I’ve put off writing this for quite a while, mostly due to lack of time. But I’m here in Cape Town and wow. But first… how I almost lost my luggage in Johannesburg. Typed this up a few days ago, here it is all TiVo’d or whatever.
Got off the plane, cleared immigration (and realized that of all the photocopies to forget, I apparently forgot to bring my letter of acceptance. Thank heavens for that tuition form that I brought.). Saw the “bag pick-up” and went passed it. Mine was, after all, going straight to Cape Town. Went through customs with nothing to declare, no problem. “Rechecked” my bag with British Air by handing them my luggage sticker. Off to the terminal, where I bought a power converter and a sandwich.
As I’m sitting (during my 3 hour layover), I started to flip through my Frommer’s Guide and started reading about the airports. “Note: though your luggage may already be checked through, you will still need to pick it up in Joburg (the local name for Johannesburg).” A lump formed in my throat – that was well over an hour ago that I left through customs. Did I need to grab my bag? Was I okay?
I raced online to check exactly that, and found nothing of any sort of information about it. Not only that, the only place the baggage was mentioned in Frommer’s was on one out of five different articles about air travel. I felt a little better, but struck up a conversation with the mother next to me at the internet bar just to make sure. She had to move luggage every time. I figured I ought to look into it, so I managed to track down the British Airways lounge to make sure. “Yes,” the woman at the desk told me, I would need to grab my bag and physically re-check it because it had gone through immigration.
CRAP. I had an hour and a half left before my flight and would have to go through security, etc. all over again. I raced. Like you would not imagine, back through security, back through a tiny backdoor escorted by a security agent across the airport back to the carrousels. Though my bag was certainly no longer on the carrousel, I went to find BA Baggage Claims. I couldn’t find the desk, though! Emirates, SA Express, Delta, BA was nowhere to be found. I asked, “where was their desk?” A man pointed to an abandoned desk and said “It would be there, were anyone manning it. There is another luggage claims desk outside of customs, here are the directions.”
I felt a little more panicky – going back through customs/security a second time seemed risky with the time I had left. I looked around for my bag among the piles, didn’t see it, and so went back out. I started towards BA’s baggage claim, which was right next to my gate on the other side of security. Handed them my luggage tag and asked where I might find the bag so that I could re-check it. He looked at my tag and told me “It’s all set, should already be on the plane.” Relief washed over me. Security the second time was a breeze, no issues there, and going through the second time around I actually knew where I was going. Big plus.
Apparently, the little stunt I pulled with American Airlines back in Boston, when I asked them to ensure that the bag was always put through automatically, actually worked – British Airways is carrying the bag all the way through, no questions asked, even after customs. Fingers crossed.
Epilogue: My bag was there waiting for me in the Cape Town Airport. To reiterate, what the American Airlines agent managed to do is apparently nearly impossible in South African customs. Thank you, unnamed agent from Boston Logan.