Day 0 (Tuesday, Sept. 5th).
Arrival at Johannesburg.
Disaster over JFK airport. Gurnis and crew circle over New York for 2.5 hours
for a storm to clear, as they land the SAA flight to Johannesburg takes off
without them! Delta puts them on a flight to Brussels, then a Sabena flight to
Jo'berg. All seats except for 2 were converted to aisle seats on the bottom.
Antonin and Magali, by the window, get treated to a top-to-bottom cross
section of South Africa: Libya (dunes), Chad (scrubland) Congo (wall-to-wall forest,
over lain by a haze of smoke), Zambia (more forest, but now at night so that
hundreds of small slash and burn fires are visible), Zimbabwe, South Africa.
Split Africa right down the middle, flying over war zones without blinking.
Prof. Gurnis, who also got a window, promptly fell asleep and missed the show.
Arrive in Jo'berg, but half of the 14 traveler's bags don't. No record of
their whereabouts. Market values of toothpaste and underwear shoot up
overnight. We are picked up advance crew (led by Capt. Kirschvink) and took 3
buckies (Toyota Ventures) back to the hotel 4 km away. When we arrived, the
fourth bucky, previously rented by the advance crew and left at the hotel, is
missing. We find it at the end of the lot with the door lock and ignition
jacked. They couldn't take it because of the electronic no-start system?
Written by JLK and Ben Weiss
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