Our Flight from Dar to Arusha

After flying into Dar for the night, we headed back to the airport so we could catch our flight to Arusha to start the dreaded hike. When we arrived to the domestic terminal in Dar we were a bit shocked by the state of the airport, but rolled with it. There are no check in counters, you go through a very weird security check point (liquids, gels etc are definitely not a concern here) and then you are in the airport. We get shown to a small room and sit down at the desk. We showed the man our printed off confirmation of our flight and then had to write our names down on the clip board. After a couple of minutes he hand writes (yes hand writes) up our boarding passes and puts a purple colored sticker with the name Arusha on our bags and we are set to go. Definitely had a good laugh about the hand written boarding passes - it was awesome. After waiting a bit for our flight we head outside of the waiting area to check out the planes and to see what's going on. Well we notice these two girls heading towards the plane- so we just thought that it was time for their flight, but no, they went to one plane got their bags off that plane and walked with the airport guy to another plane - apparently their bags were already on the wrong plane haha - we were thinking that it would be a miracle if our bags made it with us to Arusha. Anyways, the planes for domestic routes are somewhat of a treat - they are 12 seaters (at the most) and well there is no cockpit - you are sitting in the cockpit, you can see every move the pilot makes. It was very cool, but terrifying at the same time. I have never been on a plane that small in my life. Our first flight was only 20 minutes (apparently you can't fly direct to Arusha from Dar - the going pattern in Africa actually, to fly directly somewhere is a small miracle) and everything went smoothly, scary, but smoothly. Now it was time for the long flight from Zanzibar to Arusha - 1hr20minutes. I'm not going to lie - it was the worst hour and 20 minutes we have experienced. When you hit turbulence in those planes it feels 1000x worse then a regular plane. As we neared Arusha the clouds got worse (as in there were more and more of them - but they weren't big storm clouds) and everyone knows that flying through clouds can result in some bumps, well bumps they were. My feet were coming off the floor on a regular basis - I was starting to feel sick. But poor Arnold was doing worse then me - I had to hold it together for both of us. I think he almost had a panic attack (and/or he might have actually had one - Gemma, you would have passed out on this flight). One bump so particular bad that it had the whole plane (all 12 of us) letting out a bit of a scream. After 30 minutes of horrible turbulence we had landed - everyone clapped and I think said a small prayer that we had arrived alive.

Needless to say, we are trying to do everything in our power to not go on another one of those flights, but it looks like we might have to in order to get back to Dar - unless we want to take the 9hr bus ride, which I think Arnold would much rather do. We will definitely keep you posted.

Two more things I want to mention about that flight - there wasn't enough seats for everyone, so a girl (about 11 years old) sat up in the co-pilot seat haha and someone kept farting throughout the flight and it was probably the worst smell ever - I think that added to us feeling ill.

Here are a couple pictures for everyone to see

Love Melissa and Arnold