The Flight

Toronto - Paris - Cairo - Khartoum - Nairobi ..... 33 hours in Business Class comfort punctuated by extreme unpleasantness.  Nice pic here over the Alps

When Liz booked the tix using Delta Points the only available Biz Class routing was via Paris/Cairo (with a 5 hour layover in the latter).  No problem - we thought - an opportunity to have dinner with our friend Ahmed - who had been our wonderful travel planner/guide for our Middle East trip in 2008. 

In Cairo the terminal transfer turned into a bureaucratic farce - Ahmed was waiting on "the other side" of security but we were unable to get there. 

Security personnel were so intent on extorting a "tip" from us that twice we walked around the scanners with our 15 pound backpacks - to no one's concern (well...except that we hadn't tipped them).

For a couple of dollars graft you could probably carry aboard 10 pounds of C4, 9 Grenades, 8 M16s and a suicide bomber in a pear tree.

So - only a flurry of texts between us and Ahmed - and we departed Cairo with our gift for his son Mohammed.

(After we finally got our Kenya Airways boarding passes and were allowed out of the bowels of Terminal 2 we sat with a crowd of airport staff and watched an Africa Cup game that Egypt was playing - that was a lot of fun)

Then a 3am touchdown in Khartoum (that was news to us) where security personnel body frisked the cleaning staff.

At last - Nairobi - where they lose our luggage ..... (we're thinking we should have tipped that guy in Cairo)....but after an hour of searching a wonderful man finds our bag and we walk out of arrivals to find Mutua (our pre arranged driver) who has patiently waited for us - all is suddenly much, much better.

A note on Nairobi airport arrivals.  Like the legendary elephants, this is where all luggage goes to die. There are piles and caches and troves of luggage.  Luggage in braids with handles chained to pillars; luggage hidden under stairs; luggage with "collector quality" stickers from PanAm, BOAC, CP Air and Vasco da Gama.  A veritable luggage graveyard (should have taken a photo but we were too busy looking for our luggage).

Mutua is charming - the Holiday Inn is our favourite kind of "bubble hotel" - room, A/C, food, pool, service - in other words no contact with the real world.

We repack our bags down into safari size, check the rest and we’re off to fly to Kilimanjaro Airport in Tanzania…….then we almost miss the plane.

We are coming to dread airports!

Comments

[Christine Storz]

Hi Liz-I know how those timing things can happen. I lost tract of days when we were in Malta. I asked hotel (Whew) to confirm my flight for 2 days later-It was the next day. We had a plane to catch-a car reserved at Gatwick and a hotel reserved in Bath.
Have fun in Africa-will follow your blog-Ahmed has our itenary all set-deposit paid. Thank you for all your helpful information.
PS How old is Ahmeds son I should bring him a gift when we go in Sept-Chris