Kili Trek Day 0: Arriving in Tanzania

Today, which was actually two "today"s, was the start of the big adventure. It started on Monday, when my friend Jen and I threw in our last few items into our bags and got a ride from our friend Beth to Dulles. We flew Ethiopian Air, which was actually pretty nice. We were on a 787 and the flight was nowhere near full, so we had enough room to move from our assigned seats to an empty row. Jen slept most of the way, but I hardly slept at all. The movie selection wasn't great (pretty far from it), but I had my iPad and a book, so I was good to go.

Twelve hours after we took off, we landed at Addis Ababa airport in Ethiopia, which is a completely awful airport. There were no places to get food; there wasn't even a place to buy water. Fortunately, we were only there for about two hours before it was time to load the next plane, which took us from Addis Ababa to Kilimanjaro International Airport. There it was a short line to buy a visa ($100), get out passports checked, pick up our bags, and go through customs before we met with our driver from the tour company. We also met the other two people in our group, Angie from California and Kevin from North Carolina. They seem nice enough (even though their doctors ill-prepared them for this trip. They weren't prescribed Diamox to prevent altitude sickness or anything to prevent malaria).

At the hotel, we met up with a couple of Puerto Rican doctors, Luis and Rafae who just completed the hike today, so we spent a lot of time questioning them about their experiences, what they had that they didn't need and what they needed but didn't have, and stuff like that. It was good to talk to people roughly our age who just did it; I think I feel a little bit more confident.

The group (clockwise from left): Jen, Luis, Kevin, me, Angie, and Rafae.

We also had our first meeting with the guide, who ran through some of the basics of the mountain and our hike tomorrow. Tomorrow is going to be entirely through the rainforest (should be fun). After we reach the first hut, we'll be given tea and a snack from the cook (yes, our group has our own cook), and then we'll continue on to another point where we should get some great pictures of the mountain, Kenya, and the Serengeti. I hope the weather cooperates.

It's almost time to get to dinner, so I should get back to packing my bag for tomorrow. I'm looking forward to the trek; I hope it'll be a lot of fun.