We arrived in Nairobi in the evening to find that our luggage didn't make it onto the airplane with us. We all experienced our first night sleeping under mosquito nets, but that didn't stop some critter from biting Wally about thirty times. You can see where the guy cruised around on his leg by following the red bumps.
 
In the morning, we went to the airport because we had been told that our bags would most likely be on the morning flight from Amsterdam, but they weren't on that flight either. "No problem," we were told. "Just because they didn't tell us your bags are on the way doesn't mean that the bags won't come [on the evening flight]." I called Zainab at ZARA Tours, and she advised us to take the 1:30pm shuttle to Moshi. She said, "no problem" -- our bags would be shuttled to Arusha and Moshi, and then hauled up the mountain by porters once they arrived. We were all very skeptical at this point, but not having any stinkin' bags wasn't going to stop us from enjoying our vacation, so we piled onto the Riverside shuttle and departed for Arusha. The road between Nairobi and Arusha is long and bumpy. In fact, sometimes, the road just ends for awhile before beginning again, for no apparent reason. At the border of Kenya and Tanzania, you have to present your passport and visa (if required) twice -- once on each side -- while being accosted by locals trying to sell you "authentic" Maasai knives and other crap. Being Asian, we got the typical, "Japanese!", yelled at us randomly. If we were Japanese, we would know it already, but since we're not, it only served as a minor (but not unexpected) annoyance. I'm not sure why locals in countries where tourism is the primary industry feel compelled to assert where they think you come from. Anyway, after some number of hours of being thrown around in the back of a bus, we arrived in Arusha, where we transferred to another van, destined for the Springlands B&B hotel. On the van, we met Alison and Nick, both Brits with similar aspirations to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. Before arriving at the Springlands hotel, we stopped at the ZARA Tours headquarters, whose fascade blends in with the other buildings on the street (that means that it seemed to us that we were stopping in the middle of a dark street in an unfamiliar town. it didn't help our confidence level, despite knowing that ZARA is a reputable tour company). Zainab came out to meet us and to try to recruit Nick for the climb (he had taken a shuttle to Moshi without having booked a climb or safari). Anyway, after that we finally arrived at the Springlands hotel, and after washing up and eating dinner, we were briefed on the itinerary of our climbs. Alison had also signed up to climb via the Machame route, so she was to join our group (with her own guide) for the next week. After the briefing, we retired in our mosquito net-covered beds, dreaming (vividly because of the malaria pills) of lost luggage.
 
[next section]