And finally getting there

Sunday, February 12

Incredibly, my flight arriving from Boston was directly across from my flight to Kigali, so transfer time was about 30 seconds.  But they were boarding almost immediately, so no real time to stretch the legs and remember what it's like to stand again.

I paid up for Economy Comfort seats on all legs of the trip, which is worth it to me with long legs in coach.  I was on the window for both flights and had a reasonable person on the aisle who didn't mind my repeated bathroom breaks.

I did forget though how painful the flight from Europe down to Africa can be.  We were nearly 90 minutes delayed leaving Amsterdam due to ground problems ("we are changing the runway", which is a rather open-ended statement, what does that mean, why does it take 90 minutes?) but we still arrived in Kigali pretty much on time.  I spent a lot of it sleeping off and on, watching movies, documentaries, tv shows and playing games on the iPad.  Somewhere mid-Atlantic yesterday, I lost any brain power to read.  That will come later.

For all my relief at getting a visa for Rwanda before I left home, it was pretty pointless.  I still had to wait in three lines, but they moved far faster than in Kenya.  So it was more organized but still pretty pointless.  The only thing I didn't have to do is pay, since I had paid online.

Tim and Cyrus from Treks2Rwanda met us and they are both very sweet, grabbing out luggage and loading it into the car, and telling us not to process anything if we are too tired, we'll do it all tomorrow.  So Kim and I are now settling into our hotel for the night in Kigali, having arrived here at 9 pm local time.  It's pretty warm, low 80s I'd say but not oppressive.  It feels good.

Going to take some Ambien and get some quality sleep, hitting the city tomorrow before driving out to Volcanoes National Park for the gorillas.