Final morning. We are up at 6, finish packing our bags, quick muesli yogurt and coffee around the camp fire, then we are out on the boat cruising back down the delta. It is a peaceful morning with yet another impeccable African sunrise. Everyone is kind of zoning out and chatting idly when James exclaims “what the heck is that!” jumping up and pointing. Miraculously there is a leopard strolling through the low reeds along the channel! This is most surprising since this isn’t at all traditional leopard habitat. James is even more excited than we are repeatedly emphasizing that he’s never seen a leopard out here in the ten years he’s been doing this. The boat driver, who has been doing this for twenty years, agrees. We all agree that we’ve been very lucky with our leopard sightings this trip and it is somehow fitting that the first and last animal we see on the trip is a leopard.

Boat ride takes about 2 hours, then a short game drive to the airstrip, arriving just as our plane is touching down. We are the first stop on this bus, so we have to land at two additional lodges before finally arriving in Maun, in total only about an hour. We get our bags checked for Joburg and have about an hour, so we go across the street to The Duck restaurant for some breakfast. This place was recommended by James and based on busy-ness seems to be the go to waiting spot for the airport, which is exceedingly basic.

Our flight is on time to Joburg giving us our full 5.5 hour layover. We have a handler to help us navigate the airport which yet again ends up being well worth whatever it costs. Check-in for our flight doesn’t start until 4 hours before, so we end up waiting in line for 1.5 hours. The check-in area is chaotic with the signs between e-check and business class being switched and for some reason they don’t open the actual waiting lanes before the desks open, so everyone is just forming makeshift lines to get into the eventual real line. Our handler is very helpful in fending off would be line cutters and ensuring that we get to the counter first once they finally open 3.5 hours before our schedule flight.

While waiting, we’d heard murmurings that our flight was delayed, but no details. Once we started checking in it is immediately clear we have a problem, they explain we are definitely missing our connection so that will only check us through to Doha and we’ll have to go to the transfer desk there to get rebooked for 24 hours later. This process takes quite a while including some back and forth on whether they could reserve seats on the next available flight now, so other people who are getting bumped don’t scoop them. Annoyed, our handler fortunately is able to take us through the staff security checkpoint bypassing the large normal one, through immigration, and then to the lounge.

Derek jumps on the phone with Qatar airlines trying to reserve seats on the next available flight. After providing booking code, date booking was made, names of passengers, passport numbers and expiration dates for each traveler they said “there is nothing we can do, you will need to check-in at the transfer desk in Doha”. Argh! Not long after we get 4 confirmation emails verifying we DID actually now have confirmed seats on the following day’s flight to Seattle, so somehow the result we were hoping for happened. That is a big relief and our dog sitting service confirms that they can extend a day, so phfew, this is just an inconvenience, not a crisis.

Our flight ends up being 5.5 hours delayed. Departure time was listed as midnight, so we arrived for the purported 10:30 boarding time. All the gate attendants and the pilots are standing around outside the gate, and it isn’t until about 11 pm that the flight crew has fully arrived and they start pre-boarding procedures. For some reason, business class isn’t done being cleaned, so they start boarding the rest of the plane, which is fine, we are just tired and want to lay down. When we do go board Tom is up first and the scanner blinks red “boarding declined”. WTF. Somehow the new connection booking from Doha to Seattle reset the security information on our current flight invalidating our boarding passes. We have to be put to the side, with a few other travelers in the same situation, while they take all our passports and boarding cards and huddle around a terminal for another 10 minutes or so. Eventually they get it sorted, we board, and crash into our seats. The flight eventually leaves just after 1 am.

When we get to Doha there is a person waiting for us to help with booking a hotel, transferring bags, and updating security information on our tickets. But it takes forever. We arrived at around 10 am and are on a shuttle to the hotel at 12:40 pm. First delay was just getting the hotel and passes, then they were confused that we wanted to take our checked baggage to the hotel so had to go do something else (which is still unclear what). At the baggage claim they’d long ago stopped the carousel for our flight so we had to go to both of the luggage service desks to find them. Outside, we find the Crowne Plaza representative who sits us down and tells us the shuttle will be here in 40 minutes. Woof.

Temperature in Doha is officially 101 but Weather Underground says “feels like 129” and it is definitely like a hot humid oven going outside. We shower, get food, and nap until 4:30 pm then try to get out and experience a small amount of the local culture. First stop is the Islamic Art Museum, Google says it is open, but when we arrive in an Uber there is a big sign clarifying they are closed on Wednesdays. Ok, second stop is the Qatar National Museum. It is very large and nice museum starting with history of 600 million years ago up to current times 😅. We didn’t really know anything about Qatar history, so now we feel much more informed.

The sun has gone down and it is starting to become moderately “cooler” (perhaps just 97 degrees and 100% humidity) outside so we head to the Souq Waqif which is a large market / bazaar that is supposed to be an interesting place to look around. It is quite a nice place to wander around, much cleaner than Tom expected based on other souqs he’s been to in the middle east. They even had some air-conditioning going in many of the small corridors which was just enough to take the edge off the heat and humidity. Angela picks up a few postcards and a glittery abaya and then we get rid of the last 3 Riyals on a few delicious dates at a dried fruit shop. We opt to head back to the hotel for dinner since we still have food vouchers and everyone is feeling pretty tired.

The next morning we get our 4 am wakeup call, then 5 am we are in the shuttle to the airport. Check-in has additional complexity because they still think we have 4 checked bags in storage, and so now need to get a supervisor to help figure out how to delete those and only add the actual bags that we have. They figure it out. Thank goodness for business class, all this stuff has been a hassle and time consuming but would have been at least 10x worse if we didn’t have some priority with the airline.

The final 14.5 hour flight back to Seattle goes according to plan concluding a great 2024 trip to Botswana.