We were up at seven for a quick stroll on the beach then down for breakfast at 8:30. Again, the cook prepared your eggs the way you wanted and wrapped a full breakfast around them. When breakfast was done, it was back to the room for some final packing and we departed Fairlight at 10 a.m.

      
      
    
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As we had a bit of time before our flight was leaving, we took a one hour tour through to downtown Durban. One highlight was driving by the new soccer stadium that was built expressly for the World Cup venue at a cost of $450 million USD. Another highlight was driving along the waterfront. There was a lot of building, road work, etc. in this very busy city of 3 1\2 million. Durban is also the major seaport for South Africa.

    
      
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At 11:00 we drove out to the King Shaka International Airport. This is a brand new airport opened two weeks ago and was surprisingly small for such a large city. After saying our fond farewells to Andre as this was the end of our tour with Climax, we went in to check in to Kulula Airlines for our flight to Cape Town. We originally had booked Kulula Airlines flight MN702 for an 11:00 departure so we could arrive in Cape Town by 1:00 and spend some time at the V&A Waterfront during the afternoon and enjoy our hotel in the evening. A couple of months ago they moved the flight to 1:10 p.m. Okay, still doable. However, when we went to check in for our flight at 11:00 we were told the flight had been delayed again. Now they weren't going to depart till 3:10. We lost another two hours, and got a four hour wait at the airport to boot.

So, at 2:40 they had everyone line up for boarding but never opened the gates until 3:00. To make matters worse, I was booked into a window seat which turned out to be in Row 9 which has no windows in that particular plane. And of course because they had cancelled two flights to fill this one, the plane was jammed to the rafters. The seats were also jammed so close together my knees were jammed against the seat in front of me.

Now we proceeded to sit with the doors closed for another 50 minutes because the pilot said we were waiting for luggage to be loaded. This is now over an hour from when we were supposed to be taking off and they claim they're still loading luggage? Finally we taxied out and took off at 4:05 p.m.

Then, to add insult to injury, fifteen minutes into the flight the pilot came on the intercom and informed us flying time would be 2 hours 10 minutes. They even screwed that up. The time in the air was 2 hours 25 minutes. Finally we landed at 6:30 p.m. We lost a very large part of a precious day because of these idiots. And we get to fly with these guys again in a few days.

One big concern we had was that if the shuttle we had pre-booked to take us from the airport to our hotel had gotten tired of waiting and wouldn't be there when we landed. However, once we got our luggage and walked out into the arrivals hall, thankfully there was our EZ Shuttle driver with our names on a signboard. The weather was really overcast and quite cool. It was a 25 minute drive to our hotel in downtown Cape Town but we made it with no more delays and got checked in with no issues.

The Westin Araybella Quay Hotel is 5 star and the rooms were fabulous. There was every convenience imaginable and big beautiful comfortable sink-out-of-sight beds. We unanimously decided we were too weary to go out for dinner and it was a good thing because the sky's opened up and the rain started coming down hard. Instead, we opted for room service.

    
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After a bite to eat, I sorted out a few notes and Lee and I were off to bed by 11:30.