On The Road Again!
Well folks, I’m on the road again! This time it’s . . .
I arrived a few hours ago and while I can say Tanzania is a huge step up from Liberia, the last two days have not been easy.
I woke up early yesterday to finish up some stuff at work since my vehicle didn’t pick me up until 2:00 to take me to the airport. When I got into work, the server was down. I couldn’t do one of the two things I wanted to so I just passed it off to Finley (which he’ll find out on Monday). Luckily, I had electronic copies of the documents I wanted to work on loaded onto my work computer (not just the server site) and worked on them instead. Since I didn’t have e-mail access, I fortunately had a jump drive I was permitted to use to transfer the docs (I have a “pre-cleared” one I brought in . . . love the bureaucracy!). At least I got everything done that I wanted to get done and left Liberia with a clean conscience!
Well, this flight had several firsts. My first Kenya Airways flight. Seemed decent enough until I realized my seat back would not recline. One and a half hours to Accra, Ghana, then five and a half more to Nairobi, Kenya? Well, that wasn’t the worst of it. As we approached Accra, the weather got pretty bad, we started descending, then suddenly started rising again. The pilot came on and said that a plane “broke down” on the runway due to the storms and we were being rerouted. Well, unfortunately the “break down” was overshooting the runway and landing on a bus killing several people - but we didn’t know that at the time. So I got to visit Cotonou, Benin. That is of course if you consider sitting in the plan on the tarmac of the airport “visiting.”
So after hanging out in Cotonou for an hour, we flew back to Accra, now two hours late. Refueled and added passengers at Accra, was promised that the “flight isn’t full so you can move to a seat that is open once we take off” and promptly found out that the flight was so nearly full that the two available seats didn’t recline either (though to give the airlines credit, one of them was not supposed to due to a fire extinguisher being in the way). Long story short - I got one hour of sleep last night.
And, of course, we arrived in Nairobi two hours late. Just enough time for us to walk from one gate to another gate and then immediately onto a new plane bound for Dar Es Salaam. Ken (a colleague taking the same course as I am) asked one of the flight team to check and see if our bags made the transfer from our inbound flight. A few minutes later she asked us for our bag receipts and disappeared. Fifteen minutes after that she handed us our bag receipts and said they’re onboard! An hour and a half later we were in Dar Es Salaam.
It took me about half an hour to get my visas (see above) and when I walked out to the baggage carousel, Ken (who walked through with a diplomatic passport) was at a side table talking to a woman. No, our bags did not make the transfer (so why were we told that they had?) and we had to make arrangements for them to ID our bags and to know where to send them.
Catching our ride to the hotel was no problem - the guy who was supposed to pick us up had a sign with our names on it. Things were looking up! He gave us a short tour as he took us to the hotel, which was nice. Although not as modern as the US or Europe, Tanzania is worlds ahead of Liberia - they actually have traffic lights, traffic signs everyone obeys, not nearly as many motorcycles, and motorcycle drivers wear helmets (though most passengers didn’t)! As we were checking in they apologized because their online system was having problems, but it only took us a couple of more minutes to check in, and they told us that they’d move us to ocean view rooms at no extra cost after the first night. Most excellent!
At that point, all I wanted was coffee (they had an espresso machine right next to the lobby) which I got, then went up to my room to take a shower. The room is very modern and has everything I need (to include the African sports channel that plays 24 hour soccer! The European Cup begins next weekend . . .). I hopped into the shower and oh that felt good after that flight. However, just to remind me that yes, I’m still in Africa, the power shut off and with it the hot water. I was halfway done drying (in the dark) before power came back on.
Ken and I had lunch and walked around a bit to check out the neighborhood, in particular the shopping opportunities.
It should be a very interesting next couple of weeks. Here’s a quick shot of the Indian Ocean from a patio at the hotel.
