Looking Back - Day 1 & 2 - Getting There

Looking back on it now, seems like it was a long time ago already.

Day 1:
Leaving Saskatoon @ approx 5:30am, meant not much sleep the night before. I think I went to bed about 1:30am for the 4:00am alarm. Once we were @ the airport though, I was good for the time being, but it's a 4 flight journey with approx 21hr in the air. Though I'd flown quite a bit in the past (1-3hr flights), I was a little concerned that I might be a little bored with it all, but with three books, iPod, Nintendo DS... thought I'd have it all covered. Turned out I read about 10 pages and watched my iPod for about an hour. Not sure where the time went!

Starting it all off, we checked our bags in and took the first flight to Minneapolis. It figures that once we arrived there, our bags didn't, and panic quickly set in. What if our bags didn't arrive? All of our gear was in there, and we'd be beginning our first climb in 48hours! After finding only broken internet terminals, we finally found one and e-mailed the guide company to give a heads up, in case we'd need them to find us gear in Tanzania, and also our travel agent to see if she could offer any help while Northwest wouldn't at all. With that, we had done what we could, and headed off to Amsterdam.

Day 2:
It just so happens that in planning the trip, we had about 16hours in Amsterdam on the way over. So after landing @ approx 6am local time, we took a train into the city to have a peek around. We wandered for hours, rarely coming across a street we had been down already. We ate the food, took a ride down the canals, and took in the World Press Photo 2008 exhibition. We also hopped on the internet to check the e-mails we had sent from Minneapolis. Word had gotten around back in Saskatoon, and my e-mail was filled with 'Where are your bags?!?!?!' messages. Back to Amsterdam Centraal Station about 6pm for our flight later that evening. Ironically enough, my feet took the biggest beating of the trip on this day, as the cobblestone road made me realize what little support my shoes had. I also had a couple of hotspots on the tops of my toes from my shoes rubbing. My boots were so much better! An exhausing day.

This made it easy to catch some zZz's on the way to Kenya, and we were both out for the majority of the flight. Arriving early in the morning, we had a short time in the Nairobi airport, before catching the last flight to Kilimanjaro International Airport (JRO). We got our first glimpses of both Kilimanjaro, and Mt Meru on the flight... a teaser for what was to come.