Tanzania....halfway through and it just keeps giving.

What we expected to enjoy we've really loved, and what I thought would be rather easy has turned out to be one of the hardest things I've ever done.

We arrived in Tanzania a little over two weeks ago after the longest and most fustrating flight from Cairo to Kilimanjaro airport. I'll save most of the details for the bar but in short. We arrived at the airport in Cairo only to find that we'd been dropped at the wrong terminal. Got to the right terminal and found out that our confirmed tickets that we'd worked hard to confirm were in fact not confirmed at all and they weren't going to let us on the flight unless we took a connecting flight out of Ethopia on Sunday. Our safari was to start Sunday morning. Fifteen minutes before the fight left we agreed to take the Sunday flight for two reasons. First we figured we'd have better luck sorting this out at the head office in Ethiopia and second our Egypt visa expired in 7 hours.

Get to Ethopia and they say there's nothing they can do for us. It's 10:30pm now. Before we can leave the airport, we're 'In transit' so our bags have been shipped on ahead on us, we have a hotel assigned by Ethopian Airlines along with everyone else in transit. Kathryn asks a fellow who has been helping people around us if there's anything he can do about getting us on the 2:30am flight we were orginally confirmed on and our tickets show as confirmed. He agrees it's the airlines fault and so will help us. at 3am he returns with tickets for the next day directly from Ethopia to Kilimanjaro airport. We were to flight through Dar in Tanzania but that's fine we'll go direct to Arushia (Kilimanjaro Airport).

The new flight doesn't leave till noon the next day so they put us up at the Hilton and after looking for our bags, which they said they'd take off the 2:30am flight, we give up and get driven to the hotel at 5am. Little room service and we get three hours sleep and a hot shower.

Back at the airport at 9am and look in vain for our bags. The head of Lost and Found tells us to go to Arusia and fill in a lost luggage claim. 'But we leave Arusia tomorrow on a week safari'. We decide there's nothing we're going to do here and lets just keep moving forward.

Get to Arusia on one of the most turbulent flights I've ever been on. This is one of two times I've actually thought the plane might go down. There's nothing the Ethopian Airlines in Arusia can do for us except put an email notice in the system that our luggage is lost. At 6pm, our flight arrive a 3pm, we take a $50US cab to the hotel.

We have one extra day between the end of the safari and the Kili climb so we push back the safari one day in the hopes that our bags will be found the next day.

In there morning there's no word on the bags so we figure we should head down to the second hard clothes market and get something to wear while we're on safari for a week and the clothes we've had on since we went to the airport in Cario are starting to get a little tired. We pick-up some really fun stuff. My personal favourite is a Team Canada Roots shirt for the 2002 Salt Lake City games. Kathryn has since stolen that for her own use and I'm never going to see it again. But that's OK because that evening when WE called the Ehtopian Airlines office ours bags had arrived in Arushia. We picked them up the next morning while leaving on the safari.

This has become a little longer than I intended so here's the highlights of the last two weeks and we'll post more later.

The safari went to Lake Manyara National Park first and driving around in a 4x4 where the roof pops open so you can stand-up and look at the wildlife.......I felt like I was in Jurasic Park. There we saw Blue Monkeys, baboons, elephants, zebra, warthogs, hippos, buffalo, wildebeest, Dik Dik's and Impalas. As well we saw what came to be one of our favourite sights - giraffes. Three feet from the truck they towered over the roof by six feet. Giant animals that look very awkward but are surpisingly one the of the most graceful creatures I've ever seen.

Well I'm going to have to cut this short as we need to go sit by the pool after living in a tent for two weeks and getting on a seven hour bus ride to Dar Es Salaam tomorrow morning.

Short note on Kilimanjaro climb..........we made it! As I said one tof the hardest things I've done. Living in a tent at 3700M+ ASL for eight nights wasn't easy and then to climb 1800M in the middle of the night. In the end it was really worth it but we're licking our wounds today.

Take care all and will finish these stories soon.

K&K