Arrival at Mt Kilimanjaro National Airport

And I have arrived!  It's a beautiful Wednesday afternoon here in Tanzania.  Kilimanjaro International Airport is pretty small; no pulling up to a gate here.  There are few enough flights that the people who live around here know what flights land at one time; Lewis says that there is a daily KLM flight that comes in in the evening so when you see a big plane at that time, you know that's what it is.

Once we got off the plane, I had to fill out a form for my tourist visa.  The forms were available in a tent out back, so I had that ready by the time I made it in the building.  The line for visas wasn't too long; I waited there while everyone else went ahead to get the luggage (not out of sight; arrivals is really all one big room).  I had no problems at all getting a tourist visa (despite the worried of the Italian check-in guy); five minutes later I was walking out the front door of the airport, to be met by this little welcoming committee:

I'd been on the flight with the girls, of course, but they'd run on ahead as the others were taking the luggage out to the cars.  Beth, an American who is married to a Tanzanian and lives in Monduli, has become a close friend of the Shorts' and she had come to drive one of the two cars needed to pick us all up.  She had made a nice sign for me, and her little boy was there to hold it up for me.  He's such a sweet kid. :)  (If you can't read it in the picture, it just says 'Welcome to Tanzania, Katy.'

It took two cars for all of and all of our stuff.  Beth had driven one, and Albert, the Shorts' neighbor and driver for the school, brought the other.  The one Albert drove, that you can see in the photo below, takes diesel and is a tough four-wheel-drive, which you need around here.  The other car we were in is also a four-wheel drive, but slightly smaller and not diesel.  In the end, all the luggage was piled into the brown car, leaving room for only Albert and Lewis.  The rest of us piled into the other.  I thought I took a better selfie than this in the car, but I think I took it on Michela's phone and I haven't remembered to get it from her yet.  And no...I am not driving.  This part of the world drives on the left.  :)

It's a nearly three hour trip from the airport to Monduli; we fortunately stopped at a nice gas station with a little shop about forty-five minutes in for cold drinks.  I got a pineapple Fanta...if you ever get the chance, try one!  They're amazing.