Life at 35,000 ft

The look on her face was priceless. We had just gotten on the flight from Amsterdam to Kilimanjaro and the pilot came on the speaker system with expected flight plan details. He said we would have a flying time of approx 8 hrs. Marisa's mouth dropped! What?!! 8 hrs? She knew the second leg of the flight would be reasonably long, but another 8 hours! Wow, really is Kilimanjaro is long ways away! And, to be served 2-3 meals on each flight, puts it all in perspective. We 'need' to do this climb just to get some exercise!

The plane has in-flight movies on demand, so between short naps, reading, playing Tetris, and catching up on our movie-viewing (whatever possessed Meryl Streep and Colin Firth to do the Mama Mia musical, I'll never know! Mr Darcy singing and dancing to disco tunes seems a bit odd!) the time is actually going by quickly. As I type, we have only 3.5 hrs left to go and Mark has already made a connection with an Arusha local that can possibly get us going in the right direction for a more cultural experience (read as - less touristy) in and around Arusha following the safari.

We're getting excited now! Walt pointed out a very wide river that we can only assume is the Nile River being seen from 35,000 ft. The Red Sea will be further east and according to the map, the Libyan Desert and soon, Darfur Mountains will be to the west.

The journey continues...