The African Adventure. part one. scene one. take four (immunization shots).

so i thought it would be good to share a little bit more about our 2 week trip to Africa. It was such an epic experience that one post, and a lame regurgitated email post at that.. doesnt quite do it justice..and well lets admit it.. my tri training is close to nonexistant so i have very little in the way of swimbikerun to muse about... so all you creepy people out there that i really do love so much...here is some more stuff to keep you from spending too much money on Amazon, or entering data in to an excel sheet, walking the dog.... :) at least temporarily...

so right.. we were SUPPOSED to fly - over the course of oh... 24 hours.. from Raleigh to Kilimanjaro (which by the way for those of you who, like me, failed geography, is located in Tanzania in central eastern africa on the coast.) much to our disappointment before we could even leave DC, we found out we would be spending the night in Ethiopia because we would miss our final connection. unlike when you get stuck in atlanta and there is a flight leaving every 47 minutes or so to seemingly every po-dunk town in this country, there is but ONE flight to kilimanjaro per day.

SO fast forward. 16,17,18 (who knows i lost count) hours later we land in Addis Ababa (yep took me a while to pronounce that with out sounding like Apu from the kwikimart. hey i never said i was PC and YES i know he is not african).. so right. after an ordeal at the airport about our hotel for the night (no need to dwindle on that) and an eye opening bathroom experience (again better left unsaid) we made our way out of the *ahem* airport. i had not taken 4 steps from the building when i saw three donkeys (burros? or is that only in mexico?) grazing nearby. i did a double take. for the next few moments i kept muttering to myself "donkeys. what the hell are donkeys doing here." and that my friends was not even the most jaw dropping moment of the DAY. we made our way to the hilton and after going through a gate with about 9 armed guards (though seemingly with little to do besides chew on toothpicks..)we entered the actual hotel, through a metal detector. maybe not your typical holiday inn experience but didnt phase me. what did get my attention was when we were promptly wished a "merry christmas". i suddendly felt like marty mcfly and wondered when i had jumped back 2 weeks..they had a tree and everything.. were they like those annoying neighbors who leave their lights up till february? later i would realize (stupidly) that not everyone is on the same calendar.


view from our hotel.

we dropped our stuff and decided to pay a cab driver to drive us around the city. some quick math (for bobby not me), it cost us about $35 for 3 hours tour. i had no idea what to expect, but he seemed nice enough and when he reminded us to put on our seatbelts i thought for sure we would return to the hotel with minimal damage. he took us to 2 churches, and found us some really nice local guides that took us through and explained everything. one thing they mentioned numerous times so that even an ADD person like myself got the message- they were the only african country that participated in the league of nations in geneva - this fact was depicted several times in the church. so much for seperation...and there were beautiful stained glass windows (why white people in the art i ask? made in europe.. ohhhhh). lots of old silver stuff and thick books dedicated by this emperor or that religious icon. i kinda got a bit lost trying to keep track of it all. bottom line. church is where its at.



he also took us to the market... which seemed to go on forever. i say that only because once we found our way in, for the life of me i would not have been able to get out. this is when it got a little bit.. ummm interesting. SO. MANY. PEOPLE. everywhere. not a single traffic light. no rules. no regard for anything. at one point people started banging on our cab and it got a little dicey. i just couldnt stop staring at the ladies so nonchalantly carring around dead chickens by their feet. the men auctioning off goats. the kids selling bananas and fruits. the random animals just walking through the streets. little packs of goats, and dogs and cows and chickens who had not yet met their match.







ok. so after that little afternoon fun, we went back to the hotel. they actually had a pretty nice thermal pool. soooo nice in fact... a super quick dinner and then the jet lag and lack of sleep hit. we had a 9 am flight to catch.

we took a bus to the airport in the morning, which i honestly thought they were going to kick bobby off of and leave him on the side of the road (with the donkeys).. long story... not due to his bad behaviour or anything (have you met him??), but we had bucked the rules the night before and snuck him into the hilton... (the behind story is we each flew on different ticket classes, so he was put up in a different hotel..) anyway crisis averted and we arrived at the terminal. as we got off the bus and made our way along the sidewalk some random guy checked our passport. (for what i dont know.. he seemed a bit more interested in all of the other stamps...) we went through some really sketchy security - im not sure they were in fact actually paying attention to the contents of our bags. then seeing only one option that might take us to a terminal, we walked past a lady who then asked "are you leaving the country?" i said YES. she had no reply so we went on. i suppose that was customs?

anyway the only other eventful well.. event.. in ethiopia was that our flight was delayed. by 4 hours. now likely most of you have spent that amount of time in a US/european airport terminal. there are restaurants, TVs, bars, internet connections etc. not here. here we watched the workers on the tarmac. watched them load up all of (what we suspected was) our luggage onto one plane... only to remove it all about 20 minutes later... hmmmm. the one shining moment was when they brought out cokes and what i think was french toast to all the people waiting. that was nice. finally we are on our way. phew!

we landed in kilimanjaro, immediately were engulfed in the most oppressive heat i've ever felt (110 degrees), were rejoicing (thank you jesus!!) at seeing both pieces of checked luggage and met our guide who then drove us to the hotel. that night we caught our first glimpse of the mountain. WOW.



our hotel is about 26 (yep i automatically thought. wow marathon.. ha!) miles from the base of it.

more to come. we go on safari next!

slowly, slowly.

thats how you get to here.



the top of the world.

it was amazing. it was exciting. it was EXHAUSTING. quite frankly the hardest thing i've ever done in my life.

do i have stories? yes.

do i have pictures? yes.

do i have thoughts on things i saw that i didnt think existed? you betcha.

but for now i must still ask people what day it is, and even hesitate when looking at my phone wondering if its been reset to the correct / currently occupied time zone.

but here is a little snippet from the first part of the trip... when we spent a day/night unexpectedly in ethiopia (addis ababa) and then went on safari. (sorry no pics yet. i'm at work. they are on the camera at home. use your imagination for now.. or google i'm sure will give some good stuff).

***NOTE this is an email i sent to a friend just after arriving. its messy and may not make sense. but if you read this blog with any regularity its nothing new***

Addis ababa- sheer chaos. They wished me a merry xmas upon arrival. Utter confusion. Saw people carrying around dead chickens and auctioning off goats. SO. MANY. PEOPLE. An electronics store selling boom boxes from 1984. And more mentions of the league of nations in conjunction with god than mentionable. their one and only country olympic gold medal is in the museum of a church. Oh and a facist italian invasion. Twice. Flight delay here means you get free french toast. french toast on an average day would be well, average. but 4 hour flight delay made it golden crusted.
Saw kili for first time at dusk last night. Wow. Just wow. i'm gonna climb that sucker. Celebrated arrival in tanzania with large beer and bottles of wine. Made many new friends in span of 3 hours. Then locked myself IN my hotel room this morning. that my friends takes a special kind of person.
On safari today. On the way saw a huge coke billboard (dont get the wrong idea.... there is NOTHING for miles, then ONE billboard. COKE seems to be the only thing thats made it this far) with maasai person standing under with goats. Such contrast. not many cars. people walk for MILES just to get a days worth of food and water. Close enough (but not dumb enough) to pet elephant,giraffe and ugly babboon. Hotel is on top of mtn in middle of nowhere, down the muddiest, bumpiest road that ever existed. and the pool I swam in (using that term lightly as I piddled about like a 6 yo in a wading pool) is nicer than the one I swim in at home. The most beautiful sunset ever. i've seen poverty like i could not imagine. yet people persevere and remain happy. dont ever for one second take what you have for granted. having a roof over your head and running water is more luxury than you could ever imagine.


one pic of me on the hike.. :) more to come. i need to remember it all first.

packing makes you realize you have nothing to wear

so lots going on. lots means the blog goes unattended. lots means lots goes unattended.

after our little trip to pittsburgh, which by the way was so much fun!... things settled down for oh about 3 days then back up to warp speed. we traveled down to the ATL for a merry weekend and saw about an inch of the white stuff, much less than our yankee friends who were literally knee deep. i kinda missed the chaos, but temps were freezing enough to make it feel like home. ha.

from there i went farther south, to the vast stripmall lined city of tampa. well actually more out on the coast, we stayed at indian rocks beach. i met my mom and littlest brother there for a few days - and some quality time with my ninety eight year old grandpa. yep he was born in 1912, graduated college in 1934 and wow... the stories i could tell you. he worked on the panema canal as an engineer and to this day knows more about politics than i could ever dream. he tells me "kari getting old is hell, dont ever do it". or "she's nuts i tell you, nuts. crazy old lady is 102". we taught him how to use google earth. amazing to think of the things he's seen in his lifetime.

now back home for a quick stopover (thats what raleigh has become lately, a place to do laundry and maybe catch a few nights sleep) before heading here on wednesday.



africa. i'm excited. and nervous. and excited. the plane ride will be sheer torture. i am not one who can sit still and watch movie after movie. or read. or stare straight ahead. ugh painful. so why africa. well why not. but actually its a work trip. all in the name of promotion, and telling the story of performance cotton.

after 2 weeks its home again for one day then out to salt lake city for a week. looks to be an interesting january for me.

on the training front. its haphazard at best. i literally tried to swim about 4 times in the past 2 weeks and have encountered pool closings for way to many reasons. so we'll just have to see how things turn out.

later.