Tanzania At Last

We started this journey Friday morning at 9 am.  It's 10:00 pm, Monday night (we are 7 hours ahead of the East coast) and we are finally here. We are in Tanzania, just a few miles from Kilimanjaro, at the Lake Duluti Lodge. The flight to Dubai was amazing. Personally, I only got about 20 mins of sleep (feel asleep watching the Internship).  I spent 90% of my time at the inflight lounge. With such an amazing feature how could I not?  I met some pretty cool folks as well.  Evan woke up after a quick 4 hour nap and joined me in the lounge for the remainder of the flight. We weren't quite sure how Jamie was doing, we didn't want to risk the walk down to level 1.  Just Kidding ;). With the in-flight phone I was able to call him but despite our best efforts we couldn't sneak him upstairs. 

Speaking of in-flight phones, the plane had a ton of great features including, 3 outside cameras viewable from our screen, SMS and email satellite messaging, low-speed Internet, 100s of movies and TV shows and a lot more. Our pod had an iPad looking device that was used to control everything.  It changed the TV, controlled the lights, the bed, etc etc,,, very cool.

After landing in Dubai we headed straight for the Emirates club.  WOW, what an amazing airport. Dubai airport is like the Ritz Carlton of airports.  Very impressive. On our way to the club we were distracted by a spa in the airport. Not just a spa but a marble floor & water fountain, over the top nice, spa.  We set appointments and headed to the club to check out the showers.  We found the door to the men's shower which was less than impressive. We were pleasantly surprised to walk in to an enormous spa type environment where we were quickly shown to our own private bath/shower suites. Very nice!

The 90 minute massage was awesome.  The spa rooms were as nice as I'd ever seen, complete with spa music, heated massage table, shower, etc.  After the message our 3 hour layover was coming to an end. We headed to the gate and boarded our plane for Nairobi.  

Nairobi's airport is a far cry from Dubai's. Their main terminal had just burnt down so we were put in some hot, noisy lockdown for 3 hours. After that exciting adventure we boarded our puddle jumper for Tanzania. 

We landed in Tanzania just 1 hour after takeoff.  On arrival we were able to see glimpses of Kilimanjaro but it was getting dark and it was cloudy so we couldn't see much. We cleared customs, grabbed our bags, found our driver and started the 45 minute drive to the lodge.  Our room is amazing albeit small.  The bathroom is just as large as the main living area. Everything is very modern and, more importantly, very clean.

As I'm typing this we are finishing up dinner. It's nice to have something other than plane food. Tomorrow is a day off.  We will spend tomorrow resting and checking out the town.  Wednesday morning starts the big hike.  Stay tuned...

Oh, as for pictures, we don't have wi-fi in the room so tomorrow I will try to make the time to bring the laptop up to the main lodge and upload a few.  Good night!