This post is an update on what I’m doing and why you may see new recipes featuring unfamiliar ingredients on the blog soon. My fiancé and I decided to take a major leap and move from Portland, Oregon to Cape Town, South Africa for a while. He has long wanted to study at the University of Cape Town (UCT), and this year we decided to make it happen.
Moving to another country is a complicated process. To start our visa applications we needed to gather a stack of certified personal documents, secure a place to live in Cape Town, and book plane tickets. Because we didn’t buy return tickets, we also had to pay a hefty deposit in case immigration required us to leave the country. Signing a lease for a flat without a guarantee you’ll be living there is nerve-racking, and handing over passports and other important documents to be shipped away is stressful.
After about six weeks of paperwork, appointments, and logistics, we were ready to submit our applications. We allowed ourselves nearly two months for visa processing, which seemed generous since the consulate’s stated turnaround can be as short as 5–10 days. I sent our package with Priority Shipping and a tracking number to minimize any chance of loss.
Before things went truly sideways we had a few minor panics: our first-choice apartment fell through, we worried we’d messed up my fiancé’s financial aid (we hadn’t), some documents were slow to arrive, and wire transfers were fiddly. All solvable, but time-consuming and frustrating.
Then the truly stressful setbacks began.
Obstacle 1: The package was delivered on a Saturday and no one was there to sign for it.
When the post office attempted delivery, no one was there to sign. We learned that undelivered mail doesn’t automatically get redelivered, and our tracking info stopped updating for a while. Fortunately I was able to request redelivery online, but we lost valuable time.
In the end we confirmed the South African Consulate General had our complete applications, and then the waiting started.
Obstacle 2: I messed up the prepaid return envelope.
I discovered I’m not good at mailing sensitive items. I misunderstood how tracking numbers are assigned and didn’t secure a tracking number for our prepaid return envelope. When the consulate called to say our visas were approved and asked for shipping payment, we explained we’d included a prepaid return envelope. They used it, but without a tracking number we had no way to follow the package’s progress.
Obstacle 3: Our visas should have arrived already.
Five days later, the passports with stamped visas still hadn’t arrived, though they should have taken only a few days. The consulate confirmed they had sent them on schedule. I realized I might have underpaid postage if the envelope held more than just passports, which could delay delivery. At that point we were days from moving out of our apartment and the prepaid package’s address would soon change, further complicating matters.
Obstacle 4: It’s Thursday, we leave Monday, and our visas still aren’t here.
We had waited more than two weeks for a package that should have taken 2–3 days. Calls to multiple post offices and the consulate turned up no answers. With only one business day left to resolve anything, I learned the consulate could issue new visas the next day—but only if we brought new passports for stamping. This would mean rushing to get replacement passports in time.
We scrambled to book an afternoon flight to Los Angeles, find a hotel, and prepare for the worst.
Obstacle 5: Our visas arrived while we were flying to Los Angeles to reapply.
As we suspected they might, the passports arrived the day we were en route to LA. There weren’t any affordable same-day flights after the mail arrived, so we continued with our plan. We spent a night in a cheap hotel and used our last full day in the U.S. at LAX, waiting and dealing with last-minute travel stress.
Obstacle 6: Our flight from New York to Johannesburg was canceled.
We finally left Portland, had a farewell dinner with family, and boarded an overnight flight to New York. After a five-hour layover and a long delay while engineers sourced a replacement part, the airline canceled the flight. The carrier put us up in a hotel, provided transportation, and gave a few vouchers, though the food was disappointing.
A bright spot while we waited: we ran into famous South African golfer Gary Player in the hotel lobby. He was gracious, chatted with us, and let us take a photo before a brief crowd formed.
Obstacle 7: We missed our connecting flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town.
When the airline rescheduled connections we were given only about an hour and twenty minutes to clear customs, reclaim and recheck bags, and go through security. We reached the recheck counter in time but the rebooking and boarding pass issuance took far too long. With only about ten minutes left to reach the gate, we discovered a printing error: my fiancé had two copies of my boarding pass, so we couldn’t pass security without corrected passes and had to return to the airline desk. By then the gate had closed and our checked bags were already on the earlier flight.
The airline rebooked us on the next flight and assisted with our baggage; the bags arrived on different flights but ultimately we retrieved them all.
Now we’ve moved into our apartment and are settling in. I wrote parts of this post in Evernote while waiting for our WiFi to be installed; we finally have a connection. It’s slow and unreliable but it’s working. My next posts will cover our Cape Town adventures, and soon I’ll share some new recipes inspired by local ingredients.
