My trip to Africa started with a lesson
that I imagine will be valuable throughout the trip; do not expect things to go
exactly as planned. My flight out of
Winnipeg was delayed by nearly 2 hours, ensuring the fact that I would be
missing my connecting flight in Chicago.
I did finally arrive in Chicago, and expectedly, my flight to Brussels
had already left nearly an hour prior. I
went to the United Airlines desk and they set to work trying to get me to
Nairobi as quickly as possible. A new
route was found and I was off to London no more than 2 hours later. This new flight plan was eliminating one of
my connections, and would be taking me directly from London to Nairobi,
however, it meant an 8 hour layover in London.
After arriving in London, I was able to get online and send Joce an
update on my arrival time. A driver was
going to be picking me up at the airport, and they would need to know that I
wouldn’t be arriving as initially scheduled.
After hours spent trying in vain to catch up on some needed sleep, I
boarded the second red-eye of the trip, bound for Nairobi. Seemingly all ready to go, our plane didn’t
seem to budge from the gate, several minutes later we were greeted by some
fantastic news from the captain; the computers in air traffic control were
down, no flights were leaving at present, there is no eta. 30 minutes later the computers were back up,
we were in the queue, waiting to be directed to take off, still no eta. 60 minutes later we had reached the front of
the queue and were off, this time however, there was no way to alert anyone of
the additional delay. Thankfully, when
I arrived in Nairobi, all my luggage showed up, and my driver was still there
waiting for me. We made the 20 minute
drive back to our house, through Nairobi morning rush hour in only 90 minutes,
and I had finally arrived. Safe and
sound. I escaped the 36 hour adventure
mostly unscathed, now it was time to sleep.
-steve
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