deefer

We landed in Johannesburg at 4am. There was no form to fill out for customs. There were 3 lines - South African passports - visitors needing a visa & visitors not requiring a visa. You just get in the appropriate one and go to the customs agent. Ours did not ask any questions - just stamped our passports and we were on our way. We did not get African rand in the US. Our plan is to use the credit card whenever we can & use cash from ATM's for tipping etc. We will be flying out this morning to our 1st safari camp so hit the ATM at the airport. It would not allow me to take out more than 8000 rand. There was a 50 rand service charge ( $2.92 usd according to google today). The ATM screen gave me the option to use their bank for the currency conversion. The conversion rate would have been $494 usd - my gut said chase bank would give me a better rate so I declined - just checked my account - was only charged $471 usd. We will be flying to our Safari camps with Federal Air. We will be meeting up with them shortly. If you chose to to fly to camps be aware that there are luggage restrictions for these flights. We will be meeting the Federal Air representative who will take us to their lounge - we were told the airline would store our other luggage. We shall see .... updates to follow.

We are sitting in the airport waiting for our flight to South Africa and what a better way to kill time than to start posting on cruise critic! We will be on the NCL Jade on Jan 14th - if KentheCruiser would have stayed on for another B2B this would have been his itinerary (although he would have sailed on Jan 2). Really enjoyed his review! We are doing a 4 night/5 day safari in Kruger Park prior to the cruise so are flying into Johannesburg. Then have 4 nights in Cape Town with various tours booked - details will follow! Lets start with the cost of this cruise. There was a significant price drop after final payment. We would have saved about $2000 if we had waited until after final payment. I did phone to see if we could get some OBC, was not successful. We are 9 days out and it still shows cabins available if you want to come! The next time we visit a unique (to us) part of the world, I may just wait until after final payment. If the cruise is sells out (or doesn't have the cabin we want) we would just do a "land vacation" for those days. I would miss the unpacking once and waking up in a different place every day that a cruise gives 🙂 Will post again once in Johannesburg....

We were on the Sun to Alaska this Summer. There is no thermal spa on the Sun. We sure did miss it.

But you can make your espresso an americano by adding hot water - ask your butler to show you how to do that too!

We are currently on the Sun! Our roll call had 2 people ….I responded to the initial post and then crickets! I think the reason the Suns roll calls are particularly quiet is that it’s a small ship to begin with (less people) and then not sailing at full capacity. We were told our sailing has only 1100 passengers.