After getting through security, and Mike got hassled over a first aid kit of all things, we boarded a tiny propeller plane with twelve rows of tourists bound for Dar Es Salaam. Glancing out our window as we took off, we caught our last glimpse of the mountain. Our airplane was cruising at 16,000 feet. Kili stood at 19,000 plus. This was when the impact of what we had accomplished finally hit us. You have to keep in mind that we were higher than the clouds for the latter two days atop the mountain. We couldn't tell how high we were, not even at the summit, which, as I recall, was just snowy, white, and COLD. It wasn't until that very moment on the plane that we began to fully comprehend how awesome we were. :) And, according to our wonderful flight attendants, we were super lucky that we got to see the mountain from the plane. Apparently, it is rare and far between that the clouds part at the right moment. We really did get lucky a LOT on this trip. As the excitement died down, we settled back into our seats only to find that our in-flight entertainment would be a Mr. Bean movie. We busted out laughing, took the requisite picture so we could email it to our very own Mr. Bean, and spent the rest of our hour-long flight not-so-secretly glad we had opted out of what would most likely have been a seven-hour bus ordeal to reach Dar.

Since I had made my pact to stay far far away from the internet for the duration of our trip, I had completely cut myself off from even checking my email. Thus, it was not until the evening prior to our flight, when Lea got bored and decided to read through her email, that we realized our connecting flight to Zanzibar had gotten rescheduled to a later time. Crap. But luck was still on our side. Our original connector, which had been moved to an earlier departure time for reasons unknown, ended up being delayed due to mechanical issues with the scheduled plane. That left us just enough time to make a mad dash off our first plane, run out of the arrivals terminal and over to the departures terminal, rush through airport security, get our new connector tickets, go through gate security, get to our gate, and get directed outside…to board the airplane we had disembarked not 20 minutes earlier. We had literally walked in a circle around their airport and ended up where we started. I don't know who laughed harder. Us or our fabulously funny flight attendants.

This connector flight was also when we finally figured out something that had been staring us in the face since day one. Middle-aged white women notoriously come to Tanzania to pick up youngish boy toys. This was common knowledge to at least two of my friends, neither of whom bothered to give me a heads up because, apparently, everyone knows this. In Europe. Somehow, those of us in America were missing this particular tidbit of insight. We were watching in amusement at all the 40-something's with their little 20-something's interacting on the plane when suddenly it hit us. The sly questions we had been asked, the shotgun propositions we had received, the pieces of paper with phone numbers and emails we had been slipped by random people we had greeted in passing on the mountain. Guess there was a rhyme and reason. The best part? I just realized I now have an awesome comeback for the next great aunt who laments my single status.

After the shortest flight we'd ever been on, there was probably less than five minutes between reaching cruising altitude and preparing for descent, we deplaned to find ourselves minus our luggage. While we had made our original connector, our luggage had not received the same priority. They had actually taken it off the plane and transferred it onto the afternoon connector in the 20 minutes it took for us to walk in a circle around Dar's airport. Talk about efficiency. But Precision Air has really good service and our luggage would eventually end up being delivered directly to our hostel.