kearneyjourney

On Christmas Day, we got up at 04:00 to catch the taxi at 04:45. Nobody was too happy about having to get up at such an ungodly hour; and the entire family of travelers looked appropriately grim upon our arrival at Vienna International airport. We dropped off our bags and were happy that we had printed out our boarding passes the previous day, as there was a long line of Japanese at the self check-in machines. We sat down at the Ikarus bar for a light breakfast and were subjected to a session of Christmas music from hell. Katie said at one point: “Somebody shoot me!” which seemed, at the time, the most expedient way to escape the noxious sounds.

The plane left promptly at 06:55 and arrived thirty minutes early in Amsterdam. I was happy to be rid of the passenger sitting next to me, a broad-bodied woman who had no appreciation or respect for my space and repeatedly opened her arms across the common armrest to read her mindless tabloid. I once dropped my tray table to give her plastic proof that she was beyond her bounds; and the whack on her hands caused her to beat a hasty retreat.

We again stopped at an airport restaurant for a light meal and something to drink. I gave Kiffin a Merry Christmas wake-up call to pronounce that I was in Amsterdam. Passport control and security control were both very busy; but we had plenty of time and were not stressed. Flying via Amsterdam proved to be an excellent option, as both Vienna and Amsterdam had been experiencing little disruption through the winter storms wreaking havoc across Europe. We felt fortunate to have slipped past the worst nodes of air traffic disaster (London, Paris, Frankfurt) and to have fled the European continent to sunnier climes. We boarded the flight punctually and took off toward Kilimanjaro International Airport. On route to Tanzania, we watched the sun set at around 18:45 local time as we crossed an area in Sudan; and at that point, we were still 2 ½ hours out of Kilimanjaro Airport, so no daylight upon arrival.

As an experienced traveler, I could see that the visa process might be a huge time-sink, judging from all the people on the plane and the need for most of them to purchase a visa directly at the border. As chance would have it, we were up toward the front of the plane, which gave us a favorable position when the plane landed and all the passengers emptied into the arrivals hall. I managed to get the entire family to the head of the line and then watched the Airbus full of passengers stack up behind us. The process then took on a strange twist, as the gentleman coordinating the visa logistics looked at me and asked: “Are these your family members?”, to which I answered “yes”. “OK,” he said, “they don’t need to wait here. You take care of everything for them”; and he proceeded to wave them through a side passage with no passport control, while a young lady deftly snatched three hundred dollars out of my hand ($100 for US citizens, $50 for EU citizens), took the passports, stamped a visa onto a page of each passport and handed them back. The chief logistics honcho then waved me through the same empty side passage; and I found myself officially in Tanzania, while nobody had really checked to see whether the people traveling with me were indeed my family or had legitimate documents.

The bags came relatively soon; and as we prepared to leave the airport, I could still see the monster visa line backed all the way to the airfield door. It looked ugly, and I was glad to be through that mess. When we exited the airport, Ray was there holding a sign up for us and was so happy that his wait had been an abbreviated one. I think he immediately grew fond of us for our resourcefulness and our success in beating the crowds through the airport. On the way to the Arumeru River Lodge (our first accommodation), he said: “I thought I would be waiting there at least an hour, and then there you were. Thanks a lot for that.”

The car was a safari-customized Land Cruiser with plenty of luggage space, eight seats and a roof that could be raised for more efficient game-viewing. Upon arrival at the Arumeru River Lodge just east of Arusha, we entered into a high-ceilinged structure made of dark wood and bamboo and were greeted by the owners/managers, a German couple that had bought the lodge roughly six months previously. After a welcome drink, we said good-bye to Ray and were taken to our quarters. The two rooms were unfortunately rather far apart; but that didn’t bother us immediately. The weather was warm (around 28C or 80F) and pleasant, such a terrific change from the European winter, and all around us was a symphony of sounds, of insects buzzing and chirping and other wildlife (frogs, bats, birds) projecting their voices into the night. We also spotted tiny antelope on the grounds which turned out to be the dikdik species; and the shadowy forms of guinea fowl darted across the grass. These birds had been introduced onto the grounds to keep invading snakes in check and ensure that there were no poisonous species near the lodge. Initially, we were a bit paranoid and immediately took cover from the mosquitoes, which were there, but were not too bothersome. The beds had mosquito netting around them and screens on the windows, so we should not have been too worried. Still, we all put the insect-repellant on our clothes and skin and went off to dinner.

Dinner turned out to be a buffet affair; and again, in our paranoia, we were careful to avoid anything that looked uncooked. It was at this point, while dishing up the soup, that our first minor travel calamity occurred: Katie spilled the soup on her hand and suffered what I presume was a third-degree burn. She was in pain the rest of the evening and most of the night, which meant all of us got very little sleep. And this was the point at which the distance between the two rooms proved a real annoyance: Katie decided to sleep in our room, while I transferred over to room where the boys were sleeping. At one point, the pain was so severe that I sought help at the reception; but there was nobody there, and nobody answered the phone when I tried to call for help. I would only later discover that we had a gel for burns in our small medical kit; and this probably would have done the trick. Still, I was left wondering about what we would have done if there had been a true medical emergency. As it was, the burn was uncomfortable, but certainly not life-threatening. I related this incident to the owners the next day; and they took my feedback to heart and have committed to including an emergency medical number in their hotel information in the future.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 16th, 2011 at 5:02 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.