Welcome to Africa - Our 36 Hour Day

Fitting one year's gear into SUV - no problem

Our journey from Thailand to Africa began with a one and half hour drive from Lampang to Chiang Mai with the Kramers.  Once in Chiang Mai, they selected delicious cafe for lunch and then headed to the airport. We decided to arrive on the early side because this trip included 3 legs and we were hoping to be able to check our bags all the way through (which doesn't always happen for a variety of reasons).  This trek will be the longest journey of our year. 

The Kramers parked out the vehicles and joined us at the ticket counter.  Here we learned that to park a vehicle at the airport means that you leave your car in neutral in a lot with many other cars.  While you are in the airport others might need the car behind you so will push your vehicle up, over, or whatever is necessary to get their car out.  It's like a real life version of the kid's game "Traffic Jam."  So when you return to your car to leave, you need to find it in the sea of vehicles and then begin pushing other vehicles to make a path for your vehicle to exit!

Immediately at check-in the problems began as we are told our first flight was delayed. With an impressive level of efficiency they rebooked our second flight (which was on a different airline) because the delay would cause us to miss our connection. OK, well all seemed fairly straight forward.  We got our bags checked all the way through, all 18 boarding passes, and off we went. The Kramers were sweet enough to see us off and walk us all the way to security, where we took a few last pics, and say some sweet goodbyes. Of course some locals wanted pictures with SJ (no need to bother with the rest of us but mom snuck in on the action).

Mom joined in on one of SJs many photo shoots

As we waited for our plane, a second delay was announced.  I had unfortunately asked at the counter when we dropped the bags what would happen if the plane was delayed further.  I noted that in America, one delay usually meant two or three.  I was thinking the tower somehow heard me and was laughing as they announced our second delay, followed by the slowest tarmac exit EVER!  So at this stage we now knew our next connection was tight.

Upon landing, we saw a guy with a Doha (our 2nd destination) sign on the tarmac and he quickly escorted us to a bus, which we have all to ourselves. This amazing gentleman then explained we should be able to make the flight but our bags likely won't. We had to decide immediately to stay or go. It's the last plane of the day. We opted to make the flight and deal with our sole possessions for a year later. He then sprinted through the airport with us, fast tracked us through security, where another airline woman joined our race. We got to our gate and were the last ones to board our huge Airbus A380 where we are row 77. This flight was 7.5 hours of bliss on Qatar Airways to Doha, Qatar.

Private escort due to delay

Private bus just for us (1AM here and they should be tired)

Upon arriving at Doha, we felt like we had landed in a mall. There were luxury shops, luxury cars (even the new Audi R8 and a Ferrari) all set up in a very clean and large airport. Our layover was now quite short because of our delays so we ventured straight to our gate, waited in line and handed over our boarding passes, enjoying a relatively stress free connection compared to the last. Then they ask for the kids birth certificates - WHAT?  We don't have those! No country requires that!  Apparently a few months ago South Africa changed the rules and all children are required to have birth certificates with raised seals in addition to passports. This was news to us. The woman opened the little cloth gate and directed us to "please step aside".  Dad explained that we have them digitally (thank you Dropbox and soccer tournaments!) and we proceeded to hop from wifi to wifi trying to find one that works (no SIM cards in Qatar) - even the boys are on their iPads at this point trying to help.  It's easy enough to locate the boys' but SJ never had any soccer tournaments requiring electronic birth certificates. We did still have our old adoption folder and proceeded to show them the translated one from her DRC certificate. The supervisor accepted it and told us that they may not accept our certificates in South Africa. He told the woman to allow us to board and she gave us the "I cant believe you are going" look and we quickly headed to plane before she found some other reason to not let us go.

On the plane, Dad paid for wifi ($5 for 12MB) and shot off some notes to Ray to get a picture of SJ's official MN birth certificate, figuring that would be easier to try to sell immigration in South Africa.  Once again, THANK YOU Ray! who promptly dug into our firebox of documents to send a copy. This leg was 8.5 hours so we had a lot of time to consider our options - which were none by the way. The internet seemed to indicate that if SA rejects you, you are required to fly home or back to where you came from on your dime. Not good.  Not to mention the fears that run rampant due to the fact that we have a different colored child heading to a country which changed laws due to child abductions. The working plan was to find the Delta lounge and hopefully print off our digital copies.  The issue here was that the rule changed just before we left home but when we left home, we were not sure we were going to Africa. It was something that we were prayerfully considering. God opened some doors and we felt pulled to go and checked the visa requirements on www.visahunter.com, which we have used often to figure out what is required in each new country when landing.  Upon further searching, it appears this is the only site on the web that doesn't mention the need for birth certificates - ugh.

This was about hour 24- oh to be limber :)

Once on the ground in Johannesburg (after about 22 hours of travel) we were greeted with a long que to clear immigration and there was no gate section to find the lounge in - stuck we are. We finally got our turn and our guy sort of laughs at us, calling over a supervisor.  We kindly explain, as best we can, that we did not know about the new birth certificate rule and we only have these digital copies. "It was all over social media" he explained. Maybe dad should get a Facebook account after all!  Eventually we charmed and prayed our way to get him to look and he approved our entry!  We were in... welcome to South Africa. Now we needed to see our bags pulled off as a miracle, get some cash, SIM cards and our rental car because we had a 4 hour drive to Swaziland in front of us. As expected they had no idea where our bags were at this point and we tried to determine if we were better off waiting or just heading to Swazi.  The bag guy explained there was no chance for today and they could be flown to Swazi where we could pick them up at the airport there.  We figure dthis was as good a plan as any.  We were pleasantly surprised that the children handled this extremely well. All the stuff they have for a year was lost and no one really complained or threw a tantrum - that's progress!

Cash proved challenging again because Visa put another block on our card. No SIMs and no wifi worked, so we couldn't call the bank to unblock the card. We couldn't help but laugh at this point. Eventually we found a SIM card store that accepted credit cards and got our SIMs, called the bank via Skype, unblocked our card and got some cash.  Now for the rental car. Guess what?  It's not there.  They offered us a larger car, which we were fine with but would have to wait about half an hour for it get there. That became an hour,  but the rental place did allow us to print the birth certificates on their printers so we had them for our exit. Had we not been delayed yet again here, we would have left without doing this, thus complicating our exit. Eventually we hit the road in our 8 passenger van with about 30 hours now logged on our day. Ironic that this is the largest car we have had had our trip but no luggage to load into it!

The drive went smooth enough and as we drove across South Africa, the landscape began to change from rolling agriculture to beautiful mountain and rocky landscape (Swazi we would learn is called the Switzerland of Africa). The only ordeal was getting pulled over on the SA side at a routine check point of sorts that the police set up.  Feeling a little apprehensive, we stop and rolled down our window.  The officer seemed kind enough but asked to see our "triangle", but with the heavy accent we struggled to understand the word.  Eventually we grasped the word, but now have no idea what he wanted.  Dad turned on the hazard lights and asks "those"?  "No your triangle the officer asked with increasing annoyance. We were baffeled.  So Dad got out of the car and walked to the back and started looking.  We had a stick like thing in a case that unfolded to make a reflective triangle should we have to pull over with car trouble (we later would see lots of these as African cars seem to break down frequently).  The officer was satisfied and off we went.  We grabed some food, successfully got our exit visas stamped with no looks of disdain or someone pulling us aside because of our our newly printed birth certificates. By the time we rolled into our lodging, greeted by the Prince family, it's been 36 hours and 22 minutes since we left Lampang.