Tickets for Tanzania

It's official - we're going! This week I booked plane tickets and made a down payment on our safari! Yay!

Here's what everything looks like. First of all, the plane tickets. Nathan and I are flying separately since I get a ticket through work.

Amber's Flight:
August 21st - Leave and fly Rochester to Minneapolis to Amsterdam to Dar Es Salaam (total travel time: 26 hours and 10 minutes). My team all stays in Dar Es Salaam on the 22nd and then we'll be traveling to Arusha together on August 23rd.

Nathan's Flight:
September 19th - Leave and fly Rochester to Minneapolis to Amsterdam to Nairobi, Kenya, to Kilimanjaro (total travel time: 27 hours)

We're flying different flights on the way home, so, as Nathan's mom pointed out - we can race - just like on one of my favorite shows, The Amazing Race:

Amber's Flight:
October 9th - Kilimanjaro to Amsterdam to Detroit to Rochester (total travel time: 27 hours and 20 minutes)

Nathan's Flight:
October 9th - Kilimanjaro to Nairobi to London to Chicago to Rochester (29 hours and 30 minutes)

Yes, Nathan got the worst of the two schedules, but surprisingly our flights are suppose to get to Rochester within 1 hour 15 minutes of each other. Assuming no one gets stuck in Kenya, London, Amsterdam, Chicago, or Detroit. How much do you want to bet someone will get stuck somewhere?!! :)

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Secondly, the safari. I did my first foreign wire transfer last Friday to book it. Here's our itinerary:

9/20 - Nathan arrives & Amber's program finishes

Kilimanjaro Climb
9/22 - Arusha to Machame Camp (9850 ft) - Register and start our Kilimanjaro climb. Hiking mostly through forest today.
9/23 - Machame Camp to Shira Camp (12,600 ft) - Alpine Terrain
9/24 - Shira Camp to Barranco Camp (12,950 ft) - Extra day for acclimatization
9/25 - Barranco to Karanga Valley Camp (13,900 ft) - This will lead us to Kilimanjaro's ice fields
9/26 - Karanga Valley Camp to Barafu Camp (15,200 ft)- Terrain gets really sparse and we don't stay here long as we start our summit attempt at midnight
9/27 - Barafu Camp to Summit (19,340 ft) to Mweka Camp (9,840 ft) - Summit day! Hopefully no one is too sick to get to the top! Highest point in Africa, here we come!
9/28 - Mweka Camp to Park Gate - We stay in a really nice hotel with a shower tonight!

Safari
9/29 - Arusha to Lake Manyara
This beautiful park has lush vegetation and tropical forests of giant fig and mahogany trees. Elephant, giraffe, buffalo, zebra and a variety of antelope inhabit the park as well as a variety of monkeys and a large population of hippos. There are also tree-climbing lions and, for Nathan, flamingoes, pelicans, hornbills and plenty of forest bird species.

9/30 - Lake Manyara to Serengeti & Olduvai Gorge
Afternoon game drive in the Serengeti with a stop at Olduvai Gorge, the cradle of mankind where the Leakys found evidence of human life's start in Africa.

10/1 & 10/2 - Serengeti
Two full day of game drives in the Serengeti. Depending on the time of year and the migration of the herds you can expect to see wildebeest, lions, elephants, giraffes, zebras, monkeys, baboons, hippos, rhinos, antelopes and many birds and other species.

10/3 - Serengeti to Ngorongoro Highland (Walking Safari)
Walking safari through Olmoti Craters, which is off the beaten track. We're likely to see the local people known as the Masaai grazing their animals in the crater.

10/4 - Ngorongoro Crater
Morning game drive at Ngorongoro Crater. This is the one place I've heard everyone say is not to miss. As very few animals migrate in and out of the crater with its 2000 ft. high walls, you can expect to see lions, elephants, giraffes, zebras, hippos, flamingos, jackals, rhinos, antelopes, many birds and other species.

10-5 - Ngorongoro to Tarangire
Drive to Tarangire, Tanzania's third largest national park and sanctuary for an unusually large elephant population. There is a great diversity of wildlife including lion, leopard, cheetah and up to six thousand elephant.

10-6 - Tarangire to Arusha
End of the trip

We don't leave until 10-9, so we're also entertaining the idea of going to Zanzibar, an Indian Ocean island right off the coast.