Once at the airport in london, I knew everything normal to me would be gone and I will e headed for a realm of unknown that I might not be ready for. The flight was semi normal, aside from the " we changed aircrafts and you lost your isle seat" situation. Stuck in the mddle in a 9 hour flight is not fun, but I ha fairly nice company with me. The man to my left was a large Nairobi native and the girl to my right was a Kenyan born texas student who came to visit friends. They were both two of the darkest people I have ever met before and we ended up looking like a real life Oreo cookie, which they though was funny when I told them that.
Once the flight was over I was officially in Africa. I stepped off the plane and was engulfed with this intense heat that surrounded the airport. This airport was the strangest one I had ever seen. It was small, dark, and filled with people who looked as confused as I felt. The only stores in the place were duty-free ones and no restaurants. After dealing with making sure my bag would be on the Zanzibar flight at 8 am, u waited in another slow, slow line to get my airport tranfer flight ticket and aske where the hell I could go to sleep or sit since there were no chairs near the gates and only a few sporadically assigned all over.
The teller told me they had a sleep and shower area downstairs and I was more than happy to find it. Once I got downstairs there was a tiny room with 10 or so little shady storage unit looking type things and a man at the front who greeted me and told me sleep rooms for 4-8 hours would be 42 US dollars. I immediately obliged and headed for the room. The room was so tiny and had a ceiling you could see through to upstairs that kept tapping and humming but the bed was super comfortable and I quickly passed out. The next morning I woke up really early and decided to take a shower. I still am not sure if they just don't have hot water there or what but it was the coldest shower I've ever taken. It pumped me up for the day though as I found a littlestand were I promptly bought some bottled water and yogurt.
The gate situation at the airport is really crazy. You have the security check point at the right of the gate, but then to get to the planethey have you walk down the runway a couple blocks to the tiniest plane I had ever seen in real life. I was a little nervous but me and my closest zanzibarians, all 48 of them, wandered on the plane and hoped for the best. The flight wasn't too bad.
It was really short compared to the others and they served us a continental breakfast which I wasn't expecting. Pretty soon after getting to see Mt. Kilamanjaro up close and a whole look at the gorgeous island of Zanzibar we landed an I was practically running off the plane. The minute I stepped off, a wave of heat and humidity hit me and it immediately smelled like Florida to me. I threw off my sweatshirt and ran inside. Once I had filled out my visa stuff and shelled out 100 dollars, I was headed to pick up my bag.
Thank god it was there. Then I wandered out the back door and was immediately greeted by Jessica of one heart source. That was it! I was finally here.
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