Mt. Kilimanjaro, at 19,341 feet, was covered with clouds most of the time. You can just see the top of Kili above the cloud bank in this photo if you look carefully
After five pleasant days on Zanzibar, it was safari time, and we caught a flight from Zanzibar Town to Arusha in northern Tanzania. Arusha is the elephant (what, you preferred “lion”???) of the safari industry with over 500 safari companies and 5 major national parks or conservation areas (including Serengeti) within a 4 hour radius. If that’s not enough for one town, it is also the launch point for climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, which lies 100 km to the east.
Our single-engine single-pilot plane on Arusha’s single landing strip
We boarded a 12 seat, single-engine Cessna 22 at Zanzibar airport an hour after its scheduled departure time and took off for Arusha. Our group accounted for 7 of the 11 passengers. The other 4 were a family that looked to be from the US as well. We exchanged a few pleasantries, and, yes, the family was from the US, specifically Philadelphia. A few more questions determined that the wife, Amy (perched in the Cessna’s co-pilot’s seat since one engine only needs one pilot) had worked as an intern for our safari-mate, Joe V., at the American Friends Service Committee some 30 years
Every seat counts on a Cessna 22. Here Amy flies co-pilot.
ago. All kinds of crazy cross-connections began to pop up. Africa suddenly seemed local and familiar.
We landed on the sole runway of Arusha airport a couple hours later and found our two guides waiting for us. They introduced themselves as Chagamba and Mika, loaded our bags into 2 Land Rovers, and we headed for Mt. Meru and Arusha National Park where our safari would begin.
On way to our night’s lodging, we hit a traffic jam. A truck crash completely shut down a bridge on the main Arusha road, backing up traffic for miles.
Bystanders trying to see the crash site. Mika knew a dirt-road workaround, but that too was backed up and we waited for over an hour to get through.