March 12th – 13th 2015: Travelling to Namibia

Our travel to Windhoek would be a fairly long one, and began on Thursday March 12^th. As I took the day off from work, and our flight from Geneva was only at 20:50, we obviously had a lot of time to prepare everything. The thing is though you can never have too much time! Still, it was one of the most relaxing trip starts we have had, and to top things off, my brother came to pick us up at 18:00 to go to the airport.

Yeah, I bet you are thinking that getting picked up at 18:00 is a bit too early for a flight basically three hours later, but since the Geneva car show was on you never know what the traffic is going to be like. As it turns out, there were no problems, and we arrived well in advance of our flight. On top of this, the airport was strangely empty and so the check-in was very swift.

Getting to the standard Tax-Free cigarette purchase, we walked past a stand for Villars chocolates, which reminded us we had not bought any of their fabulous dark chocolate with hazelnuts for our trip. So, after chasing down a sales person, we picked up a few of those for those relaxing moments in the evening.

As we were both starving, we headed for the lounge and some lousy pasta with Mexican meatballs. If it is one thing you can be certain of, it is that the Swiss Business lounge in Geneva is not the place to have dinner. Given that we would be indulging in a late dinner on the Johannesburg flight, we just needed something to help us wait.

It is always nice to settle in for a long flight. I am always pretty eager to get on board, and as usual, we were one of the first persons to board. This way you can prepare all your things and get really comfortable before the take off. We were getting really hungry by now though, and it was without surprise that we found the menu to have a fairly poor selection. In the end, we both decided on having the perch, as they confirmed they could serve it without the butter sauce.

After take-off, they were pretty slow in getting the service going though. It seems to me that they must be reducing the staff in the business section, because it is taking longer and longer for them to get the service organized. They were pleasant enough though, and in spite of first bringing Myriam her perch with the sauce, they quickly replaced this.

We both slept really well after the dinner, and I got a good 5.5 hours sleep. The flight was actually shorter than I expected it, but I guess that just means we will sleep even better the first night in Namibia.

Johannesburg was pretty uneventful. The airport has been considerably improved since we were last here, and there was a good selection of shops. So, we first set out to find a safari hat for Myriam, and although we did find the perfect one, they did not have the right size. We will just have to try again later in our trip. After that we headed off to the business lounge, which surprising also had a smoking lounge in it! Yeah, well us smokers are having more and more trouble finding places to smoke in peace, so this was a nice surprise!

The last leg of our trip was a pretty quick and comfortable 2 hour flight to Windhoek. Getting off the plane, we then had to walk to the terminal in the scorching sun! I didn't mind at all, and it was a chance to see the difference between 35° in Singapore with 100% humidity and the dry 35° in Windhoek. Had we been in Singapore we would have been soaked arriving at the terminal!

Finally we proceeded to pick up our car. There seemed to be some issue with it, and when we finally got outside we were told that the problem was that our car needed to be serviced soon, and so we would have to change it during the course of our trip! Not really what you want to have to do, but what can you do. No matter, our car was a really nice Toyota Fortuner, and after a long discussion as well as an explanation about the car, we were finally rolling towards Windhoek. Oh, the very friendly Avis guy told us that people had spotted giraffes on the way to Windhoek, so you can bet Myriam had her eyes wide open the whole way, but no luck.

Windhoek is the biggest city in Namibia, and it is probably smaller than Nyon! The hotel was very easy to find, but then it turned out that in spite of requesting a smoking room they obviously had not taken notice of this. Luckily there was one left, and so all it then took was sorting out the key cards to get them to work in the elevator, and we were finally settled in our room for the night.

We then spent the evening getting our gear in order for the coming days, trying to be as practical as possible.