Johannesburg

We had a pleasant and long (14 hours) flight from Atlanta to Jo'Burg.  Mostly, everything went smoothly.  Our bags all made it.  We cleared customs and passport .l mmcontrol quickly.  The rental car was availab nole.  Unsurprisingly, we had a credit card de miclined which is often a problem with overseas travel.  In this case my credit union Visa card was declined.  We used another card which went through.  Later, I checked email and the credit union sent me a message which allowed me to reactivate the card.  This was handy because it meant I didn't have to call them, which brings me to the one snafu.

I peepurchased eSIM cards to have country wide data and text for the trip.  I used a company called Maya Mobile.  I bought the eSIM cards before leaving home and prepaid $70 for a month of unlimited data.  Very fair, price wise.  Frances' worked fine, and she got Google Maps up and running so that we had GPS navigation to get to the hotel.  I've been working with their tech support, but still can't get my Android phone to connect to the cellular network. So the credit union's usage of email was handy, since my phone wasn't working anyway.

The drive from the airport was calm.  There was a bit of traffic, but there was no road rage.  Everybody allowed folks to merge and chang lanes with great civility.

Driving on the left side of the road is surprisingly easy to adjust to.  I've only done this once before during a work related trip to the UK.  They added a bit of extra fun by upgrading us to a pickup truck with a manual gearbox.  The bed has a cover, so this will work out nicely.

Tomorrow, actually in about 4 hours, it's about 5AM here, I'll resume the search for anti malarial meds.  We are staying in newish area with shops and the like.  There is a physicians office about a kilometer away, so I'll try and hit them up when they open.

On Friday the fun begins when we head up to Kruger National Park for some animal viewing and photography.

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