HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Escaping the oppressive heat of Rio de Janeiro
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Leaving my roomie for 4 weeks-I’m going to miss you Pal
WORD OF THE DAY: AIRPORTS AND AIRPLANES
DISTANCE TRAVELLED: 17,174KM
Today I start my journey to Ethiopia and see what my future holds. I haven’t seen Zeme since October and after all the who-ha of the last few weeks I will be happy to just finally getting on a plane and having him in my arms. Even if it means that I am the one that has to travel the 30 hours and not him. My flight isn’t till 3.25pm, so I had the morning to have a nice leisurely breakfast and then back to the room to finish the packing. I am leaving Kate with a small plastic bag of stuff that I won’t need for the next 4 weeks, other than that, the rest of my gear is on the truck or in my backpack ready to go. Funny to think that I will have my stuff spread out in 2 continents for the next 4 weeks.
Deb is moving into my bed for the night tonight. Svendog left at 6am, Mick left at 11am and Paul and Liz don’t leave till 6pm tonight and they were going to leave their bags in the luggage room. But we got a knock on the door at 11am and they asked if they could keep their bags in our room as someone just had their bag stolen from reception and it had their passport in it and they were on their way to the airport for their flight home. NIGHTMARE…. So they wanted to make sure that their stuff was safe and it worked out well as they then stayed with us in the room till 12 and then Paul carried my bag down for me and they helped hail a taxi and with a final hug and good-bye to Liz and Paul and a massive hug for Kate, with promises I will be back to re-join her in 4 weeks I was off to the international airport. I didn’t get a chance to see the rest of the gang. Julia, Helen, Deb, Sharon and there was no Tucan love from Mark or Gray, but I am assuming they are getting their shit ready for the new joining group as they have 21 new people joining and the pre-departure meeting is tonight. I wound down my window as my taxi pulled away and I kept waving until I could no longer see my buddies waving frantically at my departing taxi. My next adventure begins and I have all the luck and wishes with me from everyone so I know that I am going to be okay.
Being the end of Carnival I expected the airport to be busy, but after the 25 minute drive and paying the taxi driver 40RS, I found the airport to be nearly deserted. The trolleys were free, so with my bag hoisted on that I found my check-in counter which had no-one waiting. It is a little strange when you find your counter there were 3 small mobile counters where there was a guy waiting. He checked my flight time, checked my e-ticket and passport and then let me through to the check-in counter, which also had no-one waiting. I asked the check-in chick if my bags could be checked all the way through to Addis as I was travelling on 2 separate tickets and this flight was on an e-ticket all on its own. It wasn’t going to be a big deal if she couldn’t as I had the time to recheck it but it would just be less fuss for me in Sao Paulo. Well you can imagine my surprise when she said no worries I can do that for you! Woo Hoo! Thanks and my bag only weighed 19.2KG and I also got my window seat, so it looked like today was starting out to be a good travel day. From leaving the hotel, to checking in, security and finding the table was a process that only took 55 minutes!!!!!! No word of a lie. Isn’t that INSANE!!! I had allowed extra time based on Rio Carnival traffic, so I had nearly 2.5 hours to kill, but this was okay as I found a café, pulled up a chair and table and started to get some blogging done. I didn’t move for nearly 2 hours when the battery on my computer started to get flat, but at Rio International they have charging stations in their departure gates so I was able to re charge the computer and the laptop for the next section if I have time to pull it out.
The airport isn’t the newest but with free trolleys and the charging stations it has thumbs up from me. I also LOVE the South American way of boarding planes and they have 2 lines, sometime 3. They have the lines based on seat numbers and even though they do boarding via seat numbers all over the world, for some reason it just seems to work better here. I am lucky I have always been in the first seat call, meaning I am in the back of the plane, but I am okay with this so I can just get on and get my backpack in the over -head locker without someone stealing all the space. The plane we were on was a 737-800 with a seating configuration of 3x3. It was only a 45 minute flight to Sao Paulo and as quick as you could say Rio Carnival we were landing in Sao Paulo. Even though I left from the International airport in Rio it was a domestic flight so with no security, customs or baggage collection I found myself in the arrivals hall. I found the international departure sign straight out of the baggage collection doors, up the escalators and my check-in counters for Lufthansa were just to the right. It couldn’t have been easier. There is something strange checking in for an international flight with no bags and I am sure it looks weird as well. There was only one person in front of me and I was checked in through to Addis with my required window seats within 10 minutes. Hello travel gods….where have you been hiding the last 3 weeks, I could have used you with the Zeme saga’s. I had 3 hours here at Sao Paulo and no 30 hour international leg is fully complete without a McDonalds feed, so I stopped and had 10 nuggies before proceeding through the quickest security and passport check I have ever been through and into the gates.
I found my gate and pulled up a pew and blogged for 1.5 hours before having a wander around the duty free shops, to which there aren’t that many at Sao Paulo and then our flight was called and they had that great seat lineup to which I was again in the first boarding by a row, see ya suckers!!!! The Lufthansa aircraft that operates this service is a 747-400 with a 3x4x3 configuration. I was allocated the seats directly behind the galley which at first glance I thought were dodgy seats, but you still got a pocket in front of you and there was bulkhead leg space, I could nearly straighten my leg before hitting the wall. The check in chickie was very nice to give me that seat. The down side was it was an older aircraft that didn’t have in seat TV’s. WHAT I hear you cry, I know. I thought for a second that it was just these seats next to the galley, but after a quick reccy all the seats didn’t have TV’s and there were the old fashioned TVs that dropped from the roof every 6-10 seats. It surprises me on an 11 hour flight that operate such an aircraft, but they obviously do and after reading the inflight magazine it conformed there are 3 places in South America that operate this aircraft and I happened to be on one of them. Thank goodness I am on a direct service back to Rio and will be on a plane that does have personal TV’s. Maybe I have just done so many flights now that my expectations are just a tad too high? I mean this is how we travelled 10 years ago and we didn’t complain back then did we?
Once on the plane, strapped into my window seat the gentleman on the aisle arrived, so the middle seat was still vacant. I think this is now my most tense moments of a flight, waiting to see if the seat is going to be empty, which on an 11 hour flight is always an added bonus to have the extra room. So when people are walking past looking at the seat numbers looking at their boarding passes and you just hope that they keep on walking past and when they do you make a sigh of relief and wait for their next wave of people to come through. Well we were lucky and the doors closed with an announcement for the Hostees, so we were home and hosed we had a spare seat. The only bad side to these seats as they are a form of bilk head the arm rests don’t lift up, but to be able to spread your wings during meal times and to put your stuff does make all the difference on long haul flights.
It was an overnight flight, so once dinner was served the plane was shut down for sleep time which was fine by me. I think I slept for 8 of the 11 hours which I love as it makes the time go so much quicker. Breakfast was served and we landed on time into Frankfurt International Airport. We wound our watches 3 hours forward as we exited the plane and then I had to work out where I was and where I needed to get to. Frankfurt International Airport is massive and busy; you could see the jet streams of at least 20 planes as we came into land and then the planes that were waiting to take off and at gates was impressive. Frankfurt Airport is by far the busiest airport by passenger traffic in Germany, the third busiest in Europe (after London Heathrow Airport and Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport) and the ninth busiest worldwide in 2010. Passenger traffic at Frankfurt Airport in 2010 was 53.0 million. As of winter 2011/2012, Frankfurt Airport serves the most international destinations in the world, serving 275 destinations in 111 countries and is the second busiest airport in Europe by cargo traffic. The southern side of the airport ground was home to the Rhein-Main Air Base, which was a major air base for the United States from 1947 until 2005, when the air base was closed and the property was acquired by Fraport.
The airport has been expanded several times since its opening in 1936 and now has two large terminals (Terminal 1 and Terminal 2), with a capacity of approximately 58 million passengers yearly, and four runways. In recent years, major construction works were necessary to make the airport compatible for the Airbus A380, including a large A380 maintenance facility; because Lufthansa has stationed its A380 aircraft fleet at Frankfurt Airport. On October 20, 2011, the fourth runway went into operation, which will allow the airport to meet the predicted demand of about 700,000 aircraft movements in 2020. To handle the predicted passenger amount of about 90 million in 2020, Fraport currently builds a new terminal section at Terminal 1 for additional six million passengers and a large Terminal 3 for 25 million passengers is scheduled to be built beginning in 2013.
Lufthansa has a separate First Class Terminal at Frankfurt Airport for the use of its first class passengers. The terminal can only be used by passengers flying Lufthansa First Class or Lufthansa's Miles & More HON Circle members. They also must be departing on a flight operated by Air Dolomiti, Austrian Airlines Group, Lufthansa, Lufthansa Regional or SWISS. Passengers flying other Star Alliance partners in First Class do not have access to the First Class Terminal. The terminal has 200 staff and is used by about 300 passengers daily. It provides individualized security screening and customs facilities, valet parking, a white-linen restaurant, a cigar room and bubble baths. Passengers clear exit immigration controls in the terminal and then are driven from the terminal directly to their aircraft by a chauffeured Mercedes-Benz S-Class or Porsche Panamera. The commercial success of the FCT at Frankfurt has led Lufthansa to plan the opening of a similar facility at Munich Airport.
I told you this place as massive. I was lucky that I arrived into terminal2 and my next flight departed from terminal 2 after checking the 6 big screens that had for departing flight only up till lunch time, I had to clear another security check and I was back in the gate areas and duty free. DUTY FREE. I haven’t done any duty free since buying perfume in Madagascar in September and I have been talking about getting a new IPod. Firstly the battery life on my current one is getting a little short and it doesn’t have a camera like the new generation IPods. Now at the back of my mind is my gadget conscience telling me I don’t need it, I have a perfectly working IPod, don’t buy it. But I just know I will eventually upgrade and get a new one, and I figured if I do it now, I will be able to give Zeme my old one, versus holding back and being good for a few more months and then buying one and what would I do with the old one. At least I know this would go to a good home. I went and got a sausage sandwich to ponder on this and decided to just do it, so I did. While I was there I also bought some more memory cards and while I was at it my drinking camera was on its last legs, so I bought what I considered to be the deal of the century an Olympus 10xoptical zoom for 160AUD. This is an exceptional price and as I had spent over 300EUR I was entitled to a tax refund. Well by now I was starting to run short on time, but 60EUR was worth the race around. So I had to go to the custom and duty office to get a stamp to then make a dash to the refund office to actually get the cash back. You had the option for cash or a refund to the card which they swipe there and then, so I got the refund back to the card and then retraced my steps back to my gate which they had just started to call. Nothing like getting things done at the last minute.
We had to be bussed from the terminal to our plane and it was a 15 minute journey. Where the hell did they park our plane? It was actually quite an interesting ride as we got to see the planes coming in, taking off, at the gates and also departing and at one point we were only 5m away from Singapore Airlines A380 as we drove past it moving to the runway. That thing is MASSIVE!!! The flight from Frankfurt to Addis was a newer plane and an A340-300 with a 2x4x2 configuration and in seat TV’s. When I arrived at my seat I was in a 2 seater and there was a lady already there. Damn. I knew my luck had to run out at some point. The upside was I was in another bulkhead row directly behind business class and this time I could stretch my legs and get them fully extended AND we were in what seemed like a premium economy cabin that only had 5 rows and our own toilet, but the seats and service were economy. So out of 40 possible people in the cabin we had 15!!! And when the announcement came to close the doors my neighbor moved into the set of 4 seats which she had to herself for the 7 hour flight to Addis. Thanks again travel gods; it’s nice to have you back in my corner again.
My nerves were starting and I couldn’t stop looking at the main cabin screen that tells you all the flight information as you fly, time at destination, kilometers left and fly time left. I just couldn’t draw my eyes off the time as it counted down to my landing in Addis and seeing Zeme again. Would he be there? What about if he forgot or got the days mixed up? All this was running through my head as I slept and watched a movie to kill the time. It is also at this time I think of the new group as they head out of Rio today. I wonder how the seating went, how the new group looks and what they think of ‘our’ truck. This also brings me to think on where I will be sitting when I meet up with the truck again in 4 weeks. I really can’t have a say as I haven’t been there and there are only 10 days left till Caracas and then Mike leaves and I know he was going to try an nab my original seat, so I know that I may just get MY seat back again anyway.
Tick, tick, tick the time went by and after 29 hours we finally touched down in Addis Ababa-Ethiopia. The time had come and I had a million butterflies in my tummy!!! The good thing coming back to a place is that you know where you are going and what you need to do. Australians need a visa to enter Ethiopia and a 30 day visa is issued upon arrival for 20USD. As I was at the front of the plane, I was first off and made it to the visa office fairly quickly and they have a pretty efficient system in there considering they write each visa as you come through. Immigration took a little longer but from arriving to getting the baggage carousel was only 30 minutes and out bags were just starting to come out, so I made an excited pee stop at the toilet and by the time I got back to the carousel my bag was there. I grabbed a free trolley on my way back and after getting my bag tag checked to the chitty and waved through the scanner with a few quick questions I entered the arrivals hall looking for Zeme. There was also to be a transfer guy from the hotel with my name, but he was the least of my concerns at this point. I’m scanning all the faces as I came out and I couldn’t see Zeme. My stomach dropped. I looked at the time, I had landed nearly 55 minutes ago and I knew that the airport wasn’t far from town or his home. In the meantime the transfer guy came over to me with my name on the sign, so I explained to him I was waiting for some-one and sent Zeme a message. After 5 minutes I tried to call him several times and there was no network. Dang it, I was at this time feeling sick to the stomach and I asked the transfer guy to try and call the number as it was a local one and he got through after the third attempt and Z was waiting outside for me. THANK GOODNESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I saw him walking towards me and he had the beautiful smile I remember and then he pulled his hands from behind his back with 5 red roses!!! What a way to be welcomed back to Ethiopia. Boy I have missed him.
So I am now back in Ethiopia and all going to plan I will be returning here in August to make a new life with Zeme and I am so excited about the prospect. Z and I have a wonderful 4 weeks, well 3 weeks and 3 days and we are going to use every minute to our advantage and it feels good to be here.
WELCOME TO ETHIOPIA xx
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