Last Thursday, we flew to Cape Town (yaaaaayyy!)… at 5:55 in the morning (eeek!). It may not sound all that bad for those of you living close to an airport. We, however, live 160 kilometers from this airport. ?

Also, none of us are early risers. Here’s why:

1. Shawn works a whole 6 minutes away from home. Even if he wakes up at 7:15am, he’ll still get to the office on time.

2. Zee gave up her daytime nap at the age of 3 and a half. Seeing as the only time she actually sleeps is at night, I always let her sleep in, in the mornings. Rest is good for her little body and mind, and that’s how I make sure she gets enough of it.

3. Most nights we get to bed pretty late.

4. I just don’t like waking up early. ?

Wednesday night

Back to last week… On Wednesday night Shawn and I were so worried we may not hear our alarms in the morning, and would miss our flight, that we barely slept! Seriously – I got in an hour, and he power napped for 30 minutes! ?

He even got fully dressed for the next day, after his shower on Wednesday night. I had dressed Zee after bath time too, so she’d be ready to go in the morning. I couldn’t do the same, as it would’ve meant wearing a bra longer than I absolutely needed to, and that’s just not how I do.

Thursday morning

So there we were, at 3:00am, packing our bags into the car, and getting ready to leave. Being up that early is bad enough, being up that early in the middle of Winter is just painful. We let Zee sleep, and she eventually woke up on her own anyway. She’s never been up that early; poor kid looked so confused. As soon as she realized what day it was though, the excitement set in. “Mommy, daddy, we’re going to Cape Town!” 🙂

By 3:55am, we were all in the car. Of course, this was the day our gate motor decided to act up. The gate opened halfway, stopped, and made a loud noise. This had happened before, but those times we weren’t rushing to board an airplane! Fortunately, it worked again after Shawn’s first attempt at fixing it, and we could get on the road. It’s now 4:05am. Oh, did I mention that as we were about to leave the house, I’d started to feel nauseous? The gate delay only seemed to make it worse. Awesome.

We’d never used Lanseria International before, so I checked the distance on Google Maps… the arrival time worried me – 5:40am… exactly the same time boarding was scheduled to close. Oh. My. Goodness. The only positive thing I could think of was that I’d at least checked in online the day before. As Shawn drove, I kept watching that arrival time… 5:36… 5:41…5:27… 5:40… Nausea… crazy, crazy, stress induced nausea.

Thanks to my husband’s brilliant driving (high 5 babe), we were finally there, and parked safely in long term parking… at 5:25am (fuel stop included… oh ja, I knew I forgot something – on our already rushed and eventful trip, we almost ran out of fuel too).

A golf cart left with two other people just as we were getting out of the car, which meant we grabbed our bags and started running! The golf cart was on its way back as we ran, so we jumped on and headed to departures. I don’t think we’d ever gone through security and boarded so fast before!

Nausea update: it literally disappeared as soon as we stepped on that plane! Poor Shawn knocked out as soon as he was in his seat – exhaustion and stress will do that to you. I dozed off a few times, but my head kept flopping forward, and I woke up each time with a very sore neck.

As for Zee, our little person didn’t sleep at all! Once we were seated, she told me that she was super excited as it had been “sooo long” (2 years) since our last flight. She was determined to experience it all, so she was wide awake the entire flight. She adored the bright city lights when the plane took off, loved seeing we were in the fluffy clouds once it got brighter, and she was thrilled when we were above Cape Town and she could see the ocean.

So, all in all things worked out okay that morning. And having a proper long first day in our fave SA city was definitely a bonus. Still, I’m not sure I’d book a flight like that again… I mean we’re not morning people, we should embrace that. It was a brilliant, full day in Cape Town though, so maybe we will do a 6am flight again. But probably not. ?

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