Oops! (Blush): 17,000 km Out…

Look! Our Ship, the Hyundai Singapore, which I have been tracking over the past three weeks or so from Cape Town to Las Palmas, to Rotterdam, to Hamburg, to the Thames, to Antwerp and on to Le Havre, appears not to be Our Ship, after all! Gulp! (blush slightly)

Mind you, I do not have official confirmation of this allegation, merely the word of a shipping clerk in Wellington – and I must believe her, ‘cos she seems pretty positive about her facts: Our Stuff has changed ships twice, and has come via Port Louis in Mauritius. I ask the question: Did any of my readers doubt that Our Stuff was on the Hyundai Singapore? (up until now, anyway).

Dum…dum…dum… Here is Our Real Ship:

Please meet Our Real Ship:  MSC Geneva hails from Germany with call-sign DDJH2, currently travelling south (193º ) along the East Coast of Australia from Sydney down to Melbourne at 16 knots, expected ETA 23:00 UTC on 24 February.

We shall wait to see the next port of call after Melbourne. Hopefully, MSC Geneva will set sail Eastwards in our direction on a trip of approximately 2,600 km as the crow seagull flies.

The next day or two will tell. Unless they go sail-about to other Australian and New Zealand ports before pitching up in Wellington next to the Cake Tin.

Over and Out. Roger.

Not down under– Our itinerary

Despite what the British may think, our destination cannot be termed “down under” from our point of view (mostly because we are down under, to start off with!). To describe our upcoming journey, I would prefer to use the term “up and around the corner” – up to Gauteng and then a-r-o-u-n-d the corner to Sydney.

Unless one is walking, talking in kilometres or miles is not all that informative – I prefer to talk in hours and minutes – we all know how that works. In the greater scheme of air travel, ours is not a particularly long trip, but for us yokels, it seems like forever.

I take the opportunity of logging this journey now, as I won’t be able to use a smartphone and write as we go. Leg 1 (flight 332) is a mere 2 hours from Cape Town to O.R. Tambo, where we get to sit around a tad short of 4 hours. As we take off, courtesy a flying kangaroo Qantas 747-400 (under Star alliance with SAA) and head east into the darkness.

We settle back in our comfortable (economical) seats after supper of chicken or beef, watch a bit of a movie, or watch the little plane icon on the blue screen doing speeds much higher than my car, but moving exceeding slowly across the little screen. Maybe get a bit of shut-eye – after all, we are flying towards the sunrise, so to speak.

Leg 2 (flight 7700) is a couple of minutes shy of 12 hours, which means that Kingsford-Smith Sydney arrives at some minutes before 6:00am – the time difference added in translates to a quarter to three in the afternoon instead. There goes most of Christmas Day, swallowed up by time difference. Last time we visited New Zealand, I did a bit of a read-up on Kingsford-Smith, here’s the Wiki reference, he was quite a guy!

After a 4 hour afternoon wait – the boring shift – we embark on leg 3 (flight 842) to the Land of The Long White Cloud, “around the corner” – a journey a  smidgen more than 3 hours and another 3-hour time difference. Yikes! As we touch down at Wellington airport, the official Christmas Day ended five minutes earlier. Some folks are still awake, we hope.

Look at your wristwatch if you haven’t changed the time yet – folks in Cape Town have yet to even sit down to a Christmas lunch!

Middle Earth