Everyone in my family knows I will do anything for a free airline ticket — especially for a business class ticket. Well, I may have met my match.

Kelly and I arrived yesterday in South Africa using my United Airlines points to score two free business class tickets. It took me an entire weekend to find the tickets and the connections were — well, not the greatest. But, I figured what the heck.

I left Gainesville for what was supposed to be a 7 am flight to Atlanta, which turned into an 8:30 flight after I got up at 5:30 am. Ok, no worries. I arrived in Atlanta, made it to the gate and met Kelly there. We boarded our flight for Newark with no problems and arrived there, flagged down a black Suburban, which took us to JFK airport. I had researched prices and figured anything under $150 was a good deal. We were good to go there.

Our next leg was from JFK to Cairo. We settled into our business class seats and had a fairly decent dinner and then stretched out in our almost-flat seats for a night’s rest. We arrived in Cairo, deplaned and found our guide who would spend the day with us touring two Egyptian museums. (My free tickets included a luxurious 12-hour layover in Cairo.)

After a day of touring, we arrived at the Cairo airport only to find that our flight was delayed two hours, until 1:15 am. OK, no worries, we figured. We got on the plane finally and passed up dinner in favor of sleep. We settled in for the night and awoke an hour before landing — or so we thought.

The flight steward then announced that the Johannesburg airport had bad visibility and we were going to divert to Durban. Ok, that shouldn’t be too bad?

After sitting in the plane at Durban for three hours, we were finally informed we were flying to Jo-berg. A mere 50 hours after leaving Gainesville, we finally arrived.

Was it worth it? I’m still trying to decide. Stay tuned for more about South Africa, which so far looks spectacular!