27.5

Twenty seven hours, thirty four minutes and eighteen seconds, that is how long it took from my parent’s front door to our “hotel” in Arusha, Tanzania. I would have written it out like this, 27:34.18, but I thought it had a better impact in words. We flew out of Chicago to Amsterdam, from there we had a three hour layover before heading on our flight to Kilimanjaro, both flights were similar in length, just over eight hours. I woke at 5:30 am, September 28th, the day of our flight, I’m a notoriously nervous traveler, Betsy is so good to put up with me, I suppose she has to since I’ll be “camping” with her for the next ten months. Saying “goodbye” to my parents in O’hare, which is always a hard thing to do, putting on socks (thank you Mom, Dad and Betsy) in the security line, and hurrying up to wait for the plane to board, were the first items in a long list to be accomplished. Flying to Amsterdam was surprisingly easy, it didn’t hurt that we had exit row seats, although the poor guy next to us had our laptop drop squarely on his head, not once but twice during the flight; I’m surprised he didn’t give the two of us a black eye to match his skull fracture. We made friends with one of the flight attendants; he was really nice and gave us special treatment (extra bags of almonds, first class tea, and extra attention), who would have thought being nice to someone might make them do a little extra for you? We flew KLM, as far as I can tell they outclass all of the American carriers, although their faux Italian food is terrible! We were, however, able to nab four bottles of red wine which were saved as a celebratory drink on our arrival. The flight over to Amsterdam was uneventful, it was night time as we flew east and couldn’t see anything, not that the Atlantic Ocean is that spectacular. We spent a few restless hours in the Schiphol Airport then boarded our plane to Tanzania. We went over the Alps, somewhere between Switzerland and Austria, then over the Adriatic Sea. We saw a few pieces of southern Italy and then as we flew over the Mediterranean Betsy told me to look out the window; we were coming up to the coast of northern Africa. The stark contrast between brilliant blue and khaki sand was a sight I have never before seen, it was really cool. Right around this point we were served dinner, which had a Pu topped dessert. (see picture above) We were able to view the Nile and parts of the Sahara Desert; it was quite an amazing and spectacular flight. Mid-way through the flight I noticed Betsy fast asleep; unfortunately I am unable to sleep on planes, I tried but to no avail. We landed and made a mad dash to the customs department to fill out visa forms and beat the Europeans so we could get out of the airport, it was sort of like a race to a “baggage-finish-line”. Luckily, we won and all of our baggage arrived in one piece and we were off to Arusha 45 minutes away. We went to our hotel, which is literally a hole in the side of a wall; Betsy disappeared for a tenuous five minutes as five Tanzanians stared at me awkwardly. She re-emerged signaling that we had a hotel to stay in and that was it, we made it, and had a few bottles of wine to toast a very long and tiring trip. I’m glad to finally be here, but I am a LONG way from home!
-Ryan
ps- I will post pictures later, I forgot to bring the memory card...