Getting to the ship in photos
Here are the photos that go with these entries on getting to the ship in Africa:
https://fbhjr.dreamwidth.org/1527325.html or https://fbhjr.livejournal.com/1532464.html
We woke to the wonderful view of the rental car parking for the Cape Town airport.
It is nice they generate some of their own power.
My wife found more challenge in getting the towels in the hotel room than I did.
We had a nice breakfast at the hotel.
Then, took the shuttle the half kilometer to the airport. (No side walk, so I didn’t want to walk it…)
We got ready for our flight to the east side of South Africa.
The South African idea of a cool terminal is quite a bit warmer than we were used to.
They load the plane to Durban from both ends. We got in the front. Other people had to get out on the ground and walk to stairs in the back.
I did get a window seat this time, so was able to take lots of photos on the 2 hour flight across the country.
I had arranged for a driver from the airport to the hotel. He met us at the King Shaka Zulu airport, which has a big memorial at the tomb.
Unlike the Cape Town area, Durban was very green and pretty.
As in all the cities we visited in South Africa, there were a LOT of signs trying to get folks to vote.
Our hotel room in Durban was on the 9th floor of a hotel right on the beach. In local terms it was a very expensive room. In US terms it was about 1/3 of what we pay per night in Orlando.
Pretty as it was, I was tired and took a nap.
But, I did spend a lot of time admiring the view, day and night.
And, I was up before the sun to see it was very pretty at sunrise too. Folks hit that pool at 6AM.
My wife was very impressed by the folks selling things along the beach road. They took down and put back up all their stuff every night.
We had to check out of the room 3 hours before we could go to the ship, but the hotel let us hang out in the 5th floor lounge with a very similar view.
We watched ships come and go, knowing we’d be on one soon.
We could not get the same driver to go to the ship as his company would not "go all that ways" to the ship. Google said it was just over 1 kilometer…
So, the hotel called us an Uber.
He assured me that he know where we needed to go more than the cruise sales guy who had actually given me a location. So, off into Durban we went.
Right into a police roadblock where they were stopping any vehicle with more than one person in it and asking for a permit to carry passengers.
Our driver got into a bit of an argument over this with the police woman who called her boss over. You can always trust a police officer wearing a bandana over their face, right?
A fine of 3/4 of what I pay for lunch at the local pizza shop was required. The driver didn’t know how he would be able to afford so much…
The price of one lunch later, we were on our way again.
I don’t think he was in on the scam as he seemed actually quite worried about the bandana man and his gun. But, I still think it was a scam on someone’s part…
But, where he was so sure we should go was NOT where we should go.
So, finally back to where we told him to go in the first place.
Driving down the road I was told to use, we did spot our ship.
It still required 3 more tries to figure out how to actually get to it.
But, we did and got checked into suite 912 on the port side of the ship.
Just for reference, the route we should have taken and actually took to the ship.
The port side of the ship was against the dock, so we didn’t get that great of a view from our balcony.
We were right next to the helicopters. I had thought they were cost guard, but it turns out that bring pilots out to ships and bring them back by helicopter. I’m not sure how that is financially viable…
Of course, one of the first things we did when we got on board was laundry…
Each deck had it’s own washer and drier.
It was still a nice view of the city from the other parts of the ship.
And, we were happy to be there.
