On to Tanzania!

After our gorilla trekking, we drove immediately back to Kigali and stayed in the hotel we'd stayed in before for a night so that we could then fly out to Arusha/Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, the next day. We had a fairly relaxing night and morning the next day, got on the internet a bit and wrote some postcards, and then headed to the airport early. It is a point of contention in my family about when to arrive at the airport before a flight. My dad insists on getting there at least 3 hours early, just to make sure that he gets through security ... surely it can't be because he's afraid the flight will leave early, right? ;) I always think that less time is needed, and to this date haven't yet missed a flight, so I think I've got it down pretty good. But when in Africa, one never knows what will happen. Especially when it comes to airports and planes. So we got to the airport 4 hours early, figuring that we would just eat something and spend some time reading after check-in. When we got to the airport, we were told to wait in a short line in front of the sales office for Rwandair, which is the airline that was running our flight through Precision Air. So I got in line behind a group of about 4 or 5 Rwandan men, but who were all together so I thought this can't take long. Wrong. An hour later, the little group of guys left and my patience was gone, especially because I couldn't understand at all what they were trying to do and why the woman at the counter just stared at the computer screen for an hour straight. But I finally got up there and they told me that the flight was delayed 3 hours. Great. So we got there super early only to be delayed another 3 hours and stand in line uselessly for an hour. Ok, we decided to have some lunch and doze off in the little cafe in the airport - it is a super tiny airport, so there isn't much choice of things to do. So we ate and dozed, and Ryan decided around 3:45 to go check things out again (our original flight was to leave at 4:30). So he stood in line for another 45 minutes for no apparent reason, and when he finally got to the front, the guy printed the boarding passes (at 4:38pm) and told us that the flight was to leave 8 minutes before that. Register Ryan freaking out. He tried to get the guy to hold the plane for us, which just elicited laughter from the two guys behind the counter, and he ran over to a dozing me, grabbed the bags and we ran to the counter. We went through security, and checked in at another counter (who knew there was more than one, since nobody is helpful?) and they assured us that the flight was in fact delayed and so we had 3 hours until we took off. Phew, but whoa frustration.

So finally, we got on the plane, which was quite nice and the flight was fine, and we arrived at Kilimanjaro International Airport, in Tanzania, at about 9ish at night. Unfortunately with the delay in our flight, we flew in after dark and weren't able to see Mt. Kilimanjaro from the plane. Our friends Aryan and Lauren, who came to meet us for a safari about a week after we flew in to Tanzania, saw the peak of Kili from the plane and said it was an amazing sight to see. Maybe next time I fly into Kilimanjaro International Airport I'll be able to see it? :)

We were picked up by a driver from the tour company we used for our hike up Mt. Kilimanjaro, and drove the hour it takes to get to Arusha from the airport, and checked into our hotel. It was a pretty nice room, though no hot water (quite the commodity in East Africa unless you are going the non-budget route, which we are not). So we washed our clothes in the sink, hung them to dry, and got a good night's sleep. The next morning, we met with Nelson, the owner of the tour company for our Kili hike, Focus in Africa. He described the hike to us and went over the details, and then drove us to the ATM to get some money to pay the balance of what we owe him for the hike (the deposit we had already wired over here from the U.S. - having to wire money for tours is the protocol in East Africa because almost nobody takes credit cards. So that was interesting and a huge leap of faith on our part because we didn't realize how common it is, and it seems like one of those Nigerian bank scams, right? But it worked out just fine, fyi.) Unfortunately, you can only pull so much money out of the ATM each day, and that amount is like $250, so we went to a few different banks and still didn't have enough, so we paid in a mixture of different currencies. It worked out though - money is money, right? I'm sure my bank was very alarmed at the activities, until it realized that I was in Tanzania and not just some stolen card trying to pull money out of 5 different atms in Arusha!

So we went to a new hotel for that night, Nelson checked our hiking gear that we brought for Mt. Kilimanjaro, and he rented for us the things that we didn't have: 2 sleeping bags, 2 sets of gaiters (pieces of cloth that you wear and secure over your pants and shoes to keep out thorns, mud, rain, etc.), 1 day backpack, and 2 sets of walking poles (thank goodness for those poles!). Our gear passed the test, and we got another good night's sleep and watched a movie (yay! A hotel with a tv that gets more than just TRACE, the music video channel!), and got ready for our early morning departure for our 6-day Mt. Kilimanjaro hike the next day!

One of the Twin Lakes near Musanze, which we also visited on our day between hiking and gorilla trekking: