In country

Thank goodness for tailwinds! I'm pretty sure that for most of the 3 legs of our flight we were being pushed along by the jet stream at close to 100 mph. That took about 2.5 hours off the posted flight times which is quite OK by me.

I'm re-reading Michener's "The Covenant". For those of you not familiar with the book it is about the founding and history of South Africa. I'm currently in the early founding of the Dutch settlement in what is now the Cape Town area where we will be flying today. I was thinking what a marvelous time we live in. The sailors working for the Dutch East India Company would suffer through voyages of over 2 years from Holland to Java and back. Many would either never arrive due to sinking ships or be taken down by scurvy due to lack of fresh foods. It was touch and go for us with the airline food but we survived.......The trip down the west African coast alone would take months. Mindy and I just did it in 8 hours! Drinking wine, reading books, and watching movies at 37,000 feet. Amazing.

Well we are off to Cape Town. A nice safe introduction into the continent. Supposedly a lot like Northern California. Many vineyards which we will be researching quite extensively.....cya