my worst travel experience EVER (in a world controlled by malevolent computers)

I considered if I was succumbing to hyperbole with such a title, but I don’t think so. I’ve had some real travel disasters in the past, but never with an 11-month old baby strapped to my front, who is even less amused by the situation than I am.

Here’s some travel advice: NEVER BOOK THROUGH A THIRD-PARTY WEBSITE. I have had this travel rule in the past, after some traumatic experiences. But the Expedias of the world (yes, I’m naming names) are so alluring, with their slick search engines and nice fares and promises of doing multiple tickets in a single itinerary.

BUT IT’S NOT WORTH IT. Most of the time things will work out just fine. And then sometimes, something will go disastrously wrong and you will be told you have no ticket or the wrong ticket and there will be a big fight about it between the airline and the third-party website, and you will be stuck in the middle, standing at a ticket counter for hours at a time with an 11-month old baby strapped to your front and a full bladder and no chance to go to the bathroom, wondering what you did to deserve this.

That was me. Today. And the plane left without me, and I am now in an airport hotel room, making my third call of the day to Expedia, and once again on hold for a small eternity, which means I may as well vent through blogging a little.

Cassia and I started our travels this afternoon in a minivan of fellow travelers, which left Mbabane late (I don’t know why I expected any different), and then took a much longer break than the driver said he would at the Alzu rest stop (I don’t know why I expected any different), and then we were close to an hour behind schedule and I began to get worried that I wouldn’t have enough time at the airport for the complicated task of checking in with a baby, too much luggage, and not enough hands. Also, Cassia was not thrilled with 4 ½ hours in her carseat, and made a great big stink about it for much of the trip, in spite of having a very kind mkhulu sitting next to her who talked to her and let her pull his gray curly beard whenever she wanted.

But we got to the Johannesburg airport two hours before the flight left. All good. I went to the check-in counter. The British Airways agent frowned and typed and examined our passports for ten minutes, and then told me that she couldn’t find a ticket number for Cassia, so I needed to go to the B.A. ticket desk. Which I did, a bit disgruntled about having to lug all my stuff all the way across the terminal. But we still had plenty of time, and I wasn’t worried.

When I booked through Expedia, I had definitely booked an infant-in-lap ticket for Cassia. (On international flights, they charge you a few hundred dollars for an infant-in-lap, and they need a ticket, unlike on U.S. flights.) And when I checked my reservation on B.A.’s system, Cassia was definitely in my reservation as an infant-in-lap. But somehow she never got a ticket. Don’t ask me to explain this. So the B.A. ticket agents got to work trying to get her a ticket. First there were two working on it, and then three, and then four. Gradually their conversation with me changed from, “Of course we’ll get you on that flight,” to not answering my questions about whether the flight was still being held for me or not, to “Sorry, the flight is closed.” They said it was Expedia’s fault. They called Expedia, and Expedia put us on hold again and again, and finally after an hour and 13 minutes the B.A. ladies said they weren’t going to keep paying for that international call and they had to close up shop anyway (it was now nearly 10), so they hung up.

It’s hard to tell who was enjoying themselves less during those 2 ½ hours standing at the ticket counter, me or Cassia. Cassia cried on the outside. I cried on the inside. And then, when I thought about how exhausted I was and that I was only barely starting my trip across the world and still only a few hundred miles from my starting point, and already down to only 10 diapers in the diaper bag, I cried a little on the outside as well.

It’s now 12:30 a.m. and Cassia just fell asleep (finally) and I have been on hold with Expedia for 20 minutes (after that incredibly long, totally unproductive call at the airport, I also had a 25 minute call from the hotel that got cut off, and now this 30 minute call, and every time I have to start all over with a new person and explain everything and then get sent to that person’s supervisor and so on). So I actually still have no idea who is going to agree to re-book me, or on what flights, or how much of my cousin’s wedding festivities I will miss.

I still feel mostly in the dark about the problem, but as best as I can understand it, when I booked with Expedia, they couldn’t actually book Cassia on an infant-in-lap ticket because there was a U.S. segment (Seattle to Billings) in which she didn’t have a ticket at all, because for U.S. flights an infant-in-lap doesn’t need a ticket. So somehow this threw their whole system into chaos, and they couldn’t give her a ticket for the international segments either. And somehow, the way that Expedia had booked me meant that British Airways couldn't book her in my itinerary because she was already there but ticketless, and they couldn't book her in any other itinerary because who lets a baby travel on an itinerary without a minder, and so they tried a dozen different ways and simply could not ticket my infant. In spite of the fact that I was standing right there, at the airport, with the little passenger in question, pleading, “Please let us on this flight! I’ll pay! I just have to get on this flight!”

Once upon a time, I believe people just paid actual money and were given actual tickets, and then were allowed to get into a plane or train or automobile and travel from Point A to Point B. What an ingenious solution, so simple! How have transportation systems become so complex that four people working hard for an hour can’t figure out how to sell a woman a plane ticket for her baby? I would be having a good laugh at the absurdity of it, if I weren’t sitting in a hotel room still on hold with Expedia when I should be on a plane to my cousin’s wedding.

… That was all written last night while on endless hold with Expedia. At 1:30 a.m. a very nice young man in India told me none of this was my fault, and even started to give me possible itineraries out of here, and I started to be hopeful that Expedia would do something to help me. At 2 a.m. his supervisor told me that she just had to very quickly talk to her supervisor. I begged her not to put me on hold for a long time as it was 2 a.m. and I was finished. At 3 a.m. she finally got back on the phone to tell me that the best they could do was cancel my ticket and refund me the money (which she seemed to think was a favor as technically I was a “no show” and could have ended up with zero back on the ticket). She told me the whole thing was my fault since they sent me an email in January telling me that they couldn’t book the infant ticket. I never saw the email, nor did I notice that they never charged me for the infant ticket. So it was kind of my fault. Also, I was dealing with nine different plane itineraries for this summer trip. NINE. Details get missed.

But would it have been too much to ask for either Expedia or British Airways to flag the issue in my online reservation (which I checked on both of their websites multiple times), or for an actual person from Expedia to call me to discuss that the “ticketed and confirmed” message in my online reservation wasn’t actually true? British Airways, for their part, says it definitely wasn’t their fault as they had no idea the infant hadn’t been ticketed, until they tried to check me in. And no one can explain why four B.A. agents working hard for an hour couldn’t actually get me an infant ticket. That will have to remain one of the unsolvable mysteries of the universe.

So bottom line is I had to start all over and book a brand new ticket for today, which was of course expensive, and none of the multiple very pleasant B.A. agents I talked to had any authority to lower that last-minute fare or to get me a seat that isn't a middle seat (with a baby on my lap). Who does make such decisions? The computers?

I am on the verge of saying I am never going to book through a computer or website again, only with an actual travel agent. (This never would have happened had I booked with a travel agent.) Do travel agents even exist anymore?

At the very least, I am really, truly swearing off booking through third-party websites. I told Expedia (in our five hours of phone calls yesterday) that I would warn everyone I knew about them and their lack of customer service, so there you are. Be warned.

From Cape Town to Cairo

There's an expression in Africa ... "from Cairo to Cape Town" or the reverse "from Cape Town to Cairo."  It's the African equivalent of the American "New York to L.A." way of talking about the whole country.  Somewhere along our Christmas adventures, it dawned on me that we literally did go "from Cape Town to Cairo" -- well, with a couple stops in between.


Cape Town

Nelson Mandela died the morning after we arrived in Cape Town, which was kind of weird and surreal.  But I'm profoundly thankful to have been in South Africa when he died.  It's impossible to deny that the entire nation was grieving with deep pain.  But it seemed to me that the timbre (in Cape Town, at least) of this grief did not reflect so much the loss of a hero, but rather the celebration of one dearly, and deeply, loved.  At the waterfront area, there were temporary gazebos set up with blank greeting books -- they looked just like an ordinary guest book --where anyone on the street could write a farewell message to Madiba (which I did).  For me, the most memorable memorial to Mandela was a huge image of him projected with green light onto the side of Table Mountain.  I don't know exactly how they did that, and the quality wasn't very good because the rock is pretty rugged on that cliff ... still, it was amazingly impressive.  It's an image that will stay in my brain forever.

I've only had a handful of magical moments in my life where time seemed to stand still because of the sheer grandeur of what was happening, or what I was seeing, around me.  One of them occurred while watching the sunset atop Table Mountain.  I don't know of anywhere else in the world where you can watch the sun set over the ocean from 3,000 feet above sea level.  It's hard to describe it; but from that height, I suppose because of how the light reflects on the water, the horizon appears to be behind the sun.  It honestly looks like the sun sinks into the sea.  It was utterly magnificent. It's also pretty incredible to be looking down on a major metropolitan city, skyscrapers and all, while standing on the ground rather than sitting in an airplane.  At some point in my life, I'm definitely going to go back and spend some time exploring Table Mountain ... it's a fairly indescribable wonder.

A taste of Table Mountain

Actually, I could say that same thing about the entire cape, from Table Bay (on which Cape Town sits) around the Cape of Good Hope to False Bay.  We spent several hours driving the entire length, and after a couple days in Stellenbosch, continued along a stretch of highway called "The Garden Route" which hugs the southern coast between the towns of Mossel Bay and Plettenburg Bay.  We turned north in the city of George to head back through Beaufort West and Bloemfontein en route to Johannesburg, where we would fly to Cairo.  Well, along that stretch of the N12 between George and Beaufort West, just north of Oudtshoorn, there is a canyon through the mountains (the range that separates the lush coastal plain from the arid Karoo desert) that I assume was cut by the small river which runs along the bottom.  The road runs alongside the river and sometimes on top of it, and that's about as wide as the canyon gets, with several-hundred-foot-high cliffs of orange-ish rock on either side.  I don't think there's even a name for this canyon, but it's just as impressive as the Glenwood Canyon in Colorado.  It's not as large or spacious, but the majesty of this canyon comes from its closeness and antiquity rather than raw scale.

...the photos don't really do it justice...

I'm disappointed that I was not able to take any photos of Khayelitsha, which is the slum outside Cape Town.  [The batteries of the camera were dead when we drove by.]  Truly, no treatment of Cape Town is complete without the inclusion of Khayelitsha.   It's not exactly just on the other side of Table Mountain from Cape Town, but almost -- it's another 10 miles or so.  The point is this: when you see all those great photos of Table Mountain taken in Cape Town or from the bay, if you could see on the other side of the mountain you would find a slum with 1,000,000 people living in it.  Khayelitsha is a metropolis of dilapidated shacks with corrugated tin roofs, a city reeking of sewage (you could smell it from the car driving past) that is growing, rapidly in fact, filled with poor blacks who hope to scratch out a meager living by working in the city.  In case you don't know, the name "Khayelitsha" is a Xhosa term meaning, "New Home."  The name is the story, the slum the legacy of apartheid, the tragedy the reality of sin and oppression in our broken and fallen world.  The work of Madiba, and of Jesus, is not yet finished.


Cairo

After being in Cape Town for a week, it was hard to fathom that Cairo is on the same continent.  Cairo does not have the same feel as Khayelitsha, but the circumstances are very similar ...  only multiply the number of people about 25 times.  It was my second time to visit Cairo, and we stayed right downtown, a long city block from Tahrir Square.  The food, even a shwarma from a street vendor, was delectable.  We were warmly welcomed and received by everyone with friendly hospitality.  Cairo may not quite live up to the hype as "Paris on the Nile," but it's a memorable place.  I really like Cairo.

[I don't any photos from Cairo on this computer, I'll have to upload them another day.]

We had the experience that, really, you can only have in the Middle East.  One evening we went to the old part of the city, by the large market called the Khan-al-Khalili, and as we stepped out of the cab met a man named Samir.  He offered to take us around, so we dutifully followed and had a wonderful time weaving in and out of narrow alleys and shops, largely manned by friends and acquaintances of his.  Samir walked with a slight limp, and he informed us that he had worked a trade job before his legs could not handle it any more.  Now he works as an instructor at what is considered the second-oldest university in the world -- the school which convenes at the Al-Azhar Mosque.  We spent some time that night with him, as well as the following evening.  We saw the Mosque, drank tea and ate delicious Egyptian food,  climbed a minaret in another mosque for a great view of the night-time cityscape, and bought some small hand-crafted jewelry boxes inlaid with shell and bone. 

We decided to spend a day at the pyramids.  Now, I want to talk about a particular kind of cultural experience we had there in contrast to an experience I had here in Swaziland shortly before we left on this trip.  The differences were amusing to me.  Back in September I received a call from an American iwoman who had just come to Swaziland to work at the American embassy here.  She had heard that  taught music lessons and wanted to know if I would teach her son piano.  I told her that my schedule was full, but that I would call her back if I ever had an opening.  Well, shortly before we left on our trip, we had gone to embassy as a family to pick up Cassia's "Certified Report of Birth Abroad" -- the equivalent of a birth certificate for an American citizen born overseas -- and I recognized the name of the woman who brought it out to us.  I introduced myself, saying, "I think we've spoken on the phone before, you wanted me to give your son piano lessons."  A look of recognition flashed across her face, and she said, "Oh, I remember!  Yeah, I'm pissed at you for that!"  She was joking, of course, in her New-Jersey-like way.  She was hoping, through some relationally-derived humor, that she might persuade me to acquiesce to her business-related request.

A similar thing happened to us at the Pyramids, but in a way that worked exactly opposite.  Let me explain.  At our hotel, we paid for an arranged tour to go to the Pyramids.  This tour included lunch and but not entrance to the Giza area  (I'll call it a "park"), which we didn't realize until after we had already bought the tour.  Further, the Giza area is huge, and most tourists either hire a camel-drawn or horse-drawn carriage to tour the park.  The place is entirely sand, so you can't drive around, really.  You either hire a camel or a horse, or you hoof it on your own two feet over the vast complex.  We didn't have a lot of cash (because, you know, we thought we had already paid for everything!), so we were negotiating with the camel tour operator to at least go in and see the park.  We ended up paying less than half of what he originally asked for, but he wasn't terribly happy about it in the end.  Actually, we probably would have paid for except that our driver realized our predicament and talked him down even further than we were planning!  Anyhow, it was something that the tour operator said during the negotiations that struck me, particularly after having recently had the experience with the American woman that I just described.  During a somewhat tense moment in the negotiations when we were saying that we probably would not be hiring him at all, he said something like, "It's OK, you will have my friendship, even if I don't have your business." Now he was sincere in this; but once again, he was relying on a sense of relationship with us in an attempt to get something he wanted in a business environment.

Here's what struck me: the American woman suggested relational distance, whereas the Egyptian man suggested relational closeness -- a stick versus a carrot, so to speak. In essence, they were each doing the exact same thing, but in the exact opposite way.  There are lessons here, both on the human level and on the cultural level.  I felt better in the second instance, even though the actual situation was much more foreign to my own culture and experience.

[By the way, it's experiences like this that make cross-culltural living so challenging yet so rewarding.  As humans, we are truly enriched by interacting with other humans that are culturally different from us.]


If you ever get to Cairo, make sure you hit the following locales:

- the Egyptian Antiquites Museum (the photos of King Tut's mask from your history textbook are woefully inadequate; it's a completely different experience to see it there in the glass box, 6 inches from your face)

- the Pyramids (duh!  but really, they were there when Moses was born ... probably Abraham, too!)

- the Khan-al-Khalili, the huge bazaar in Islamic Cairo

- Islamic Cairo, and walk the mile-long stretch of Bab el-Wazir street from the Bab-Zuwaila (a gate from the old city which dates to the 11th or 12th century) to The Citadel

- the Al-Azhar Mosque, the oldest Sunni mosque in the world (dedicated in 972)

- the Blue Mosque, located on the Bab el-Wazir street near The Citadel

- The Citadel (the old fortress constructed by Saladin)