Travel and Arrival

In my intro I forgot to mention a very important detail.  The four ladies going on the trip were Amanda, Chrystal, Julia, and me.  The week before we were supposed to leave, Julia's mother passed away, and she flew home to TX to be with her family and attend services for her mother.  She planned to join us in Africa as soon as she could.  In a fortuitous twist, a week or so earlier Julia had purchased travel insurance that covered in her case of emergency, trip changes, etc.  She could fly to the States, and make her changes to the Africa flights without paying a fortune.  So- it was just three of us traveling on the initial journey.  

Hmmm.....look at all those destinations!  And neon yellow coats!  

Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul- very comfortable trip.  

 The food was good too!  REAL butter.  :)

Upon arrival at Istanbul airport we wandered around a little, exchanged some money, and checked out the shops.  The beaded jewelry was beautiful- I can't wait to check it out more during our cruise in April.  I refuse to pay airport gift shop prices.

These painted balls were also cool.  It's hard to tell, but some of these are close to basketball size.

Painted plate, definitely telling a story.

These bowls are awesome.

 We wandered through the food court, past the Burger King, fried chicken place, subway, and some kind of ice cream shop, and found the Turkish food.  YUM.

There were also Turkish delights, as many samples as you like.  I tasted a pistachio one (interesting), and a rose flavored one (tasted like old lady perfume).

On our second flight we did lots of reading, watching movies, journaling, and snoozing.  The plane was very hot.  I wanted to see when we finally crossed the equator, so I could snap a picture.

There I am, finally in the lower half of the Earth.  You can see Kampala, which is close to where Marshall was deployed last year.

We landed around 3:45am, and it was warm.  Not hot, just warm.  The mosquitos were salivating at all these people getting off the plane.

 It's hard to see, but it says "Kilimanjaro International".  Then I got a bug bite.

We had to get visas, and passport stamps and all kinds of fun stuff.  $100 cash for a TZ tourist visa, in bills that must be newer than 2006.  We also had to show our yellow fever card showing we had been vaccinated.  Then I got a bug bite.

Finally we got our luggage and went outside, where we were met by Ibrahim and Freddy from Afrishare Solutions.  They had been there for hours waiting for us, with little to no sleep.  We loaded in the van and started the 45 minute drive to Moshi, where we would be living.  The Kili airport is halfway between Moshi and Arusha.  Here are Amanda and Chrystal- tired but extremely excited!  We're here, we can't believe it!

Then I got another bug bite.