kearneyjourney

Our trip to Tanzania had its antecedents already several years ago. I have been interested in this part of the world for a long time and, as a hobby paleoanthropologist, have always wanted to take a trip to the rift valley and see the area known as the “cradle of mankind”. Also, Kilimanjaro has always fascinated me; and this mountain and many key paleoanthropological sites (Olduvai, Laetoli) all lie within the expanse of northern Tanzania. Finally, I had heard from friends and colleagues that the Tanzanian people are very friendly and accommodating. So the only problem was finding a suitable time to travel there. As Christmas 2010 was approaching and we heard that our nephew, Graham, who had been planning to come over around New Year’s, had postponed his trip until summer, I immediately saw an opportunity to put together an itinerary through the Northern Circuit of Tanzania. This was in early November, with only 7-8 weeks remaining until Christmas vacation was upon us, so I had to move fast.

First, I needed to check with the family: the kids were all enthusiastic, while Gertrude needed a bit of convincing – not so much due to the destination, but that it was so short-term and would be just one more expensive vacation after our trip to the US the previous summer and our planned trip to Hawaii this summer. But I argued, successfully, that traveling to Tanzania was something I had always wanted to do and that it wouldn’t get any cheaper or more likely if we postponed it. After some research, I found flights to Kilimanjaro International Airport (JRO) on KLM, but before booking waited to see whether we could even find an organization to help us plan the itinerary, find hotels and supply a guide.

Through TripAdvisor and a very helpful Manx member of the Tanzanian forum (Mfuwe, which I understand is a city in the Eastern Province of Zambia), I was given the name of an agency called Acces2Tanzania run by a husband/wife team based in Minnesota. Brian Singer, the husband, spent a couple of years in Tanzania with the Peace Corps and met his wife there, Karen Stupic, who became my principle contact in planning the trip. She immediately came up with a plan that fully suited our needs. The total price-tag was certainly not a bargain; but I was prepared for that little shock. The rates at Access2Tanzania are somewhat elevated, but for all the right reasons. Also, I learned from Karen that Access2Tanzania invests back into local projects centered primarily on education in two west Tanzanian towns, so there is a developmental aspect to the agency’s work, as well; and that suited me fine. So by 15 of November, two weeks after the idea was born, the flights and itinerary were finalized.

Now we only needed to get ourselves ready by procuring the necessary immunizations (Yellow Fever, Typhoid Fever, Meningitis, Hepatitis A & B, Cholera, Tetanus, Diphtheria), buying anti-malarial prophylactics (Malarone) and other medication (antibiotics, Immodium, electrolyte substances, etc.) and lotions (bugsprays, sunscreen). Also, we needed the right clothing, so I decided that everybody would get safari clothes for Christmas. The children and I started learning a bit of Swahili and walked around the house saying “Jambo, habari gani, nzuri, asante”, repeating phrases we had learned from KulmanSam on Youtube. Katie also found an iPhone App that not only translated from English to Swahili, but actually pronounced the words and the phrases. I bought a guide book for Northern Tanzania and began doing some research on what we would be seeing. Now all we needed to do was wait for Christmas Day, which was our planned date of departure.

But our departure looked somewhat tenuous for a while, as severe winter weather caused chaos in Europe’s major airports: Heathrow, Frankfurt, Paris all got hit hard; and thousands of passengers were left stranded during the pre-holiday period. I checked our connections VIE-AMS-JRO every day to see if this route was impacted; but even during the worst of the chaos, these flights left punctually every day. Toward Christmas, the weather warmed up, the air-traffic snarls passed, and we prepared to leave, packing on Christmas Eve and taking some time in the evening for a compressed Christmas celebration.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 16th, 2011 at 5:12 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.