Amsterdam to Kili.

Nearly 16 hours after leaving home, I am now on board my final leg of the trip (another 8 hour flight) to Kilimanjaro and Tanzania. Seda had a seat about 8 rows behind me, so I had two new people in my seat section for this flight. They were Scott and Jennifer from Ann Arbor, Michigan. They were a young couple engaged to be married in the next year or so. They were on their way to meet some friends in Dar Es Salam and to do some touring as well. It turns out they are flying back to Amsterdam on the same flight as me in 18 days. So we would be able to share our stories together before boarding for home.

This is the time when I really felt like the new adventure was beginning. I had flown to Europe just three years ago with my family. We flew out of Shiphol on our way home, so there was some familiarity with the airport. But from here on it was all new. Most of Europe was cloud covered as we flew over. I had a window seat on the left side of the plane. The clouds finally broke up about the time we must have flown over the French or Italian Alps. Soon I could tell we were flying straight down the western coast of Italy. There was water below us and at times I could see clear across the country to the Adriatic Sea. Italy really is not very wide from about 35,000 feet. It was not hard to spot Rome. It seemed though that there was one continuous town all the way down the coast. It must be a great place to live. I guess I will just have to take a closer look some time. When we got to the southern end of Italy I could actually see the shape of the boot and heel. The toe was somewhere under us.

It took over an hour to cross the Mediterranean. When we finally reached the African coast we were just west of the town of Banghazi Libya. You could see a very large city on the coast and then nothing but what looked like sand and beach. My first view of Africa was the northern coast of Libya and the great Sahara Desert. After about 25 to 30 minutes there was virtually no sign of life, cities, roads or anything but just light brown sand. It was amazing how featureless the terrain was from our altitude. This was all there was to see for over two hours. Our path took us over Sudan and I believe part of Uganda and Kenya before entering Tanzania.

After about two hours of featureless landscape, a few "clumps" and an occasional road would be seen. There also were a few more clouds in the sky as well. Then rather quickly it all began to change. Within a matter of 15 minutes a totally different landscape was shaping up. Hills, forest or heavier vegetation, cities and roads on the ground and we were flying around large storm clouds. We had clearly entered into the rain forest belt of Africa. There was a large river below at times and I could only guess that it might have been the White Nile. We were quickly losing day light as we got into what had to be Kenya. I was hoping to get to see the great Kilimanjaro before we landed, but it got dark too quickly. We were to land at KIA just after 8:00 p.m. but the sun sets at the equator around 6:30 to 7:00. So I would have to wait until tomorrow at least.