Touchdown

2 weeks in.

The biggest, busiest and sweatiest 2 weeks ever.

Starting off with the optimistic task of getting all this luggage on to the plane - it only took an hour of negotiation and a lot of paying.

The flight itself, uneventful by comparison, but I have definitely enjoyed an 8 hour free bar more when not shared with a teething 18 month old.

And I'd love to say that landing in "paradise" and setting up was the dream that everyone thought it would be, but nothing worthwhile comes easy.

Surprisingly we cleared Customs without issue. Everything fit easily in the giant and expensive car we hired. Only when we found ourselves locked in that car, within the storage compound, unable to exit either, did reality kick in.......

Apparently in our exhausted haste at the airport we had never actually received the key, so turning off the engine locked everything DOWN!

Still, if everything ran smoothly then there would be nothing to write about.

Next week was spent unpacking, settling in as best we could, and working hard to clear our container out of customs.

All finally accomplished, again thanks to a lot of cash changing hands, but also thanks to Andre and Raphael at CIF and Shelly at Venticore.

And then all of a sudden on Friday evening a massive truck turns up with our stuff, forces it's way in, and then waits patiently for 3 Customs officers and our kind neighbours to lend us an angle grinder to get in the thing.

Never has so much work been done by so few people in such a short space of time.

What had taken 3 hours to pack, took 1 1/2 hours to unpack, and a lot of sweat.

Thankfully 1 of the truckers held on to Etta most of the time, and we were able to rustle up enough drinks and snacks to keep 2 Customs officials and 1 Quarantine official entertained.

Many thanks to Carson who worked a storm in the container, and Junior who valiantly subbed in and lugged a lot of boxes around.
Without both of you we would still be at it - even with you we were up until midnight trying to put up furniture to make Apartment 1 less bare when Etta woke up.

After that highlight we spent days sourcing expensive and old second hand goods that barely work.
From a washer that when tested in a power blackout surprisingly failed to turn on (sorry Romel at R3 Appliances), to an oven that shorts the fuses since the grill is not attached, to a 20 year old jeep that is still not ours at the time of typing due to bureaucratic red tape.

One day we will get there, and we will laugh about it all - this is a record so that we don't forget how hard it has been.