Maybe it was the pending anxiety attack or maybe the scotch and sambuca shots the night before. Either way my trip started with me throwing up all over my brother in laws car at Adelaide Airport. Anxiety grew as I approached the check-in counter, scenarios going over in my head, none of them good. Do I have vomit on my face? Will they (correctly) assume I'm drunk and not let me on the plane? In my nervousness will I forget not to say bomb? Did I leave my Passport / Tickets / Wallet / Sense of Humour on the kitchen table? A smile and an "Enjoy your flight" suggested not.The new Adelaide Airport had as much character as the café where I said goodbye to the family and friends which I wouldn't see for a few years. If I didn't already look terrible one might have suggested I looked "emotional" as I got my last glimpses of Adelaide from the sky bridge on to my flight.
Once off the ground and flying over central Australia I felt a lot better. From previous experience on long haul flights this is about the time that the Airlines should offer chemically induced comas to alleviate boredom and general discomfort from sitting with your knees to your chest for ten hours. In its place it they served up films and TV on my own screen and better yet, old school Nintendo games. Sweet.
Singapore Airport was a little like the local shopping mall but without the annoying school kids and credit card / loans / shutter / foxtel salesman. More fascinating than the indoor garden was the shear numbers of fellow travellers with cameras out taking pictures of the indoor garden. I wonder what sort of boring destinations these people had come from that would warrant it such attention and hoped it wasn't Cape Town.
Amazingly I slept almost all the way from Singapore to J'Burg. From the air J'Burg looks like someone had an all night bender on cement mixers (Baileys and lime juice) and had thrown up against the featureless desert. A concentration of buildings in the middle which gradually peters out into nothing. I'm not overly disappointed that I'm not leaving the plane at the airport.
Cape Town thankfully was much more exciting as we flew in over Table Mountain and the Cape Peninsula before our final decent to the Airport on the flats. As I walked into the Arrivals Hall that familiar feeling crept back over me. Oh my god what I have done? What if my cards don't work here? What if no one speaks English? How do I get to my hostel? I had to sit down for 30 minutes to compose myself. Will that Taxi driver I'm approaching be the one that everyone warned me against? It turned out he wasn't and with some general banter about the upcoming cricket series I was on my way into the city a relieved man. I arrived at my hostel. My journey had begun.
