Our flight was at 11 but we'd read that you need at least two hours to check in at O.R. Tambo and that was definitely correct.. We walked across from the hotel and were immediately accosted by a ‘porter’ who asked where we were flying to and even after we said we already had boarding passes said we needed to print them up. We accepted his advice. Rookie error we won’t make when we come back to JNB in a few weeks.
So we went through the process of getting paper boarding passes via a machine and then he led us around to what he’d said was Airlink bag drop but was actually check-in. We joined the queue and he explained he’d do this and that and then asked for a crisp $20. I knew he meant USD20. I handed him $2, he looked at me, said thanks, and left us.
Check in completed we then walked into the crazy town that was immigration. I had a terrifying moment where I thought my wallet had gone but I’d dropped it into the wrong pocket of my pack. While we were stood in the very slow moving queue they kept calling out for people boarding at this time and that and pullinging them out of the queue.
Boarding for our flight was at 10:45 and we got through with I think 20 minutes to spare.
OR Tambo is huge. Our gate was A26 and it was of course at the very far end of the terminal, down a tremendously long escalator. About five minutes after we got there they announced that our gate had changed to A5, where we’d pretty much come from! Up the steps (the up escalator was broken) and it took not far off the 10 minutes the time said.
Boarding time came and went for our Airlink flight to Livingstone. Eventually the doors opened and boarding started.
I’d paid the huge (not) cost of ZAR70 each, about $6, to select row 3 on the Embraer 190. Fantastic leg room.
Despite boarding about 25 minutes later than expected, we pulled back only 5 minutes late.
It was a great flight. Full service including drinks. Choice of chicken or beef salad, both delicious and a beer.
It was very cloudy or hazy the whole way to Livingstone. We came down through the cloud over the Zambezi well up from the falls.
Greeted at the entry to the terminal buy two ladies with the biggest smiles who gave everyone a press of hand sanitiser. Immigration offered to sell us a KAZA visa that allows multiple entries between Zambia and Zimbabwe but we were only going across to Zimbabwe once.
Both of our bags were scanned on arrival and nothing found we went out to hopefully see a sign with my name on it. And there was. The hotel said it offered a shuttle and I had contacted them to ask about it. They booked a transfer for us instead, USD21 each.
We shared the van with three others, a couple staying at Avani and a single staying with us at the Radisson Blu. Sadly their bags had not arrived with them. All three had flown from the west coast of the US through London to JNB and then on to Livingstone. Their bags just didn’t make it onto the Airlink flight. I saw the lady staying with us the next afternoon and her bag had clearly arrived as she was not wearing the same clothes!
Instead we're staying at another Gondwana Collection Damara Mopane Lodge
