This was written on July 2nd:
We have arrived! We left Anchorage, Alaska, USA on June 30th at 6 AM and stepped off the plane in Cape Town on July 1st, at 9 PM. Our trip took 29 hours. We stopped in Seattle and Amsterdam on the way, but neither place for over 3 hours. We tried to sleep on those long flights, in between movies and our inflight vegetarian meals. We toasted Chris’ birthday mid-flight with complimentary wine, and promptly went back to sleep.
We checked 7 bags, and all but one made it with us. Of course the one that didn’t make it was our computer in its specially designed sturdy carrying box (thank you Dave!). Filling out paperwork made our check out from the airport a little longer than comfortable, but our shuttle was there to take us to the Ritz Hotel in Sea Point, Cape Town. It was a little damp when we arrived, like it had just rained. Very different than the dry heat we felt when we were here in January. We snuggled in the back of the shuttle van, happy to be on land.
The Ritz Hotel is a shiny glass tower, straight out of 1975. There is a rotating restaurant on top, from which the view of the ocean and the coastline is outstanding. We didn’t look around much though on July 1st. We got our room, crawled into bed, and fell asleep in South Africa.

