Set off for South Africa this morning.....at 4.30am! Just before Clare and her mum came to pick Emily up the zip on her suitcase broke and so she had a mad dash to get her things transfered to the other bag in time. She just about managed it!

Clare and her mum arrived in Padiham and off we went to Manchester. We arrived in plenty of time and were a little worried about the weight of our cases until we were told by check in staff we had a limit of 30kg each! We were both a little gutted to have restricted our bags but then realised our internal flights from Jo'burg would only be 20kg....but we decided we would make full use of our allowance on the way back!

Once we were checked in we said our goodbyes to mummy Clare and went through the security....needless to say, Clare got frisked which she thoroughly enjoyed and we headed to the shops.

We decided on buying a bottle of whisky for Alex in the duty free and then purchased some lip gloss and perfume before taking up seats in the lounge and proceeded with people watching until our flight time!

We arrived at our plane and were greeted by courteous staff who gave us a drink of water as we were seated. We were delighted to find we had seat back entertainment including solitare, tetris and many children's films! As soon as we had taken off, the airhostess came around with the drinks trolley and we decided to start as we meant to continue with an alcoholic bevearage at 9am! woop woop! This was followed by crisps and another drink before we settled into watching our films. The trolley dollies came around with our menu's soon after this, along with another chance to restock on the alcohol and we chose our food to chow down on. The food was delicious and the entertainment onboard was excellent.....allowing the flight to pass quickly. The flight took us over Baghdad and Basra amongst others and pretty soon we arrived at Abu Dhabi.

We landed at 8pm and were taken past a thermal imaging camera to check if we had swine flu. We proceeded through to security and then into the shops. Clare got another frisking, but this time it was behind close doors due to the cultural thing going on there. We headed to the gates and bought some drinks and a baguette to share with our Dirhams. Whilst waiting for our connecting flight we took full advantage of the free internet facilities in the airport.

While waiting at the gate we got talking to a couple from South Africa who lived in Knysna...and who told us they were driving from Jo'burg instead of flying and so we challenged them to a race to see who arrived first!

We boarded our flight and set off to Africa!