At the end of October, once our new brochure had been sent off to the printers it was time for some much needed R & R and I decided it was time for a long overdue trip to Tanzania to see what was new and different since my last visit.
Living in Cape Town means that, if you want to fly pretty much anywhere, you will have to go through Johannesburg first. Fortunately there are plenty of flights between Cape Town and Johannesburg allowing ‘easy’ connections onwards. Unfortunately however, the most flights depart South Africa for the regional destinations fairly early in the morning which makes for a VERY early morning departure out of Cape Town.
After being very rudely awaken by my alarm at 0400am it was off in a taxi to the airport (late) for a rather interesting drive. Cape Town taxi drivers are not know for being the best in the world and I definitely got landed one of the worse ones, not really an ideal way to start off a long day’s travelling. Needless to say, I did eventually make it to the airport in one piece and after dropping off my bags it was quickly through security for a much needed coffee.
The 0545am flight, unsurprisingly for a Saturday morning, was only about 1/3rd full, with what appeared to be a mix of nationalities obviously mainly connecting to onwards flights in Johannesburg. After an uneventful flight to Johannesburg, I stopped to grab a quick coffee before heading on to the International Departures terminal and made my way through security and onto passport control, only to be confronted with an enormous queue and only 2 immigration desks open with the clock rapidly counting down to departure time. Eventually after an agonising 40+minute wait I was through immigration to see that not only was I departing from the furthest gate but that the gate was showing as closed. Well that put paid to any ideas of buying duty free or magazines for the journey!
Not to be defeated I was off at high speed through the airport, dodging bored travellers killing time in transit and hopefully not taking out too many children or old people along the way. Taking the stairs down to the departure gate 3 at a time they were calling the last passengers for the flight… I had made it! As I got onto the bus for the plane, the doors closed and we were off to the aircraft. Fortunately I did save myself the embarrassment of being that 1 passenger that runs onto the plane having just held everyone up… just!
We were soon on our way for the relatively short 3 ½ hr flight to Dar es Salaam and before long, we had watched a movie, had some lunch and we were descending into Dar. When the doors opened you are hit by the humidity of the tropical coastal city – Welcome to East Africa!
As a British Citizen, I need a visa for Tanzania, but this can be obtained on arrival, however there is a little bit of a process that you need to follow and there is no real indication of what the process is when you are there. Fortunately I landed with some insider information and the process is something like this:
- Complete Landing Card and Visa Form
- Hand completed Landing Card and Visa Form along with US$50 for the Visa and your passport to the random guy (or lady depending on the day) standing in close vicinity to the counters along the wall
- Go stand ‘over there’ as indicated
- Wait
- Wait some more (and try and keep track of where your passport is)
- Listen out for your name to be called – bear in mind this might be your first name, middle name or surname, or even a combination of all of the above in no particular order
- Get your photo and fingerprints taken
- Gratefully receive your passport back
- Bypass the immigration counters and proceed directly to baggage reclaim – Welcome to Tanzania!
As you can imagine, the immigration process can take a little while so, if you have a connecting flight, make sure you leave plenty of time to get through. My connecting flight was scheduled to leave about 2 ½ hrs after I landed so after collecting my bag, walked the short distance to the check in desks, but only after going through a security check and bag x-ray. After not seeing the flight up on the departures board, I finally found someone to ask about the flight to Kilimanjaro and was happily informed that I could check in at the counter for the flight to Nairobi. On reaching the front of the queue I was then informed that my booking for the 1600 flight had been changed to the 1400 flight and that they ‘sent me an email’. Not really the most convienent thing as I was still trying to keep track of my passport at 1400!
So it was back out through security to the Precision Air desk (known locally as Indecision Air!) to change my reservation to the 1830 flight and a long wait. Dar es Salaam won’t be winning any awards any time soon for the best or most efficient airport in the world. Most of the facilities are outside under high roof’s so not much in the way of air-con happening and the only café is up 2 flights of stairs, not exactly handy when you are still carrying around all your luggage. After whiling away a couple of hours in the café, blindly staring at CNN on the tv and wishing I had time to buy those magazines in Johannesburg.
Finally check in was open, so it was back through security again and then on up to domestic departures to sit for another couple of hours, this time watching Sky News instead of CNN while watching passengers boarding flights for Dubai, Oman, Zanzibar, Nairobi and Mwanza. Finally, with the minutes slowly ticking by our flight was called for boarding so it was out and down the stairs onto the tarmac before being herded across the parking area to a waiting plane. Normally the Dar es Salaam to Kilimanjaro flight is operated by a small turboprop, but fortunately this evening it was on one of the Boeing 737’s so flight time was reduced from the normal hour down to about 40 mins. As the flight filled up, it was clear that there was a problem with the seating allocation and I, along with 2 other people had been allocated 13B! Fortunately there was plenty of space on the plane so the cabin crew just said to sit ‘where you want’.
By this stage, I was very much over my day’s travelling but soon enough it was wheel’s up from Dar and en route to Kilimanjaro Airport. After a quick snack of peanuts and a nice cold Kilimanjaro beer (yes Precision Air are a full service airline) we were back on the ground at Kilimanjaro airport into a packed arrivals hall as the KLM flight from Amsterdam had just arrived and somehow domestic and international passengers were all hanging out together. Fortunately my bag came out on one of the two carousels very quickly and I was out of the airport building.
Leanne was there to meet me and we were soon trying to get out of the airport but in her haste to get to the airport (due to the shorter flight time than normal) she had forgotten to pick up a parking ticket on the way in. Eventually after getting out the car, walking to the entry boom, collecting a ticket, paying the parking charge and then giving the security guard the ticket (who had also helped us get the ticket and pay too!) we were on our way to Arusha by way of a the Njiro Centre, a couple of cold beers and an awesome curry.
Boy, was I glad to be there, 17hrs of travelling later I could have almost got to Sydney from Cape Town in the same time but I am sure it wouldn’t have been quite such an eventful journey!
The view of Kilimanjaro on my first morning in Tanzania