Flights and Kenya Day One

Ok well, the flight from Hong Kong to Jo'burg was a pretty long and boring one (13 or so hours), mum mostly slept but I don't sleep well on flights so maybe got about 2-3 hours sleep total. Because Johannesburg is 6 hours behind Hong Kong we arrived at about 6 30am, despite leaving Hong Kong at around 12am (or after). On the flight we took a few photos, firstly of the truly spectacular and beautiful sunrise we saw out the plane window. Never have I seen one quite like it, it was literally a rainbow of color, Below is a few photos of the progression of the sunrise over the couple of hours it lasted. The photos really don't do it justice and its times like these I wish we had a high quality camera.

We also few over a couple of islands and then Madagascar, which, like the movie, seems to be a mass of jungle and rivers. Finally we landed in Jo'burg and just sat at the airport waiting for our flight to Nairobi, Kenya, which was about 3 hours after we landed.  On this flight there were very few people, and most were going on holiday to the Masai Mara, a very popular safari destination. Going through customs as usual was very quick and painless and thankfully our bags were all there (mum was a little worried as we had checked them in from HK all the way to Kenya). In the terminal lobby a driver was waiting for us who then took us to the Across base. The trip was very eventful, it included roads riddled with potholes, terrible driving (by NZ standards) people walking out onto the road, cars honking, crowds of people walking alongside the road along the very red colored dirt and also a call from a Kenyan kid of "Mzungu" (meaning white person). Hearing the term Mzungu isn't actually very common in Kenya as there are a lot of white people already residing here. After a fairly long trip from the airport (around 30-40 minutes) we reached the Across base which has very beautiful surroundings and consists of some very nice buildings (we will take some photos of it in the next couple of days). Here we met Stuart and Marie Houghton who we are staying with in their lovely apricot colored house :). Both mum and I were very jet lagged so we didn't stay for long or meet much of the team (this was yesterday (the 12th of Jan)). Back at our home (for the next week) we had dinner, were shown our rooms and the shower and ate some amazingly good mangoes. I also meet Rev. Elly briefly over dinner, who is in charge of Across in Yei, but since I was almost falling asleep at the table after dinner I did not get much of a chance to discuss anything much. Anyway that covers yesterday, a bit more about today will follow shortly. We have to now pick up Stuart and Marie from the Across base, peace.