Are we there yet? I'm hungry!

Well, this is a first for me--a long plane trip.  The longest time I was ever on a plane was about four hours.  We're talking 2 days of travel... on the way home I think it was 33 hours.  Craziness!  Anyway we had a layover in Washington D.C. and had to spend the night at the hotel because our HUGE jet to Africa took off the next morning.  (Unfortunately we were delaying in Detroit, so our tour out in D.C. didn't happen.  I'll have to plan a trip there someday!)

So we settled into our hotel and discovered they had two resident swans in the center fountain.  These swans were so big--much larger than the canada geese on our playground every spring!  Harvey enjoyed hanging out with the "class pets" of the hotel, but I had to snatch him up because Ms. Swan was quite curious about him.  (You can see her eyeing him in this picture--I think it's a smile on her face as she thinks he is food!)

So, we spent a full day on the jet to Africa and landed in Addis Ababa.  From there we jumped a plane to Kilimanjaro.  After that plane we flew into Mwanza.  Oh my it was a lot of planes and time!  However they fed us on every one.  At first I was so excited about the food and huge bags of cashews.  I love Indian and curries, so the food was welcome.  By the end I really just wanted a grill cheese or salami sandwich, but here comes the curry (even for breakfast)!  I'm currently on a curry break... but didn't get too sick of the rice we ate.  

This, however, was my favorite meal on the flight there... chicken, curry rice, spicy couscous, and not one, but two rolls with a sweet cinnamon cake.  Carbohydrates galore!  They also gave us choices of lamb, beef, or veggie.  I tried them all!  I was very happy to see fruit and veggies (well, ones I could peel or knew were washed carefully) at any other meal after being assulted with dinner rolls and crackers.

So here is some of my favorite curries at lunch.  A curried lentil (beans), different curried chicken, roasted potato (might be a tumeric-based curry here too--it's a very yellow colored spice), salad, and naan bread.  (Like freshly cooked tortillas.)  All the dishes were very tasty and this is the basic Africa style dinner.  Lots of veggie and non meat options, but you could almost always find chicken too!  I didn't mind all the vegetarian options--in fact, I kinda went this route when I wanted to take a break from meat or if the meat dish was not what I cared for.

At dinner it was dark!  The Sun set around 6:20 pm daily, so dinner (which we ate around 7:00 pm) was always dark.  It was so neat though--we usually sat outside in the open air or on open patios.   Here we were in Mwanza at the Hotel tilapia on Lake Victoria.  They set up a huge table for us right on the water and I felt very spoiled with the view.  The houses where built into the mountain side their lights danced off the water!

Oh, the boxed lunches.  On many days we were not at a hotel or restaurant to eat.  So the hotels prepared boxed lunches to go.  Food that was good to sit in warm weather, unrefrigeratored, until my hungry belly beckoned it.  Well, about half of it--err, I don't eat eggs.  Is this a mayo sandwich--or is it cheese--or butter? Poke, poke.  I'm not sure.  (Tastes it) I'm still not sure.  Okay, banana and friend chicken it is!  This one also had a crescent roll and sweet muffin.  Others were more varied with a mango juice pouch, oranges, a piece of chocolate, and sometimes cake.  Overall very bread product heavy.  

Oh, we even had a hamburger with a fried egg on top a few days.  (Those days the vegetarian box lunches were REALLY awesome--peanuts, cashews, potatoes, fruit juice, oranges -and- bananas.)  I was munching on my still warm burger after picking off the egg and after about half of the meat I was done.  That was enough beef for me--it tasted just a bit different, was ground up more roughly than i'm used to, and I decided not to chance my still happy stomach.  We got three bananas in that box, and I traded the muffin for more fruit.  

Alas, our extra food we did not eat did not go to waste.  Most of the time we shared it with our drivers and gave the extra to people around us.  On the last day I shared mine with a stray dog that wandered over (there were no people near who wanted my extras) and the dog was very happy to have it!  In Africa I didn't waste food.  I made sure to eat what I put on my plate and careful not to waste what someone else could have instead!

What was my first "American" meal once I got home?  Nachos.  I was craving a really, really salty and crunchy tortilla chip with fresh salsa (I avoided tomatoes while in Africa) and guacamole.  Oh, and extra jalapenos--It was a mouth explosion of happiness!  It was also so huge--I had to share with my friends... there was no way I could finish it all.  (No I didn't really lick my food like the picture shows, we were just really tired from the plane and therefore thought this was a really funny picture to take!)