Wed-Fri June 20-22 - Traveling to Uganda

Well, at last

Google believes who I am and will let me post!  And this is one of the rare places where there actually is wifi!!

Miss Maddie trotted into her junior suite at the Cat House Hotel without a whimper on Tuesday evening, and we got up at 4:15 on a foggy Wednesday morning.  Our taxi driver had been given the wrong address and went to Dover Hill Rd, but he eventually found us and delivered us to the Santa Barbara Air Bus station on Cabrillo in plenty of time.   The bus took us down the Pacific Coast Highway and delivered us to Delta at LAX at 8:15.  We stopped at Barney’s Beanery and split a California omelet for breakfast and then went to our gate, where we found out that our flight was delayed for over an hour!  We’re flying to Minneapolis where we had a 2.5 hour wait for our flight to Amsterdam, so we were a little nervous. 

We finally boarded and took off two hours late, flying economy comfort which gave us lots of leg room, free drinks, and a Chicken wrap for purchase.  We arrived at MSP, jumped off the plane and ran from concourse F to G arriving just as our section was boarding!  We settled into our seats with dinner, drinks and movies, and a little sleep.  As we were flying north near the solstice, the sky never got very dark and we had red glow on the horizon most of the way.   

Thu, June 21- We arrived in Amsterdam at 11 AM and were very impressed to find our luggage made the tight connection and was waiting for us!  Good on Delta!!  We bought some Euros, caught the hotel bus for the airport Best Western, waited a while for our room to be ready, and finally had a chance for a good nap!

Dinner at the hotel restaurant where, although we’re here in the middle of European wines, the list only had “red, white & rose”!  And then the red wine we got was from Chile.  We got just a carafe of merlot which was enough as it was not very good, but we had acceptable pork satay and steak, and split a chocolate sundae.  Back to our room to watch the very exciting Argentina vs. Croatia World Cup game, and then a pretty good night’s sleep.

Fri, June 22 - We got up at 6:15 and off to the airport on the 7:30 bus.  We got our boarding passes from a kiosk and then checked our bags into a cage-like robot from which we managed to get our baggage tags and affix them without too many wrinkles.  Unlike five years ago when security was at the departure gate, Schiphol now has an elaborate and thorough security area where we were laboriously frisked.  We then stopped at a Lowlands Cafe for a delicious Dutch chicken, lettuce and chutney sandwich on a baguette and cappuccino and, finally, made our way over to Concourse F and met one of our group, Kathy from Minnesota, and discussed birding until we took off at eleven.  We taxied for five miles crossing a highway and a canal before finally reaching the end of the runway!

Clouds quickly blocked our view after takeoff but we did manage to catch glimpses of snow-capped mountains in Slovenia and bits of Greece between huge anvil thunder clouds.  After the Egyptian coast we continued over a long stretch of barren sand as we crossed the Sahara.  Unfortunately, it was so hazy that we couldn’t see any interesting sand features as we had on our return fight from Ethiopia in 2003.   We were fed several meals, drinks, ice cream cones, and landed in Kigali, Rwanda, at seven PM.  We waited for an hour and passengers disembarked and others came on and finally we left, turning north and landing in Entebbe at 9:45 local time.

With our electronic visas that we had printed out in Santa Barbara, we zipped through Immigration, collected our luggage after a while and were met by a rep from Journeys Uganda who drove us to the lovely Papyrus Guest House where we were welcomed with passion fruit juice and showed our very pretty rooms where we collapsed.

Our room at the lovely Papyrus