Johannesburg

Never had a faster or more seamless transit. Doha has no aerobridges at all. Every plane parks on the tarmac, and a huge fleet of transport streams past, picking everybody up and taking them on to where they need to go next. First and Business Class passengers get transferred by limo, but in economy we had to settle for the bus. Everybody's boarding pass is colour coded for the right bus, and I haven't seen so many busescoming and going since Disney World.

In comparison to India, which usually had 4 separate full security checks and pat downs, presumably as they couldn't trust just 1 to do it properly, Doha had none (nill, nada) for transit passengers. How sensible! We got off a secure plane, onto a secure bus, and straight into a transit lounge to get on another secure plane. Unless there was an explosives and knife shop that I missed on the concourse, where could I get anything that would require a scan anyway?

Going straight from plane to bus to bus to plane took about 35 minutes, and we were ready for our next leg to South Africa. Identical plane, even with pancakes for breakfast again. Impressive!

It was interesting to watch the land as we flew on towards Johannesburg. Urban cities in the desert gave way to sand dunes in the desert, then Africa turned greener as we flew south - lakes and green swathes appeared, before giving way to the urban cities of South Africa.

Eventually picked up by the hotel bus, and had time to freshen up before the 6pm team meeting at the hotel. The hotel itself is in a gated suburb - feels really weird as you enter.

It turns out that there are 12 on our tour - 5 Aussies, 2 Brazilians, 3 Germans and a couple of stragglers. Seems that we will be up early most days to move long distances. Tomorrow is 400km, so we bought some supplies at the supermarket just outside the gate, had some tea at the restaurant, and turned in to see if we could make up for the 23 hours on the plane.