There is lots of exciting material coming in from South Africa (ZA) right now so there will be a number of blog posts going up. This first one is from Richard Crowley and his experience of the trip and arrival in ZA.
Thursday morning, Randburg (Johannesburg suburb), South Africa
Group 1 met at the Sunnyside church to collect our baggage and ourselves in
preparation for the long journey to South Africa. Alas, because the President
was in town, the group of guys from Idaho (Gem State Academy) were delayed and
not able to arrive in time to join us. But they were re-scheduled on a later
flight. (Editor's Note: delayed do to mechanical problems not the Pres.)
The PAA bus took us and our luggage to PDX where we made it through all the
check-in, TSA screening, etc. and relaxed for a while at gate D11 for the first
leg to Amsterdam. The flight was long but bearable. Many of our were
seated together and enjoyed getting to know each other better during the flight.
We arrived in Amsterdam a bit early, but were significantly delayed while we
waited for them to find stairs tall enough to reach our aircraft door. The one
they finally found was only 6 inches too short.
After the delay getting off the plane we had just enough time to walk
across the large Amsterdam airport to get to our departure gate for the leg to
Jo’berg. Another even longer flight due south down the length of the African
continent and we finally arrived at O.R.Tambo International Airport, again a bit
early due to tailwinds. And again we were delayed for a while, this time by a
problem with luggage (somebody else picked up one of our bags and left us
theirs). But then we exited the international arrivals area and were greeted by
an enthusiastic group of our African brother singers welcoming us to their
country.
A long bus ride across Johannesburg late at night took us to the very nice
Apollo Hotel in the Randburg suburb north of the city where we checked in and
finally got horizontal for the first time in ~24 hours. Fortunately, the
exhaustion helped us start adjusting to the 9 hour difference in time zone. On
Thursday morning, we had a great breakfast in the hotel. We had warned them that
a large contingent of vegetarians/vegans were coming and they did a great job
accommodating us, even proving a good supply of vege-sausage along with all the
other tasty breakfast items.
We are planning on leaving the hotel around noon for a sight-seeing trip
out to Soweto and then we may be singing this evening for a fund-raiser program
to help more of our African brothers join us on the journey singing around their
country.
Glad to hear of your safe arrival!
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