Yes, it's our last day in the glorious sunshine of South Africa before we commence the long and possibly arduous journey back to Yorkshire.
Arduous? At this stage, only because as you all know from previous blogs, we are open to the vagaries of the will we, won't we issues of BA staff travel.
The thing about this time of year is that every man and his dog wants to visit South Africa and the problem has been compounded by two additional factors. The phenomenal exchange rate and the less phenomenal visit of the England cricket team which had encouraged far more people to get on a plane down here this year!
The result is that all four daily BA flights, two from Cape Town and two from Johannesberg tomorrow, are all vastly overbooked, leaving the very low priority staff travellers with a predicament. Do they sit it out and wait for space to become available? It could be days. Or do they use their initiative à la Alistair and try and find a different way to come home?
It's a very exciting game of brinkmanship which many people loathe but which I treat as an adventure. I realise of course that you can be a tad gung-ho when you are retired and don't have the pressures of work to get back to although the waiting game can be costly in terms of additional hotel costs!
Feeling sorry for us? I didn't think so!
As it stands, we are waitlisted on the second flight out of Jo'burg tomorrow night. We are at number one to get on the flight if space becomes available. The rub is, it is overbooked and therefore we have to rely on no shows or postponed travel trips to free up capacity. We might get on, we might need a hotel.
The brinkmanship is whether to take our chance and wait or as I have planned at this stage, take a flight with Emirates to Dubai which leaves Jo'burg at lunchtime tomorrow and connect with the BA flight back to Heathrow which leaves at 0225 on Wednesday morning? Surprisingly, this route home would still allow us to make our 0740 connection to Leeds Bradford albeit, we will be in the air for an additional five hours! Still following? I will update tomorrow but at 2100 hours as I write this dispatch, I have no idea which will be the option taken.
Anyway, we have had a lovely final day here with wall to wall sunshine which gave us the opportunity to head to one of our favourite places at Betty's Bay for coffee and fruit cake, the latter of which is to die for.
The final meal of the condemned Coys was at De Brasserie in Strand, a restaurant we have come to really love with the quality of food exceptional but topped by the standard of service from their staff. They provided a fitting end to our stay in Somerset West and now we must finish our packing ready for a very early flight to Jo'burg in the morning.
There will be one more post to update on what happened and to reflect again on the ups and downs of this amazing country.
Coffee and Cake at Cafe Jack's in Betty's Bay
Last Meal of the Condemned Folk
We may see you on Thursday at joburg then!
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