Day 1: Travelling to Macassar Thursday 11th February 2010

We meet in the Upper School Car Park with a temperature of three degrees but unlike last year’s group with no snow lying on the ground or weather worries about the journey. We pass on the higher parts of the M4 a light verge dusting of icing sugar snow but nothing to stop our journey running on time. We are grateful for Mr Sweetman for driving us up to Heathrow.
Arriving a Terminal One having made such excellent time, we check our bags in at the South African Airlines desk. An impromptu game of “guess each checked in baggage weight” unfolds and looking at the digital scale read out we quickly find out who has left ample space for presents at home and how heavy they can be. The students’ bags are more underweight than the staff so parents can be reassured that there is no excuse for presents for all on there returns! No one has to pay any excess baggage penalty.

With surprisingly no queues we have plenty of time to go airside and wait for our flight at 8:00 pm.  We manage to a meal and do some last minute window shopping in shops which do not seem to have the lure pricewise that one would expect of “duty free” maybe that is a reflection of the competitive times on the High Street and the rise of internet shopping.

We thought we had met a South African International team resplendent in their green and gold tracksuits as we waited to board the Airbus plane but it turned out they were students from an English private school off on a cricket tour. The flight was uneventful and the service excellent. The only down side was that the central televisions seemed to be trying to tune to the Cardiff Wenvoe mast as they were constantly showing artistic lines of interference. Most of us managed to catch some broken sleep on the overnight flight but with the excitement of being in Macassar in the morning somehow got in the way! Touching down would signify the start of day two and in day one proper. The ten hour flight went quickly but not quickly enough.