tickets showed that the latest check-in time was 40 minutes before the flight, we got on the plane. In the opinion of the check-in people it was common sense that you have to check in at least an hour before departure when it is an international flight. But why this was not clear to the people who programmed the e-ticket generator I do not know ...

02OCT  2140  LATEST CHECK-IN TIME
       2220  ZURICH        ZRH   LX  288
03OCT  0835  JOHANNESBURG  JNB   ECONOMY
             TERMINAL A

The direct flight from Zürich to Johannesburg took about 10 hours. Either they have made the monkey-class chairs less comfortable over the years or we have simply become too old - whatever it was, we did not get much sleep that night. At least Swiss has good and individual videotainment. Food was so and so.

In Joburg we stood in line for almost two hours to get through immigrations. At most 6 out of 14 counters were open at any time - it seems to be a universal law that getting a tourist visa has to be a pain in the butt.

The plan was to go to Witbank and meet up with CC from Bush Air. Public transport is not highly available in Joburg. It would have been quite a hassle to catch the only bus that was left that day - not the least because we would have had to get into the city center first. Interesting enough the lady at the airport tourist information was not of much help. In fact she didn't even 'know' about the bus mentioned above, but was more eager to hook us up with a mini-bus driver. Personally we think this was our first encounter with corruption in South Africa. The lady would probably have gotten her cut when succeeding in getting us to pay R1000 (approx. USD 150) for the 1 hour drive to Witbank. Since then we have also learnt, that people regularily get robbed in these mini-buses. Guess our instincts work well: we chose to rent a car instead, which including the drop off at Nelspruit airport only was about R520.

Before we left we also got ourselves a south african sim-card from Vodacom. You rent the card (must have your own phone) for free and pay R2.40 per minute. All incomming calls and SMS' are of course free. Seems to be a fairly good deal. We will report any surprises at the end of our trip, when we return the card and pay the bill.

We asked the guys at Vodacom where they would recommend us to go in Joburg given a couple of spare hours and a rental car. The guys wouldn't even recommend us to go to Joburg at all - to hard to find your way when not familiar with the area (we can confirm that!) and also to dangerous.

Not knowing what else to do with our spare time we called CC and found out that he, and his girlfriend Shirley, already were at Witbank, so we went straight there ... or rather: we tried to. Staying focused and looking hard didn't help, we never saw any freeway turn-off towards Witbank or anything in that general direction. The signing here sucks big time! So of course we got lost and ended up driving in the totally opposite direction. Thinking we could make a U-turn we exited the freeway, but there was no re-entry to the freeway. So there we were, driving around in some Joburg suburb / township. With all the warnings and stories about high-jackings, robbery, etc., we felt moderately uneasy. But, to cut a long story short: We finally found the freeway towards Witbank without any harm being done to us...

Besides renting out airplanes, CC and Shirley also do special effects, laser shows, and fireworks. At Witbank Dam they were hired to do the fireworks ending todays outdoor jazz concert. CC met us outside the area and led us by some backroads to the other side of the Dam, where the firework was being rigged up. At the VIP gate we were stopped by some eager official who would let CC in allright (with that truck nobody would even think of you not belonging there), but he wouldn't let us in. Thus, we got our first lesson of advanced south- african negotiation techniques: Do not take 'no' for an answer, just make a scene if you do not get it your way and sooner or later your opponent will give up. Do not give in an inch at any time under any circumstances. The instructions by CC were clear. We were told to park in the gate so that it could not be closed. CC on the other hand parked his car in such a way that it blocked all other through traffic. Then we just had to wait (and argue) until enough people got so fed up with the situation that we got let through after all.

It was a nice afternoon. We sat at the dam opposite the concert and listened to the music. Around 21.30 the fireworks were finally ignited. It was quite amazing to stand so close to the action, to actually get the ashes raining down on us. There was a minor accident, one of the tubes exploded, which made the hole rack of fireworks fall to pieces and the fireworks taking off in all directions.

After a long and tireing drive we finally got to the Bush Pilots Airbase and could get some well deserved sleep.

/Linda and Klaus