Big Ol' Jet Airliner

Another big milestone has been reached on our Africa trip today -- we've purchased our plane tickets. Even though the trip is still over six months away, it turns out that seats were starting to fill up fast for the crucial leg of the journey from Amsterdam to Kilimanjaro airport.

KLM is pretty much the only major carrier that flies from Europe to this part of Tanzania. There are undoubtedly other, cheaper ways to get there, but I'm guessing that the time required to uncover these special deals would not be worth the savings.

I bought tickets only for the Amsterdam-Tanzania roundtrip at this time. I'm hoping to use some frequent-flyer miles in the near future to get a free trip from the US to Amsterdam. Just getting between the Netherlands and Africa isn't cheap, though; my coach-class ticket cost me $1,169.61. (The other Yanks, on the other hand, paid over $2,000 for all their flights.)