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Return Home Friday and Saturday, September 1-2
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Return Home Friday and Saturday, September 1-2
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| After another nice breakfast of eggs, toast and juicy sweet pineapples, we bid farewell to Mahale Mountains Tented Camp and boarded the dhow for our journey north up the lake to the private airstrip. Roland, the owner of the Tented Camp we stayed at, met us at the airstrip in his six passenger Cessna. |  |
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We said goodbye to Emma and Ben at around noon and took off for an uneventful flight. After two hours of flying over incredible desolate terrain (no roads to be seen anywhere), we landed at Tabora to refuel. The airport was deserted. We walked into the terminal building to use the facilities and eat the sandwiches Emma had packed for us - the only people we saw were a painter painting the outside of the terminal and someone cleaning one of the rooms. Walking back to the plane, we see a sign that reads "No permission to take pictures of this airport unless you get permission." Makes sense... Another two and a half hour flight and we arrived at Arusha airport even though it was officially closed for tarmac repairs. Our guide, Charles, met us at the airport with the duffel of our souvenirs we had sent with him from the Western Serengeti. We loaded our luggage on the truck and headed to Mt. Meru hotel for a quick shower and meal. Then off to Kilimanjaro airport to wait for our KLM flight to Dar Es Salaam and on to Amsterdam. After a 45 minute flight, we landed in Dar Es Salaam and had to get off the plane for cleaning. We decided to take our hand luggage with us (since they said to take your valuables) and had to pass the film through X-Ray one more time. After about 45 minutes in the terminal, we boarded again and were on our way. We landed in Amsterdam after ten hours in the air and had a six hour layover. Fortunately, Amsterdam airport is very nice and has lots of duty-free shops with great prices on European goods. We also found a day-hotel that provides a private bathroom with shower for about $5. Then on to Seattle on another ten hour flight. We had a nice tail wind and arrived an hour earlier than scheduled. So after 39 hours from leaving Mahale Tented Camp, we were finally in our home city. Although we were tired, the trip had gone incredibly well and more than met our expectations.
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