Zanzibar or Bust

Well, it's definitely true. Jeremy and I are really freaking lucky sometimes. Take this classic near misadventure turned great story.

Our taxi picked us up from our hotel on Monday morning to drive us to the airport. Not only was the taxi early, but traffic in Arusha was incredibly light, and we made it to the airport in only about 15 minutes. (We were definitely prepared for a 45 minute crawl through traffic.)

Upon arrival at the airport, we attempt to check-in for our flight; however, we are told we will have to wait, as they won't begin checking us in until 1:00 PM. At that time, it was only 12 Noon, and our flight wasn't until 2:00 PM. So we lugged our luggage (we are still carrying all of our gear for the Kili Climb, so we do a lot of lugging of the luggage) to a little cafe in the Arusha airport and order some food. Surprisingly, it is not too overpriced, and it tastes pretty good, as well.

Within two minutes of our food arriving, a man comes by and taps Jeremy on the shoulder to tell us that it is time to check-in and drop off our luggage. I swear barely 15 minutes had passed since we had just attempted to check-in. So much for waiting until 1:00 PM. As it turns out, "they" decided our flight could leave early. I'm not sure who "they" are, but I like these people. Jeremy and I had previously tried to get on an earlier flight but were unable to do so, since it was full. How amazing! And people say the Tanzanians are lazy?!

And as a sidebar, has anyone ever had a flight depart EARLY? Can you imagine how much easier it would have been to travel to and from O'Hare airport for work if the flights departed ON TIME let alone EARLY?

Anyway, we had one more hurdle to clear before departing, which of course, is the luggage. So without getting to eat much of his food, Jeremy insisted on lugging the luggage back to the check-in counter. Upon weighing our bags, we are told that we owe $50 (US) because we are over the weight limit. We were expecting this surcharge, but we were told we could pay with a credit card. So with only 50,000 TShs in our pocket when we left our hotel, we opted to head straight to the airport instead of stopping at the ATM. Bad plan, Nic and Jeremy... Bad plan.

Of course, the Arusha airport (which really is just a landing strip, some seats, a metal detector, and a gift shop) does not accept credit cards. Of course they don't! No where in Tanzania accepts credit cards. Have we not been living here for the past six weeks? How could we believe this person? So, we need $50 or its equivalent in TShs, which is 80,000. And since we have now just paid for our lunch, we are down to 39,000 TShs. Not good. The official at the counter was of course, not helpful. He wants us to leave one of our bags at the airport, but since we are not coming back to Arusha, and are heading directly to Ghana from Zanzibar, that will not work. I'm frustrated and pissed, clearly; but Jeremy is calm. (Clearly.)

Then, I'm not quite sure how this happened, but the official asks us how much money we do have. We show him our 39,000 Tshs and coins. No, we do not have any Euros. No, we do not have any US Dollars. I yell, "We've been living in Arusha for six weeks!" He looks at us, takes our 39,000 TShs, and tells us we can get on the plane. Amazing, really. I couldn't believe it. I'm sure he'll take the money for himself, but I don't care. I was so grateful he let us on the plane!

So we gave them our bags, zipped through a metal detector, and walked out onto the tarmac. We climbed the steps into our small prop plane with loveseats on the right side that sat two, traditional seats on the left. Jeremy and I had a loveseat, and my seat belt didn't really work, but here we are in Zanzibar and it's pretty spectacular. Our hotel is "shabby chic" with reasonably priced, good food and drinks. Our room is steps from the ocean. We will have a great couple of days here before we start heading back West...