Getting to Cape Town

The page main picture shows the route to Cape Town, from Los Angeles, and then the cruise that followed it.

We had a pretty early flight from LAX and there was no decent transfer flight from Palm Springs to LAX the morning of our flight so we just drove a rental car to LA the afternoon prior and just stayed at an airport hotel. We could have driven in the morning of the flight and saved a few hundred bucks that the hotel cost but we could also have driven in the morning and got stuck in a major traffic jam and missed our flight.

Better safe than sorry!

We were able to use a different lounge this time and it was very well equipped.

A very nice bar. Too bad it was too early in the morning for drinking.  I think I still managed to have one Bloody Mary.

A very nice fireplace for a group to relax.

And a nice buffet

Taking off from LAX and looking down the beach.  Not too many bathers or surfers out yet - it's February 7th and the air and water are still very cool.

When flying east from LAX the airplane always goes west - way out to sea and then turns around and heads back east. We've done this quite a few times in the past few years and I alway enjoy the scenery heading east.

Here we're over Death Valley.

This one too.

And here we're flying over Utah.

We have friends, Ed and Lauri, who live down there somewhere.

This is a shot from my seat in the plane. When I sat down I thought "what kind of a goofy plane is this - where is the pilot?" There was just a wall with a closet where the cockpit usually is.

Then I found out we were flying a plane like shown below and we were actually in the nose section and directly below the pilot and flight crew. Very cool.

Our path from Amsterdam to Cape Town was almost straight south.  Over  Germany and France and many countries in Africa.

The next pics are all flying over the Alps.  It's winter down there.

And soon we run out of daylight but get a fantastic sunset on our way to Cape Town.