Leavin' on a jet plane

August 29 - 30 2011

Our journey from Indianapolis to Kenya was a short 31 hours door to door.

Here are a few highlights:

Indianapolis United baggage check-in gets a 1 on a scale of 1-10 for promptness and customer service. 45 minutes to check less than 15 passengers does not seem acceptable, for US standards.

Brett went through TSA three times, his record for this trip. Luckily, the TSA agent had a good sense of humor at 5:30am when Brett said I "snuck his water bottle into his bag!"

Dulles airport wins the prize for best airport this round. Comfy seats, free wifi, Ben & Jerry's in the terminal, what more could I want?

Ethiopian Air was a pleasant surprise. New, clean air craft, personal interactive tv's, good food. It's lucky for us we're not big movie buffs so we were able to "enjoy" many new-to-us movies throughout the flight.

Addis Ababa airport claims to be one of the leading airports in Africa. Needless to say, they do not seem to be using google stats, like Dulles, to check for consumer behavior. There were many surprises/eye openers for us during our three hour layover:

• As many may or may not know, I am not a fan of the smoking laws in Indianapolis. You can imagine my disgust when the man sitting next to us lit up in the airport!




• Thanks to a tip from a friend, I brought along my own TP for the trip. I was not expecting to use it in the airport when ALL THREE STALLS were out!
  
  


• My favorite was seeing the posting regarding boarding times.
  

Our next flight on Ethiopian was not quite the same level of quality, especially in regards to cuisine, which on this flight, was far more local.

My second use of traveling tips came out this flight: bring along a pleasantly scented lotion to place under your nose and on your hands if smells get overwhelming. My hands were well hydrated after the little girl behind me found the food and turbulence did not mix well.

Nairobi airport has separate buildings for international and domestic flights. After obtaining our visas we were thrilled to see all of our checked baggage arrived! We gathered our bags and walked across the street to the domestic "terminal." This gave Brett another chance to prove his adeptness with security. He only went through twice this time, thanks to my quick reminder to remove his shoes right before he walked through the metal detector. What I did not see, with his shirt untucked, was his belt. So he had to go through once again.

Security did question the chest tubes and biopsy needles, but once they saw everything was sealed they let us go.

We wanted to acquire minutes for our Safaricom cell phones during our four hour layover. In order to do this we had leave the secured area and go to the "pharmacy." The whole store/closet is about as big as the children's vitamin section at our local CVS. But they had the mobile minutes and even loaded them onto my phone for me. Which is good because I don't know how I could have done that since I can barely figure out how to text on this thing!

On our third and final trip through airport security one would have hoped Brett would have made it through on his first trip. Sadly, he forgot the cell phone charger in his pocket and had to go through again.

Thanks to a very concerned woman,who woke me from a very sound sleep, we did not miss the flight to Mombasa. I did let Brett sleep through boarding of that flight and did not wake him until our flight to Eldoret was called. And I do mean called, the ticket taker simply stood by the doors and called out "all passengers to Eldoret may now board." So we walked out to our plane.

We were a bit rattled on board when the flight attendant announced we were headed to Kisumu! Had we walked to the wrong plane? Luckily another passenger confirmed we would be heading to Eldoret after a short stop. So we flew over the flooded Rift Valley to Kisumu, the third largest city in Kenya, which sits on Lake Victoria. Pretty sure I saw a croc in the murky green waters near the shore as we were landing.

Kisumu airport

After only 20 minutes, and one more round of lavender lotion, we finally landed in Eldoret!

A driver was waiting for us when we exited. Lucky for me I was too tired to be scared driving through traffic to get to IU House. Not sure if that will continue on our next car ride.

We are now settled in and ready for the next adventure!