We leave Anchorage behind in the midst of another winter thaw, boarding a 5:05 a.m. flight to Seattle for the first leg of our long journey to the heart of Africa (eastern ventricle to be precise).  Our overall route is Anchorage – Seattle – Atlanta –  Dubai – Doha – Dar es Salaam – Kilimanjaro, a total of about 30 hours of flight time with a couple of layover hours at each stop and a full day off in Dubai.  All flights were in coach (strangely, no partners of Alaska Airlines had any business class frequent flier seats available on any day from January to April to anywhere in Europe, Africa or the Middle East).

Fortunately we did pretty good on the flights, having the rare exit row empty middle seat on the Anchorage to Seattle leg, an exit row to Atlanta, “Comfort Coach” on the longest leg, the 14 hours from Atlanta to Dubai, and an empty middle seat between Dubai and Kilimanjaro.  Comfort Coach is certainly better than the alternative, but still nothing to brag about other than free alcohol, a moderate amount of which was important to our state of mind.  The first flight sequence (Anchorage to Dubai) effectively deprived us of two nights sleep, since we left for the airport at 3:00 a.m. the first night and then flew through the second night, arriving in Dubai at 8:00 p.m.  Phyllis spent a restless third night in Dubai (Craig did better) and we then took in the local sights for a day before leaving just after midnight of the fourth night on our final sequence of flights to Tanzania -- from Dubai to Doha (in Qatar) to Dar es Salaam, arriving at Kilimanjaro Airport in Tanzania at 10:00 a.m. the next morning.