Final Chapter

Sunday morning starts with us bidding farewell to House on the Hill. One of the nicest hostels I have stayed at this place was great to us...a haven amidst all the chaos that is Cape Town. We did some last minute shopping and grabbed lunch at the V of A waterfront. A quick stop to check out the colored houses in the Bo-Kaap neighborhood then gassed up the VW for the long drive back to Johannesburg. We stopped once in the middle of the country to look at the incredible stars. We all agreed that it was the best view we have ever seen. You could see the whole Milky Way spread out across the sky like a crescent moon made of stars. We made it about 800 kilometers (497 miles in 7.5 hrs = 66 mph avg not bad) before we hit the wall and couldnt drive any more. We stopped in the tiny town of Colesburg and got a room at the Colesburg Lodge. Our super friendly clerk Ullrich took great care of us, made sure we got a meal in the restaurant and we crashed hard. Woke up and 7 and got on the road as soon as possible. Made the remaining 700k in 6.5 hours ( 67 mph avg). We met up with Dawid and Ash at their mall, grabbed some fast lunch, said our goodbyes, then had some stressful 30 minutes of navigating to Dawid house to grab our gear bags. We snagged our bags and sped to the airport with barely 90 minutes until our flights left. We all checked in just in time and the 3 musketeers broke up as Adam had a flight to Atlanta and Vinnie and I had a 19 hour flight to JFK. Vinnie and I shared a luxurious whole row for the first 8 hours before our layover in Dakar, Senegal. After the layover the flight got really bad. We had a bunch more people get on the flight, so we were moved out of our row, and promptly bracketed by crying, sick babies. After the 15+ hours of driving and the already 8 hours of flying this was a hectic ride for sure. We toughed it out only to find that when we got to JFK Vinnie had missed his connecting flight to LA, and my connection went to Dulles an airport some 45 miles from my house (that hurts when there is an airport 5 miles from my house).Saying good bye to Vinnie I flew my final leg, then took a bus to the Metro. Total travel time for me since leaving Jo'burg 27 hrs. Vinnies time was somewhere in the neighborhood of 30+hours. Total miles flown somewhere around 14,000. Total Miles Driven close to 2,000. Overall it was a fantastic trip. South Africa is a beautiful country and the people are very friendly. The food is top notch and the wine is great too. The paintball part wasnt great for us but all the credit has to be given to the teams in SA. They have been practicing and working on their game and the results show. Hopefully we will get another chance to come back and prove ourselves again.