May 3, 2025
We woke up at 6am for our last breakfast at the Joburg airport hotel. We stuck with the continental breakfast and let kids fill their plates themselves. Ollie is still loving pickles and pickled onions with his breakfast pastries. Len is still in a yogurt flow with a plate full of crackers.
The porters are pretty aggressive at O.R. Tambo airport. Though each of us can easily push our carry-on bags and backpacks, the porters almost forcefully grab them from you in an effort to “help”. On learning we were from the US, one porter showed us his $2 bill in his phone case and made multiple suggestions that we tip him in USD and not Rand. Then, on learning that we had an Oliver in our crew, they jogged to take us to a statue of Oliver Tambo for whom the airport is named. Len then introduced himself as “Rambo” in an effort to not be upstaged by his brother.
On getting to the airport gate and being allowed to watch their iPads, Ollie goes, “Wow, see Lenny it was pretty easy to listen and now we get to do what we want on our iPads.”
It was a uneventful 4 hour flight from Joburg to Mauritius, thankfully. Then, we had a twisty 1 hour drive to the resort. Len pretended to fall asleep and then actually fell asleep for the majority of the drive. In his sleepy state, he broke the glass that his welcome sugarcane lemon drink came in. We learned the kids club is open 8:30am to 11pm! We’ve been talking up the kids club big time to the boys and are hopeful they can play with some kids close to their age there.
We played more Uno at dinner. Len displayed some front runner behavior trying to leave Kyle’s team to join Ollie’s after Oliver won the first game. Ollie rejected the teammate, though, as he wants to set a solo record for most wins in a row. There are vague memories of Kyle having won 6 in a row at Mohndoro (to be confirmed).
Pizza was on the menu at the Beach Club restaurant and the boys were thrilled. Each handily finished their personal Margherita pizza. While eating, we discussed which foods they missed the most— “American nachos” (nachos in Zim had pasta sauce and mozzarella), pasta stars with pesto and beans, tacos with limey slaw, and noodle soup all made the list. I told them we would try to fit these in when in London as we have an Airbnb with a kitchen. It’ll be nice to have a familiar food boost before heading to Morocco.
At dinner we asked the kids what their favorite part of Zimbabwe was. Ollie goes, “you know it wasn’t the waterfall. I hated being wet!” Then, he must have had getting wet on the mind and he says, “Remember in Montauk when we had the water gun battle with all the grandparents?” So he likes being wet but only on his terms. Both he and Len then made it clear that the zipline was far and away their favorite part of Zim.
There were 4 “porch lizards” and a big snail by our room so we took it as a good omen for critter sightings to come. Its super hot and humid in Mauritius and it was the first time that the boys complained their hair was making them hot— lots of ponytails/buns coming up this week.
