The Up's and Down's of Mt. Kilimanjaro - Part 1

A bit of background

Sometime last year a colleague of mine was planning a road trip to Kenya. I figured this was the perfect way to spend my leave, and said I would join in order to help reduce costs.
Then I had the very bright idea of climbing Kilimanjaro, as it was close to Nairobi (where my friend was planning on going).
That's it, I made up my mind; I was going to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro!

And then I started to research the costs. Gulp.

Long story short, my colleague's plans changed, and now I no longer had wheels up north. Well, I had already committed. I would fly. Even though that would add quite a bit to the costs.

I planned and researched for months. Eventually I decided on a company and route.

** 

 5 February 2016 , Friday

Johannesburg, South Africa – Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

Finally, the day has arrived!

I am almost 1 hour into the flight to Dar Es Salaam from Johannesburg, cruising at 31 000ft in a FastJet A319.

I had arrived at OR Tambo International 4 hours before the scheduled take-off time, and made sure that I knew where to check in; the last time I had an international flight out of there, I almost missed it because I was on the wrong side of the terminal building. Whoops.

After killing some time over coffee with a friend, I took my time heading to the check-in counters. Bad move. Despite checking in 2 hours before my flight, I failed to factor in the hundreds of other people also flying internationally, and all of the security checkpoints and passport control and this and that.

Clearly I was no longer in Maun, with a terminal building smaller than the ORT KFC.

Boarding time came and went while I waited in the queue at passport control. I was starting to get a little antsy, but noticed there were people on the same flight as me, right at the back of the queue. So, I started to feel a little less stressed about potentially missing my flight. As it turned out, the flight was 40 minutes late anyway.

I haven’t flown internationally on an airliner in 13 years (except or the odd Maun-JHB-Maun on Air Botswana and Airlink), so I was excited about being able to fly FastJet. I also hadn’t been in an Airbus for, well, I can’t remember when last time I was in one. I am a big Boeing fan, but I figured I’d give scarebus a chance.

Boarding the aircraft, it was clean and looked good. It even had high-speed tape holding the wings together (that’s a joke, folks. No need to worry). The seats were as comfortable as can be for a low-cost airline, and it was actually almost nice to see the inside of something other than a B738 (how spoilt does that sound).

Once they got going with the safety briefings, I realised that Tanzanian-English is very different to what I’m used to. Completely different to the way the Motswana talk, they manage to speak rapidly, but mumble slowly, all at the same time.

I was sat in the aisle at the over-wing exit, and there wasn’t any of the usual “Are you prepared, and able, to assist in an emergency”. (*on later flights they did do that. Every crew did different briefings).

We’re in Africa now, folks...

And the coffee sucks. Which explains why it only cost R10.

*…*

Arrived in Dar Es Salaam, some time after 18:30 local time (17:30 SA time)

Dar at night… A whole different world. The traffic is intense and drivers suicidal. It is a blur of taxi’s, cyclo’s, blinged-out motorbikes, trucks, and cars.

Our taxi driver was very good, and negotiated busy intersections by squeezing between all of the other vehicles, horn blaring as we went.

That night, we ate at the Barbeque Garden. Delicious, fish and calamari, and and and.

I have also decided that wherever I go, I’d like to try the local beer. Kilimanjaro lager is good. It reminded me of CBC Weiss. I also tried the Kenyan “Tusker”, which they now brew in Tanzania. Kilimanjaro was much better.

We got to our accommodation quite late, after being given a short tour of the town. It was lights out as soon as my head hit the pillow.