Day 213 – “Cape Town: Departure”

Monday, 25 June 2007
Day 213 – “Cape Town: Departure”

The plane makes a slight turn and I look through the window at the scene outside. It is beautiful; I haven’t seen the sea in 7 years and now it is lying beneath me with the moon’s reflection on its surface. There are millions of city lights covering the dark earth and for the first time I see how big and beautiful it really is here. It is Friday and I am about to end my first plane flight ever and land in Cape Town International Airport.

It was roughly 7 hours prior to this landing that we started the trip from Polokwane to Johannesburg. After a 3 hour car ride (which was funnily enough longer than the plane flight to Cape Town would take), a speeding ticket and a pileup on the R21 we finally reached the airport. I’ve only been there 4 times either to see someone off or to fetch them there and every single time the airport was under construction. I guess an airport will just be something that always has construction somewhere.

It is my first plane flight so everything around is me is new and strange. The airport is busy and covered with people arriving from all kinds of different places. A model agency looking for a new sexy face would have had a field day there on Friday.

After finding parking, baggage check in and security we waited in the departure lounge for our flight to board. The departure lounge is full of green and gold jackets of obvious Springbok supporters on their way to Durban and by the excitement between them I almost thought the game was on Friday night.

We board the plane and I am visibly more tense when the plane starts moving and shoots up into the air. We are moving above Gauteng at over 900kms/h and the buildings become smaller and smaller until it eventually disappears and the only visible sign of this huge city are faint lights in the distance…


More on Tuesday: “Cape Town: Left, right and right again!”