East Africa with Sury – Mission to Moshi

Kenya and Tanzania October 7 – October 25, 2010


London -> Nairobi -> Moshi (Oct 7, 8, 9)

I took a late flight from Berlin to London to meet up with Sury at his cousin Rudi’s place. We had a 6am flight scheduled for the next morning. I arrived around 9pm, and soon after we headed out to meet Rudi and his friends for dinner. Turns out we both arrived in London on a “Thirsty Thursday”, a night out of dinner and drinks.

It was soon decided by everyone that since we had to be at the airport at 4am, there was no point in us sleeping. We had a fabulous dinner, and then went out to a martini bar. On top of not getting any sleep, it looked like we might also be getting drunk. What a way to prepare for Kilimanjaro! Rudi and his friends were awesome, buying rounds of drinks and showing us a good time. We finally got back to his place around 2am, and asked our cabbie to come back and pick us up in an hour to take us to the airport. The beginning of a long travel day! I fell asleep in the cab almost immediately, but Sury stayed awake and made sure we made it to the airport.

We arrived in Nairobi that night, and grabbed a cab to our guest house. The traffic was insane. Our 20 minute cab ride took at least 45 minutes. Thankfully it was a fixed rate for the ride.  The next morning we caught our shuttle to Moshi, another full travel day driving along bumpy, dusty roads. There was some confusion in the morning and we almost missed our shuttle. We thought it was picking us up at our guest house, but after waiting around for 20 minutes Sury called and they said, “Nope, it’s too far. We don’t do pick up’s there.” Great. We caught a taxi that drove us to some random gas station where the shuttle was supposed to top and pick us up. Our driver was really nice and waited with us for about half an hour before she left. The shuttle finally did arrive, and we were on our way.

Our shuttle broke down between Arusha and Moshi, with about an hour left to drive. We were stranded by the side of the road for an hour until more vehicles came to pick us up. Finally we arrived at our hotel in Moshi, which was really nice. We spent the night packing our stuff for Kilimanjaro, since we started the climb the next day.