Back in Luanda. The flight back was interesting. I flew Namibian Airways to Windhoek, and then TAAG to Luanda via Lubango, a seriously small airport on the way.
Back to another Luandan Sunset! 🙂
It started badly with me only once again getting like 4 hours sleep. My bad for leaving it till the last minute as always. Then at check in they told me that TAAG was not yet online, or open for booking, so I would have to get the TAAG ticket at Windhoek. Not a problem I thought, even though my luggage had been checked all the way through. How they do that with only only end of the ticket, I have no clue, but they were confident it would arrive. Ok. I didn’t really have any say in this matter, especially since the bag had already gone through the hatch. I cleared passport control fine and headed to Duty Free, to do the usual. Collect a bottle or 2/3/4 for my stay in Luanda. I would go for Gin this time though, even though my preference is Whiskey. I collected a two-pack of Beefeater, never had that before, and thought I would give it a bash. The only pack that comes in 2 actually. The Gordon’s was singles, and I forgot about the Bombay Sapphire, which I saw a guy at the checkout buying. Well, I’ll do that next time I guess! 🙂 The joy of a long term stint and Duty Free. The guy asked my final destination, to which I replied Luanda, and I handed over my Windhoek stub.
“Ahhh, no sorry, it’s a SADC state, therefore, unless we get an International Ticket, we can’t sell you anything.”
WTF?? Well, that just sucks! He wouldn’t take my itinerary as proof either, so I was gutted. I left the bottles at the counter, and moped off. 🙁
I literally slept 3/4 of the way to Windhoek, as I was that knackered! The stop over in Windhoek was a rather lengthy one, like almost 3 hours, and I grabbed a saamie and chilled at the bar on the rather nice cushions. Almost fell asleep too.
Upon leaving Windhoek, I was once again not disappointed in my observances of the Angolan Portuguese. Firstly, they give you a boarding card with a seat number, but to make things really interesting, they tell once you are on the plane that it is free seating. Unreserved. Great, as though I didn’t have enough confidence in TAAG already, they go and completely f#ck up the entire boarding procedure too. It was legend. I got on fairly early, so got a seat next to the window. Not my seat, but to hell with it. I wasn’t likely to get my seat anyway. The one chick with her family is halfway down, then she hears it is free seating,so she literally turns around, swears at everyone, and forces her way back through all the people boarding to go right to the front of economy to sit there. She delays the entire process by about 5 mins while she pushes through. Then a South African dude gets on, and he is told it is free seating. He tells the air steward that maybe this is where he wants to sit. Hey rightly so. If he had booked a window seat, why should he be inconvenienced by this muppet show? The air steward tells him it is free seating. He says he wants his seat. His numbered seat on his boarding card. Now occupied by a rather large, unconcerned Black Angolan Woman! At this stage I was sorely tempted to press the button and ask for a box to popcorn so I could sit back and watch the show. 🙂 Eventually the guy moved on, as the woman wasn’t going anywhere. She just kept saying: “Sit! Sit! Sit!” Unbelievable.
I didn’t sleep on this flight, as they put on Transformers (with Portuguese Subtitles). Man, I LOVE that flick. I can watch it 1000 times and never get bored. They have got a fairly new fleet of 737’s, 767’s I think. They have Air France branding on the insides, so it must be their old stock. We were about half way through when put down at Lubango. A very small military airbase. You pass a whole lot of hangers with fighter jets in them when you come into land. Really cool! 🙂 When airborne agin, they played some funny shorts, which was just crap, as I was hoping to see the second half of Transformers! Bummed!
We put down in Luanda after a rather uneventful trip, thankfully, and it took us the foreigners ages to clear. We had one chick doing our passport control who was definitely wanting to be elsewhere. She took 20 mins just to do a family of 4’s passports! Man, I was dying of boredom. We eventually reshuffled to the other clear lanes and I got through no worries then. I walked into baggage reclaim, to find NO Kamilo, our protocol guy! I called him 2 days earlier to tell him I was arriving. He would meet me there he told me. So here I am, waiting for my bag, and I’m kinda in 2 moods about calling Kamilo. Since I have already done this before I know that all he is gonna do is rock up and walk me through customs, of which I literally have nothing to declare. So, I think about it. As I am thinking the conveyor starts up. My bag comes out pretty quickly, I grab it, and decide, “Let’s Do This!”. So I head on through to Passport control. The one guy in front of me, an expat with only a togbag, walks straight through after having spoken to his protocol guy, so I decide to follow him. I am through. Suddenly, the one lady reachs out, grabs my arm and points at my bag and says something. Sh!t! Now here is when you need Protocol! I shrig my shoulders and say: “I don’t speak Portuguese.” She points at the xray machine. Ahhh, okay, my bag needs to be scanned as it is a hardshell case. Even though it is a small one, it still needs to be scanned. Cool. No worries. I have nothing to hide. I see a whole host of people having their bags opened on the opposite side of the room. Man, that would suck. Not cause there is anything of value in my bag, but just cause I packed it so tight. 18 kg in a tiny bag. If they open it now, it’ll pop! And I’ll struggle to get it closed. Well, it takes a while and then a lady comes along and scans it. She looks at the scanner, then the bag, then the scanner again, with a funny look, look the my bag, then me, then by bag, then . . . nods her head in the direction of the door. I grab my bag and head straight out. Great! My protocol cash is mine. Lucky I never got those 2 bottles of Beefeater at CPT! I was half expecting to see Kamilo waiting outside for me. No. No such luck for him. 🙂
Jeje was there, though I had to call him too, but at least he was in the parking lot. The trip home was easy enough, and t was actually good to be back.
Click.
Nunnsby
Easy Going Guy ; -)