Mon-Tue, Aug 31-Sep 1 - Going Home

We awoke to rain and walked back to Catharina's for breakfast and ordered excellent Malay spicy open face omelets.  As we were eating, a hotel employee came to our table to say that we could have a late checkout until 1 PM which is great as our flight doesn't leave until 7:30 PM, and with the rain, there's not a lot to do.  So we repacked, watched most of "Babe - A Pig", and reluctantly departed from this delightful hotel with its amazing service.

    Lighthouse at Kommetjie

We drove over the coastal mountains to the town of Kommetjie, as Bob's bird-finding book said the Antarctic Tern could be seen from the car park.  We really needed a small telescope to figure out the subtle differences between the different terns, so Bob set off for 20 minutes to walk out further on the rocks, and is pretty sure he saw one.

Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens is on the way to the airport, so we stopped there for a bit to cruise through the bookstore and shop; if we'd thought if it earlier, we could have walked the beautiful grounds with our umbrellas

We got to the airport, returned our sturdy VW Tiguan to Hertz, checked in, went through security and, after a short wait, boarded our 747 for Heathrow.  Fortunately with my meager Ruby status, we were able to board early and got in our two-seat section at the very back of the jet as British Airways had double booked our seats and had they been occupied, we would have been dumped into the hell of four abreast seating in the center! 

Drinks, dinner, movies and some sleep and we arrived at Heathrow at 6:15 AM.  We took a train over to C65 gate in Terminal 5.  Bob reminded me that we had some pounds from our previous pass through the airport and I scrapped together 2.9 pounds, not quite enough for one almond croissant  and a coffee at Starbucks, but the kind attendant took pity on us and gave us the coffee anyway!!

We got on our Airbus 380 at 9:30 and had two-abreast seating upstairs as BA puts some economy seating there.  It was daylight all the way, but unfortunately cloudy until the northern US so Bob missed out seeing Greenland and Canada.  I watched 10 episodes of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and six of "Episodes" which acclimated me to being in So Cal again, and after eleven hours we landed  a little after noon.

We cruised through immigration and got outside the Tom Bradley Terminal into an absolute scrum for the car rental buses, but finally made it on the second bus to Alamo.  We picked up our car, drove by the Randy's Donuts sign, onto the 405 and home by 4 PM.  I went down to pick up Maddie at the Cat House Hotel and she howled all the way home and is now checking that all the doors in the house work.

Good to be home.  Thanks for following along on this really terrific trip.  And thanks to RRZ for doing most of the planning and 99% of the driving(3500 miles)!

XXX, Katy
 PS  Final tally:  ~170 bird species seen, ~41 new life birds