Welcome to Tanzania!

I've been home for a week. In that time I've poured over my 8,000 photos and tried to start organizing my memories. I also got a cold. I'm glad the cold waited until I was home because I have time to be sick now. The trip was much too busy to leave time for sickness!

I flew from Seattle to Amsterdam, then Amsterdam to Kilimanjaro airport in northern Tanzania. That part of the trip took about 24 hours and I didn't sleep a moment of it. I was too fascinated by the view out of my plane window to sleep. I saw the Alps, the distant boot of Italy, and islands of Greece, then the coast of Egypt and the Nile River. I didn't want to miss a glimpse, even when there were clouds.

In hindsight, sleep would have been beneficial. I arrived in Tanzania at 8pm local time and had a two hour wait to get through customs. My driver met me outside and then it was another hour drive to my lodgings for the night. I'm not sure I've ever been so exhausted and alone in my life. Fortunately that was the hardest day of the trip.

As I learned over the next week-and-a-half, Tanzania is a beautiful, fascinating place and it was a thrill to be there.