LEISURELY TRIP HOME?? The trip from the Takeri Game camp in the bush to Endola, the nearest town with an airport takes four hours, the first two being down a “road” that should take 45 minutes, but is one giant car swallowing pothole after another. Not paved, just sand. Patsy is brave to live at the end of that!! So, I get to the airport the required two hours before and almost miss the flight!! Seems that Kenya Airline had screwed up my reservation and it was showing that I had already used the ticket!! Go figure that one out! In any case the people dithered and generally ran us all ragged and finally in total frustration the young lady trying to straighten it out just hand wrote me a boarding pass and tore off the end for me. I head down to go through immigration, the last stop before you can get on the plane to get out of the country. (Remember, I am at this point in Zambia, I am only flying Kenya Air!) Suddenly this little oldish man grabs my elbow and says, “Madam, the plane is loaded and we must get you out of here quickly!” He steers me to the front of the line and tells the immigration clerk, “Her plane is taking off in seconds, you must get her out of here!” They did, and I did, and the plane took off with me in it and headed for Kenyatta Airport. Several hours wait there in the sweltering heat, and we took off for Amsterdam. Couple of hours wait there to be off for Newark airport! But here is where the good part comes in! I go through security and I must say that this was the most thorough security I have seen anywhere. That lady that patted me down was a bit too thorough for me! I’ll skip the details but you probably can imagine!!! That was not part of the good part! In any case I get to the last point where they check your boarding pass and they tell me to step over to the lady on the right because my seat has been changed! My first thought was, “Damn, I hope I didn’t lose my aisle seat!!” Great surprise, I was upgraded and I got to do the whole loooong flight in business class!!!! I did it, and I liked it!!! I never want to fly any other way!!! This meant that I was almost the first one off the plane and got to immigration zippety quick. There to my surprise that TSA pre-screen that I paid a hundred bucks for was worth every penny. I did not stand in line. I went over to the little computer thingy and stuck my passport in the slot, answered some questions, put my fingers on the scanner and went right out!! But the reason I did not have to spend the night in the airport and had lots of time to wait was first, we got in an hour early from Amsterdam because we left a little early and had a super tailwind. Then my Southwest flight was delayed, but I would have made it even if it had gone as scheduled. So with all the wait time in between flights the whole process took about 24 hours!
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 12:37:03 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015