Day 14: Elephants and Departure

 We are all sad to leave our South African home, but also looking forward to being back home. This morning was a 4:30 am departure so that we could visit the elephants at HERD before heading to the airport. HERD is an elephant orphanage where elephants are raised, rehabilitated, and roam free under the watchful care of their minders. They have the choice to come up to headquarters each morning for human interaction and hand feeding. And they eat early!

Even the drive to Jabulani is gorgeous as the sun comes up. The colors and shadows in the sunrise are so recognizably African; I never feel as if I have seen enough. And this time, on our way, we encountered a lion stalking prey (probably impala) in the dawn light. We watched until she disappeared behind some brush, captivated by her size, stealth and grace. A bit further on, our way was blocked by a giraffe in the road.

We arrived, had tea and learned about the project, then divided into 2 groups to interact with 3 different elephants. We fed them from our hands, posed with them, and generally had a wonderful hands-on with these magnificent creatures. 

The above photos are with Sebakwe, who is famous for being the elephant pictured on the label of the popular liquor Amarula. He is one of the original elephants to be cared for by HERD.

The above are photos with Somapani, also an adult male.

And of course, anytime there is food on offer, especially during the dry season, everybody in the neighborhood shows up for a share!

After spending time with one more elephant, this one younger and quite playful, we had to tear ourselves away.

We made a stop in Hoedspruit for breakfast, then went on to the airport. We arrived in plenty of time, checked in, and waited through a slight delay as our plane was late in arriving. Airlink operates basically a shuttle service back and forth from Hoedspruit to Johannesburg, making 3 round trips per day. Since the shuttle was late leaving Jo'burg, it was late arriving to pick us up. But no matter, we all boarded, went up, came down, and landed at Johannesburg OR Tambo International Airport. We claimed our baggage, since we were transferring to another airline, and while at Baggage Claim began to get messages that our flight from London to Chicago was cancelled. Just about the time we had all of our bags and confirmed that everyone's flight was cancelled, another notification came through. This one showed that our Johannesburg to London flight was also cancelled. So we walked over to the British Airways counter, where they were faced with over 800 people trying to re-book. We were told that there would be a new plane assigned tomorrow and we would basically keep our itinerary one day later. We were given instructions to go to the hotel adjoining the airport, where we would be provided meals and housing overnight. 

We found the hotel, checked in without issue, and spent the evening watching our emails for re-booked flight information. We knew that with so many passengers to re-book, it was unlikely that we would all be on the same flights this time around, but we wanted to have all the information in order to organize everyone's safe travel home. Here is the working list of our re-booked flights:

It took 24 hours to get everything arranged. This was complicated by the fact that British Airways phone lines were unavailable in South Africa, we unexpectedly got transferred to another hotel (a short shuttle ride away) after the first night, no BA gate agents work at the airport before 3:30 pm as all of their flights out are overnights, we arrived at our new hotel and the vouchers for our stays had not yet come through, and the fact that we needed to at least pair up students so nobody traveled alone. 

Now comfortably in the new hotel, our first group of students flew out last night. Second group goes this evening, and last pair (our alumni college students) tomorrow. Meanwhile, we are relaxing by the pool, eating good food, and making the most of another day in South Africa. We were able to arrange late check-outs for this evenings travelers, so we have our rooms until we need to leave for the airport at 6:00 pm. That makes things easier!

If there are no further updates, it means we got home as expected with our re-bookings and that this year's adventure has drawn to a close.