I booked my ticket online for the Kenya Airways flights to Nairobi and back and got a confirmation email. Now, I did not read this confirmation email too closely because, well, sometimes I'm careless. Also, because it was a CONFIRMATION email that said CONFIRMATION and had a reservation number. Legit, right?
Jess and I leave about 3 hours early to avoid the infamous Dar traffic. We arrive at the airport, which is essentially an open air room and we wait in line for 45 minutes. This is after the initial x-ray machine attendant tells me he loves me and wants to marry me--a first in Dar!Jess checks in without problem and I step up to the counter. Mind you, all the desk staff are dressed in the greatest outfits for Precision Air, Tanzania's airline. Observe:
Those are gazelles on their ties!
Anyway, when I checked in the lovely man behind the counter was like, well...I see your name but you don't have a ticket number, so I recommend you go and buy a new ticket outside. I was needless to say incredulous. I had a confirmation! With a reservation number! Of course, Jess and I hadn't been particularly organized when we left the house. Neither of us knew our flight numbers, the exact time of the plane, or had printed out the confirmation emails. We arrived at the airport and both of us were like, isn't one of us supposed to be the responsible one here? Guess not.
Needless to say, I spent the next hour running from the information booth to the Kenya Airways office to the Precision Air ticketing booth, in and out of security, trying to figure out what was going on. A lovely woman in the ticketing agency let me use her computer to access said confirmation email and with that I went out of the airport altogether to the Kenya Airways office. Where they essentially sat on the phone for 20 minutes talking to someone else, then told me to return to the check in desk where they then again said they couldn't help me. It was beyond frustrating. At the last minute, I just said screw this, and bought a new ticket from the lovely ticket booth lady, which turned out to be less expensive than my original one since she got me the promotional fare. I literally then had to run through the airport to make it on the flight. And all the while poor Jess is standing at the front desk waiting for me.
The funniest moment was when we were rushing to gate, took the escalator, and the escalator literally broke, grinding to a halt while we were on it. It was a comedy of errors and we both just burst out laughing.
I sort of blame this one on myself because it's possible I did not read closely enough or that my credit card did not go through (it didn't), but it was really a terrible way to start a trip. Needless to say, when I booked my return trip once I got to Nairobi, I made sure to be very clear that the payment went through, that I got a confirmation email again and read it this time, and I truly believed everything was going to be ok...
Except, when I arrived at Nairobi airport at 6am on Monday morning, waited in line for an hour, feared for missing my flight and had no way to contact Jess cause our phones weren't working (we were flying the Dar--Nairobi legs together; she then had gone on to Addis Ababa for the weekend), the same thing happened again. I finally get to the ticket counter, only to be told I had no ticket number. I literally started crying. And then had to run in and out of security, cry again at the Kenya Airways ticketing office in another terminal, and run back, cut everyone and get a boarding pass for the wrong flight since apparently my originally flight gate was closed (it was boarding while I was crying at the Kenya Airways office). Only when I got upstairs through security and saw my original flight gate still did a lovely miracle occur. I asked if they'd let me on and they did! They literally crossed off the info on my boarding card, rewrote a new flight and seat number and ran me out to the gate. Thank goodness for that--the later flight would have gotten me back to the office hours later with no way of contacting Jess or anyone else. Needless to say, I will not be flying Kenya Airways again.
When I finally settled in (I had about 40 pounds of extra weight from the things I was bringing home from Nairobi), I saw I was sitting next to a lovely older Kenyan businessman who was an investor and adviser to young entrepreneurs in Nairobi. It was a great conversation and this is what we saw out the window:
Mt. Kilimanjaro in the foreground and Mt. Meru behind. My flying companion told me that Kili used to have a permanent ice cap that has all but disappeared in the last 10 years due to climate change.
And here's coming into to the peninsula in Dar:
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