The long haul

We are now in the African continent via HK, a trip that took about 52 hours, I know why they use sleep deprivation as a torture, cos I was going a bit la la on the lack of and interrupted sleep over the last couple of days, but after a good solid 6 hours last night I’m back!

It all started so well last Saturday with the Classic Travel lads putting on a bar tab at Auckland airport before the flight so we all headed off to the flight and sat on the tarmac for 2.5 hours with “technical difficulties”, just before the whole plane was about to riot we were off. A few complimentary bevies and some hours later we arrived to 29 degrees and just in time to watch the England v USA game in the hotel bar, a hilarious result in which the pommy fans amongst us copped plenty after Rob Green’s shocker for the USA goal.

The day in HK was spent chasing air con, a few beers and a traditional and very confusing yum cha experience. The language barrier was nailed though as the boys had a great feed with nothing that freaked us out being ordered.

12 hours after leaving HK we hit Johannesburg Monday morning, a traditional South African KFC breakfast was had (very tasty burger Nick) and then it was off to our digs where we were greeted by an awesome waiata by the whole Hotel staff (pic below), and a TVNZ crew (TV3 turned up later when we were well into the drinking, so missed the boat!), a braai and wheelbarrows full of beers as we got off the bus. The rest of the day (this was 9am!) was spent bonding over beers in the Joburg sun. Sometime during the day I managed to get the below photo with Steve Waugh (after Rosco tried to tell me to leave him alone, look how happy he is!).

My first impressions of Africa, the people seem to run on “island” time but they are incredibly friendly, very proud of their country and will bend over the backwards to help you, if NZ is half as good as them in 2011 it’ll be brilliant.

So we’re off to Rustenburg today for Slovakia, it’s a brisk winter’s day, but looking forward to an AW win!