To say we had a tough travel day is an understatement; we had a tough travel three days. We knew that the journey from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Cape Town, South Africa would be long and tiring, but we hadn’t counted on over a full day delay in arriving with minimal sleep. Our original plan was to have a flight from Buenos Aires to Dubai, about 15 hours, with a short stop in Rio de Janeiro to load more passengers. Once in Dubai, we had a hotel booked for an overnight stay and would wake up refreshed the next morning, ready for our 11-hour flight to Cape Town. With time zones being what they are, it would have taken about 36 hours total (including a 12-hour layover in Dubai to sleep, eat, and shower). However, flight delays and cancellations extended this time and removed the comforts of a hotel, leaving us groggy and sleep-deprived by the time we finally arrived in Cape Town, over a day behind schedule.

We had some pretty good meals on all of our flights, some of the best I’ve had in economy class!

The trip started out smoothly at 5:00pm on Tuesday, January 31, with our AirBNB host in Buenos Aires offering us a ride to the airport as we were leaving. We checked in, had a meal at the airport, and boarded our flight. Something that hardly ever happens to us: we were lucky enough to get exit row seats, ensuring we would have plenty of legroom for the long flight to Dubai. Our flight to Rio de Janeiro took off as scheduled and we landed after a couple hours, thinking that we would be on the ground just long enough to load more passengers and refuel. When that short amount of time turned into a few hours, we knew something else was happening.

We were excited to board our first flight on our way to Africa!

It was nearly 5:00am on Wednesday, February 1 by the time the airline announced that there was a mechanical problem and they did not have the part needed to fix the plane. We would have to deplane and wait, either for the part to arrive or a new plane to take its place. Understandable, since nobody wants to fly in an aircraft that is not fully functional. The airline asked passengers from the US and a handful of other countries to deplane first, since we would have to stay in the airport due to visa restrictions (US citizens require a visa to enter Brazil, so we would not be able to leave the airport). They led a group of about 30 of us to the GOL Premium Lounge, where they said we could wait until the flight had been rescheduled. Since they took us to a lounge and not a hotel, we all had assumed the wait would be a few hours at most.

We spent most of our time in the grey chairs in the corner, next to the window and outlets.

The lounge was comfortable at first, with free coffee and snacks, Wifi, and showers. Jon and I ate, showered, read, played on our phones, and tried to nap in the chairs available (there wasn’t really a good place to lay down). The few hours that we thought we would spend slowly stretched longer and longer with no updates from the airline. Finally, mid-afternoon, I received an email with an updated schedule for our new flight; we would be flying on the flight that night that ran on the same schedule as our original flight (a 24-hour delay, without a place to sleep). An airline representative came to the lounge to speak with all of us who had been placed there, writing down our questions and concerns and promising to speak with his manager to get them addressed. Unfortunately, that was the last we saw of him so we never got our questions and requests answered.

A buffet was available all day, but consisted mostly of snack food.

Close to the time we would have needed to check in, we wandered down to the gate to see if we could get updated boarding passes and to ask about our luggage. Nobody was there, so back at the lounge, the receptionist called the airline to ask. She said to wait for a little while and go back two hours before our scheduled flight. After walking back down to the gate a short time later, an airline attendant sat at the desk and started looking into our flight. He told us to go back to the lounge, since they would be taking our tickets there for the people who needed to be rebooked. Back at the lounge, we waited with the others until a different attendant came and told us to go get our tickets at the gate. At this point, a huge crowd of people had gathered – those that were on the cancelled flight from the night before and those that were originally scheduled for the flight that evening. Pushing, shoving, yelling, and chanting came from the crowd as they discovered that hardly anyone would be boarding the flight that evening. Luckily, the airline had given the 30 of us from the lounge seats; I think because we had nowhere else to go, whereas the others could go to hotels and have rooms.

Some people in the lounge resorted to laying on the top of the benches to sleep.

Stuck in the middle seats for the 13-hour flight wasn’t a problem for us, since we fell asleep before the first meal and spent a majority of the flight napping. We landed in Dubai around midnight on Thursday, February 2 and got some ice cream at Haagen-Dazs for a snack. At 3:00am, we boarded our next flight, which would take us 11 hours to Cape Town. Due to some weather delays, we landed in Cape Town around 1:00pm on Friday, February 3. Thanks to our friend, Elze, we had a shuttle waiting to pick us up and drive us to our hostel, where we checked into our room and nearly collapsed. Finally, after three days of travel and very poor sleep, we had arrived in Cape Town.

Our midnight snack in Dubai? An expensive bowl of Haagen-Dazs ice cream!

Our first view of Cape Town from the shuttle bus! We finally made it!

*Note: all times mentioned in this post were local times. The times may not add up if you are trying to put together a continuous timeline of our travel. Since we jumped around and were on the ground in four different time zones, it made it hard to keep track of exactly how long we had been traveling and what time it was! Therefore, it was easiest for me to put everything in local times for this post.