We knew this day would be a long one, ... and it was. We left our apartment in Kuwait at 11h30 on Thursday night to get to the airport. Flew out of Kuwait at 2h45 am to go to Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) via Dammam (Saudi Arabia). We finally got there around 8 am (it's actually a 3 hour flight if they go direct). Our next flight was to Dar Es Salaam (capital of Tanzania), via Zanzibar. We were scheduled to takeoff at about 10h30 am but there were engine problems with the plane, so after sitting in it on the tarmac until after 11am, they decided to take everyone back to the terminal and replace a part in the engine to fix the problem. We ended up leaving at 2pm and got to Dar Es Salaam after 7 pm. So what was scheduled to be an almost 8 hour wait at the Dar airport turned out to be less than two hours. Our final flight was also late by about 30 minutes (not sure why; there was nobody else in the airport!). We left after 9h30 pm to get to Kilimanjaro airport shortly before 11 pm. Thankfully, someone from the tour company was picking us up (and they were there - our driver/guide) to drive us one hour away to Arusha. So we finally checked in our hotel past midnight, over 24 hours after leaving home. Everyone was somewhat too excited to feel tired. We all thought that all of us would, at one point during the day, get more cranky and edgy, but that was not the case. It was a long day, but also a fine day. Can't wait until tomorrow, when the safari really begins. It's so cool that we are doing this.
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| 9am in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia): it's noon somewhere! |
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| Waiting for our delayed flight in Addis Ababa |
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