Part 3... Jo'burg to Gatwick

After posting my last blog - I checked out the BA website (to check what movies were on my flight). On their site - it had a news flash saying that a BA flight was involved in an incident at Heathrow. I did a quick check of the BBC news website - and apparently a BA jet had to do an emergency landing at Heathrow... Neyice...

My flight from J-Burg to London was probably one of the freakiest flights I've ever been on... For the first hour - the jet was flying right through an electrical storm. It would have looked great - but I was getting s%%t scared that the jet was going to get struck by lighting.

I slept fairly well (for me) - with maybe about 4 hours sleep on that flight. I watched a few crappy shows and the crappy Hulk movie...

The scenary over Africa was sort of freaky - hardly any cities or towns for that matter. For the most part - the moon - reflecting on the clouds - looked like a huge sea. Africa seemed like the opposite of Europe - as you cross the Medditerrian - there are heaps more cities and towns lit up.

Upon arrival at Heathrow - everything was wet. We had to sit on the tarmac - waiting for a gate or something - for about 1 hour... which was fairly painful. Maybe something to do with the accident the day before.

Heathrow - like always - is a fairly run down gloomy airport. As I was connecting to Gatwick - I decided to take the "express bus" to Gatwick - for a pricey sum of £17. The Central Bus Station was a bit of a rock show - I had to queue up for 20 minutes to get a bus ticket. The 0715 bus wasn't anywhere to be seen - yet the 0805 bus was just hanging around - waiting to go... I made my big mistake of the day and hopped on the 0745 bus. As we made our way slowly to Heathrow terminal 4 - Ant gave me a call - saying he was worried about the Heathrow accident - but realised that I wouldn't have been involved in it. It was good talking to him anyhows.

When the bus made its slow way to Heathrow Terminal 4 - the bus driver decided to stick around and announce that the windscreen wipers weren't working and we had to wait for another bus. It sort of pished off a lot of people - especially this dude who looked like the singer from Bloc Party. He started to sprout profanities at the bus driver (every second word started with f) and he was making the whole situtation more painful. 35 minutes later - the next bus arrives (probably the 0805 bus that I should have catched).

We were instructed by the bus driver to stay on the bus as we would have "priority" on getting on the next bus... Too bad for us as there was a big queue of newcomers flocking towards the new bus. The Bloc Party guy started to really lose his cool and started screaming at just about everyone.

Luckily for me - there was a third bus that quickly arrived after the second... So I went straight on to it and got on... I was sorting of thinking that this £17 bus ride (that price was after the BA discount) was a bit of a rip...

Anyhows - another hour later and I finally arrived at Gatwick airport... I was so early for my flight - that my flight hadn't appeared on the check in screens yet.

I cleared through security (which involved a pad-down by some ugly old guy) and several wands - I had forgotten to take off my belt (I'm blaming the 30hours + non-stop travelling).

I did a bit of shopping and bought a couple of PSP games from the duty free HMV - then headed over to the British Airways lounge for a shower (like J-Burg - they seemed to have the whole Texas style 8 shower head deal happening). Strangely enough - the tacky J-Burg lounge decor must be a BA thing internationally - as the lounge still looked like Montezumas...