From Seattle to Moshi

By Carolyn

This post is a recap of our travels, as people wanted to hear about our Emirates experience and Dubai.

Our traveling took about 45 hours from Seattle to Dubai to Dar es Salam (capital of Tanzania) to Moshi. Fortunately all our flights were perfectly on time and very smooth. The exception being our luggage restrictions. Who knew that the rolling carry-on luggage could only be 15lbs in addition to a small handbag?  We discovered that 15lbs is not much - I think our luggage alone was 7 lbs each, so we had to practically empty each carry-on piece.  Oh, and one of our big suitcases got mangled at some point - ripped and broken wheels (Margaret, unfortunately it wasn’t your old one). We can't complain too much if those were the only travel challenges. Our Emirates report as many of you wanted to know:  the economy class isn’t so different from other international flights with the exception of the uniforms that the flight attendants wear complete with head scarves. The best part was the video screens where we could choose from about 2,000 programs. Ian chose Cars2 and Wreck-it Ralph, I chose a few Bollywood films, and Keith chose the Hobbit. With all those entertainment options the 14-hour flight felt short.

Dubai was, just as we had heard, crazy. We had 15 hours layover there, including a hotel stay provided by Emirates Airlines. We landed at 9pm and it was a very hot 105+ degrees at night!  We had a few hours to see some sites so we took the light rail to the center of the city to see the world's largest (I think) building - the Burj. It's 2800 ft high, which is over 2.5 times Seattle's Colombia Tower. Being late at night it was closed so we couldn't go to the top. We did get to see the amazing fountain display in front of the Burj. And then crazily, we went to the Mall of Dubai. I think Ian has had maybe 5 mall experiences in his life, so this was quite an eye-opener. It was as you'd expect of Dubai - glitz galore, huge with 4 levels filled with high end  stores. It was fun to see people from all over the world, and it was good cultural learning for Ian to see so many women in full burkas and men in the long white robes with red and white head scarves. Then we slept a few hours before the next flight. 

After a 5 hour flight we landed in Dar es Salam. The airport is being rebuilt so was pretty run down. It was the extreme opposite of Dubai's airport where everything was automated with the latest in technology, spotless, and just very cool. We had to go through immigration and get our visas in Dar, a ... non-automated experience to say the least. Then a 1.5 hour flight to Kilimanjaro airport in the north, about 30 minutes from our town of Moshi. That airport was beautiful. We were greeted by Jumas, a taxi driver we had pre-arranged for, recommended by a friend in Moshi, who drove us to our new home here in Moshi.

Our landlady, Mama (Mrs.) Ndosi, greeted us at our new home. She is wonderfully motherly, gracious and generous. She insisted on opening the house for us so we could stay here the first night, even though it was 9:30pm. She had also arranged to have a meal waiting for us, cooked by our “Dada” or cleaning woman, Mary – delicious samosas, rice, greens, a meat/sauce something and those small flavorful bananas that we were looking forward to. What a great welcome!