After spending an entire afternoon in Singapore homeless we headed for the airport around 9pm for our 2am flight. The train ride took about 40 minutes so we were there in plenty of time. Usually that would be a bad thing since waiting in airports is pretty miserable, but no tin Singapore. I mean this place was like a small city and after you went through security everything was open until 1am or something ridiculous like that. I mean there was the usual duty free stores, an entire mall, free internet, 24hour dinning, an entertainment zone with a movie theater, online games and xbox's. If I would have know the airport was like that I would have gone there as soon as we checked out. After about 4 hours of hanging around we boarded the flight to Joahannesburg eager to get some sleep.
We arrived in Johannesburg on Singapore Airlines, which once again was awesome. I promise I won't say anymore about it, but Singapore Airlines is the best airline I have ever flown. We made it through customs pretty quick and headed to meet up with our ride to the Hyatt. Of course the guy was no where to be found and after looking around we finally found someone who was from the Hyatt who was there to pick someone else up. He called and they had no record of us needing a ride so we were basically SOL. Got to love Africa. Not off the plane 45 min and we were already having our first Africa moment. We finally got a cab and got to the hotel around 9am. The ride was a little interesting. All the walled in homes and barb wire always look strange to me. Between that and the ADT security signs all over the place that say "armed guard response" you would think we are in a war zone. We checked in to the Hyatt around 9am and after about an hour wait our room was ready. Not much else happened that day. We eventually ventured out to find the mall. Ironically it was Rosebank mall, which is where they always brought us the last time I was here with ASU.
The next day we spent more time walking around the area and trying to get a hotel in Livingstone. Honestly trying to find a hotel in Livingstone has been horrible. Aside from it being a busy time of year, just about everything there is a resort and costs 400 USD a night. Not really in our budget. We finally gave in after trying the internet, STA and a few other places and decided to go with a company we had contacted from Vietnam. It wasn't cheap, but we could not see ourselves going to Livingstone without a reservation. That night we hired a cab for about 100 USD to take us out to pay the travel agent and go to the Carnivore restaurant. It ended up being a really good night and the game meat at the Carnivore was delicious.
The next day we spent getting things organized for our trip and doing a little shopping. We decided to do as much of our big shopping in Jo'burg so that we could ship it before we left on our trip. The market in Rosebank was pretty cool and both of us got a good amount of stuff. after we were done shopping we headed to the Post Net shop across the parking lot to ship our stuff. Of course it cost a ridiculous amount to ship the box. It probably cost more to ship the damn, box than the stuff inside cost us, but it is always nice to lighten the load and not carry a ton of crap around. Once we had everything shipped we had to catch another cab across town to meet our Intrepid group. The place was impossible to find and our driver had no idea where to go. It took about 1.5hrs to find the place and it was a lucky find since the sign was not lit at all. We paid our on ground fee of 280 bucks to Intrepid then hopped back in the car to head home. The round trip once again cost us another 100 bucks. I swear the lack of public transportation is a killer in Africa. All said we probably spent 300 dollars just on taxi's in our 3 days in Jo'burg. The only good thing that came out of the night is that we arranged for Intrepid to pick us up closer to our hotel the next day. Once we got back to the Hyatt we pretty much went to bed. We had a 5:30am get up and we were both pretty beat.
