Earlier this year, when we sold our home and set off on a road trip around South Africa, I made sure to set aside some of the money, so that our annual family trip in November would be something special. I have mentioned before that Anton and I had a 2 night honeymoon in Stellenbosch after our wedding 15 years ago, so I wanted us to celebrate in style.
Our annual family trip takes the place of our children’s birthday parties, since they fall 3 days apart and our anniversary follows 3 days after that. So, for the last 5 years or so, we have invested the money into a weekend away instead, because the kids have way too much toys already and it doesn’t make sense to invite opportunities for more.
As I mentioned in this post, I had done some research and found that the 4 sleeper, family cabins are sold our super fast so, I made sure to make our booking in April. Honestly it started to feel like this day would never come.
A photo posted by Tami, Anton and the Zs (@tazzdiscovers) on
I bought our plane tickets to Durban in June, and then started chasing the unabridged birth certificates that we had applied for, while we were on the road. Nothing about the South African Home Affairs office ever runs smoothly, so it came as no surprise when we received a single notification to collect one out of the two birth certificates we applied for. When we followed up on our son’s birth certificate, we were told that the 2004 births hadn’t been added to the system yet, so we would have to make do with an official letter.
We used a similar letter when we crossed the border into Lesotho so we know that it works, in theory, but every time it needs to be scrutinized, you wonder if this is the moment where it won’t be accepted. In order to manage my stress, I am taking it one step at a time.
At this moment, I am writing this post on board our Mango airlines flight from Cape Town to Durban after our paperwork passed scrutiny, when we checked in our bags. The lady at the check in desk had to get approval from her supervisor, which seemed to take an endless amount of time. Because stress!!
Once that was done, we had to present the birth certificates again in order to board the plane. One down, one more to go before we board the MSC Sinfonia. I really hope we don’t have any issues tomorrow. I don’t think my heart can take it. I’m hoping that once we are on board, I can stop worrying and only start again when we reverse the process to get back home to Cape Town. At least them, I won’t worry that our money has been wasted, because the trip will basically be over.
In our next post, I hope to answer the questions you sent through about what you need to know about the cabin as well as everything else I wanted to know before I booked the cruise but couldn’t find the answers to.
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