Arrival

It's an 8 hours and 15 minute overnight flight from MSP to Amsterdam. We stumbled off the flight, ran into our friend Gar, and spent a 4 hour layover wandering around the airport (which, after our trip last year felt like home). It's almost 9 hours from Schipol to Kilimanjaro International Airport. We were toast, but somehow walking down the stairs into the tropical night, watching people run through to the visa cashier (and feeling glad we had done ours in advance). It felt very much like arriving in any SE Asian country late at night, backpack on, and for a second I thought "I've got this."

But then I realized I was at a different point of my life, in an entirely different continent, and started to also realize the differences, a set of comparisons that would stay with me the entire trip.

Our driver found us and we took off into the night on the hour drive to Arusha. On the way we passed numerous small Maasai villages along the road, lights on, people gathering in outdoor bars, markets still open even at 11pm. "Maybe we can wander into the nearest village for a drink sometime this trip" I naively thought.

Off the main road, down a bumpy dirt road, to a huge, secured gate. Pulled up to a beautiful hotel surrounded by tropical trees and coffee plants. Almost cried with the warm welcome of the staff member patiently waiting for us, showing us to our rooms, where they had kindly given us 2 rooms next to each other to make more space for everyone and allow us to sleep (this was great until Beatrix encountered a moth the size of a bat in her room at 4am...)

We had planned to eat leftover Milka chocolate from the duty free and crash — but no, they had kept the kitchen open for us. So we sat down to a delicious, 3-course meal and a couple of beers (Kilimanjaro for me, Safari for Patrick, and mango juice for Beatrix) in a beautiful, open air dining space. As we ate, the rain started, and our host told us "Here in Africa, we have a saying that, if guests bring rain, they bring blessings."

I have never felt so welcomed in my life.

Woke up the next morning to a lovely breakfast, drank delicious Tanzania peaberry coffee, walked around the grounds, and simply got used to being in a beautiful other country before off on the next adventure, the flight to Zanzibar!