To Africa in Five Days or If This Is Tuesday This Must Be Belgium

Not to mislead regular readers of this blog; we are not going to Africa in five days...it just took us five days to get here.

Lounging in a small guest house in the suburbs of Nairobi, Kenya trying to recover from a five day trip to get here, yes I said five days. The lure of a cheap ticket out of LA convinced us that the 600 mile drive to LA from Mt Shasta was worth the $800 savings. It was a fortunate decision as a few days before we were scheduled to leave we were informed that our lovely little cabin in the desert had been burglarized. This disturbing news prompted us to step up an already hectic schedule to include a drive to secure our cabin and take an inventory of our loss. In our usual marathon driving fashion, we drove most of the 750 miles to our cabin in one shot to spend the night in the desert town of Barstow. Since Barstow does not have much to recommend it, I will leave you, dear readers, with the advice to just avoid it if possible.

Up at dawn to beat the heat, the next day we drove the last hour and a half to our cabin. While our worst fears weren't realized, we were disheartened to find most of our collection of antique furniture and Mexican pottery taken and the rest of the cabin literally turned upside down.

Fortunately, the burglars had not destroyed anything getting in and out so in short order Deb inventoried while I dashed to town to get some new and stronger dead bolts for the doors. Next it was on to LA to drop our car and catch a ride courtesy of Deb's friends Patti and brother Mike (thanks Patti and Mike) to make it to the airport the next morning. After driving 1000 miles in two days, about 8 hours sleep total, and a panicky feeling of, "Oh my God I am not ready for this," we got on the plane.

Hangin' with da moose in Montreal

After a flight to Brussels via Montreal, we stumbled off the plane bleary eyed, staggering under what was a mountain of luggage for us, to find no sign of our next flight to Nairobi. We flailed around the transit lounge that contained absolutely no sort of information booth to direct us to our flight. Finally we accosted a security worker who directed us to terminal T. After a 45 minute trip through security where our bags were x-rayed, searched and x-rayed again we wandered through the labyrinth of a terminal. After walking for what seemed several miles staggering under the aforementioned mountain of luggage we found a man sitting behind a desk for Brussels Airlines who informed us our flight had been canceled and we would have to retrace our steps to a service desk to work out our next move. So it was back through the labyrinth of miles of terminal to the service desk. Now, more exhausted than ever and dying of thirst we waited in line for the next 2 1/2 hours to be told the flight would not leave for 24 hours but we would be put up in a hotel for the night. After receiving vouchers for the hotel and food, we were now almost crawling with fatigue and jet lag but made it across the street to the hotel. We had to "suffer" through a night in the Sheraton. ( Actually, the hotel was quite nice and we really did not suffer at all.) We immediately crashed on the luxurious bed now having been traveling steadily for the past three days. We woke a few hours later and determined not to waste an opportunity, jumped onto a train into the center of Brussels and spent the next few hours wandering around the old part of the city admiring its ornate gold plated Rococo architecture.




We jumped back on the train to arrive back at the Sheraton to find that we had missed the buffet dinner provided for stranded passengers. After complaining to the management we were seated in the hotel restaurant to dine in a quite civilized manner on locally grown roast chicken and salad Nicoise.

We retired to our room to wake several hours early and went back to the airport for the final flight to Nairobi. The flight to Nairobi felt like a night on a street corner in Harlem with several of the passengers bopping around, greeting friends, drinking wine and just generally having a good time. It was a rare chance to be involved in a true cross cultural experience as we chatted with some of our fellow passengers.

The 10 1/2 hour flight seemed short and soon we were in Nairobi to be met by a driver sent by our guest house and drove off into the African night.