May 15-16, 2025 Tanzania to home
So begins the long day(s). No game drives or sight seeing today. Just the drive to the airport. Someone thinks we need to be there at least three hours early. Our flight is at about 6:30 pm.
The drive should take about four hours not including lunch and bathroom stops. We traveled most of this road earlier in the trip so nothing different. Still lots of goats, sheep and cows along the side of the highway. The vehicle seems to be doing just fine.
The bathroom stop was at a high end tourist souvenir mall that sells tanzanite. The stone is found only in Tanzania. Both the other ladies wanted to get a piece of jewelry. The stones are a blue violet ranging in color from very pale to quite dark. The amount of violet reflecting depends on the light and the cut of the stone. It’s a relatively new stone having been discovered in 1967. The shop sells every kind of souvenir you could possibly want. We bought some of the cotton fabric to take home for her collection. They also sew clothing there so you could pick your fabric and style and they would make it on the spot. This was not the cheap place.
Lunch was at a fancy spa. They tried to get us to spend the day. Lunch was priced similar to home so not a bargain either. It was included in the tour cost so no additional cost. Then we went in the small gift shop. Not much here but an interesting piece of fabric that had lions, giraffes and village huts. We bought that too. This shop really didn’t want to bargain. The first one we encountered on the whole trip.
We arrived at the airport well ahead of the three hours. Everything had to go through an x-ray just to get in the building. That included shoes and jackets. Then we walked through a metal detector. Finally inside we learned that the flight was delayed an hour. Check in would begin in about 45 minutes. Well their system is still not working and the staff has no clue what to do for passengers going multiple places. They are still using a laptop that the operators don’t know how to use. Furthermore they don’t even know the keyboard. They have to hunt for every letter and number. The couple in front of us spent about an hour trying to check in. They gave up and went to a different airline. Oh yes that required eight people trying to figure it out. When it was finally our turn they had no clue what the airport codes were and argued that the baggage would have to be checked again when we got to the states. We won that discussion. They finally wrote the bag tags by hand after Rob gave them the airport codes.
Immigration wasn’t difficult just slow. Then of course security and bag check again. Then its the walk through all of the duty free items on sale. Finally made it to the gate and learned the flight was delayed even more. Our long layover in Nairobi will not be so long. The plane arrived about two hours late. They were able to turn it quickly. The flight was fine thankfully.
We were bussed from the plane to the terminal. The escalator isn’t working so we took the elevator. Oh joy another security check. Luckily a man with a wheel chair was going by at the end of the security screening. I asked if he was available and he took us to the plane. Good thing because we didn’t have boarding passes so he helped get us through quicker. The agent took down the information about our bags and entered that into the system. We will be very surprised if the bags make it. We barely had our boarding passes when they let us on the plane. Being in the wheel chair really helped.
The flight to Paris left timely and the flight was good. We have a few hours here which is good since the Paris airport is very large and the signs aren’t very good unless you speak French. There are some in English however. Here is where we split up from the other two ladies in our tour group. Now we have a long wait. The Salt Lake flight leaves from the lower level of the concourse. Looks like another bus ride. Only a few other people are waiting. As we got closer however the area filled up. We were bussed to the plane. Yea it is a Delta air craft and not Air France. The flight was so much better. The food was better and the flight attendants were much friendlier.
Salt Lake has been renovating their airport. The international arrival area is backwards to any airport we have ever been in. You must collect your luggage before going through immigration. While Rob waited for the bags, I asked what we should do if the bags didn’t make it. Golly gee both bags made it. They had new bar code tags on them too. I took back one negative remark about Air France. Rob did not.
After clearing immigration we headed for the gate. Well that is at least a mile down the way. Luckily one of the golf carts was there so we hopped on. Sure was better. After sitting so many hours our legs and knees don’t always work well.
All went well from here. We got in the house about 5 pm. Sure feels good.
Spoffords Travel 