My kids and I flew from Austin to Maryland on Friday, June 23rd, and spent a day getting them settled in with their grandparents as I finished collecting a few last-minute essentials for the adventure. My brother and I had a few last-minute conversations about gear (“How many rolls of TP should we bring? Do I have room for this LED lantern?“) and got excited as the hours ticked away.
The evening of Sunday, June 25th, our transatlantic flight to Amsterdam was set to depart from Dulles Airport (IAD) near Washington D.C. We were delighted to discover that Dulles was nearly empty, managing to clear check-in and security in under 30 minutes. Since we’d arrived at the airport almost three hours early, we had plenty of time to grab a coffee at Peet’s, chat, and look at our ride:
We boarded our Airbus A330 around 5pm. We’d paid for an upgrade to “Comfort Plus” seats, so we were in the front row of the economy section with a few feet of legroom between us and the bulkhead.
Shortly before takeoff, we got the good news that favorable winds would shorten our flight time by almost an hour, but moments later the pilot came on to announce that we’d have to wait on the runway because all takeoffs were paused due to problems with communication between air traffic control and planes. He mentioned that the plan was to send one plane up to check communications and if that went well, the airport would reopen.
Not long after that, he announced that we were first in line for takeoff and I wondered “Wait, are we the guinea pigs?” An hour and nine minutes after leaving the gate, we took off uneventfully at 6:40pm and were finally on our way.
While I’d planned to watch a bunch of movies and TV on the flight, I instead mostly ended up reading Longitude, a book about the race to find a reliable means for sailors to determine their longitude while crossing the ocean throughout the 15th and 16th centuries. I periodically looked up from my book to the GPS-powered flight display showing our progress over the sea, a feat made possible by hundreds of years of scientific ingenuity.
As an international flight, we got a pretty nice dinner:
Thanks to six hours of timezone difference, our delayed 8 hour 9 minute flight arrived in Amsterdam at 7:40am on Monday morning. After a layover of a few hours, we switched over to a 787 for the 8 hour 42 minute flight to Kilimanjaro Airport (JRO), taking off at 10:38am.
Our seats weren’t quite as nice on this second flight, but by this time I was a bit of a zombie. I finished reading my book and zoned out in a half-awake state.
Our flight path seemed strangely indirect, until we noticed that the plane was carefully avoiding flying over Sudan, whose airspace had been closed since a coup in April.
Unfortunately, our arrival was 90 minutes after sundown, so we didn’t get even a tantalizing glimpse of Kilimanjaro, beyond what we saw on the map screen:
After having boarded the A330 around 5pm Sunday night Virginia time, we finally disembarked from our 787 around 20:15 Kilimanjaro time.
It took almost an hour to clear immigration, collect our duffel bags (which had arrived, thankfully!), and wait for a shuttle bus to the hotel. While we waited, I was amused to listen in on a large group of teenagers who’d all arrived for a trip together, sans parents, as a part of some sort of adventuring group.
A bumpy ten minute ride on the packed shuttle from the airport brought us to our hotel (Planet Lodge), ending the first major part of our journey.
Shortly after checking in, we were shown to our room which took up half of a duplex on the enclosed grounds. While there for a practical reason, as a westerner, the mosquito nets would’ve lent the room a romantic feel were it not my brother in the next bed. :)
I felt both super-sleepy and somewhat energized, but after unpacking a little, scribbling a bit in my journal and brushing my teeth (remembering to use bottled water!), we hit the beds and tried to get some shut-eye in a time zone seven hours from US EDT.
My journal entry concludes: For now, sleep. Tomorrow… adventure!
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