The internet is Very spotty and I'm trying to grab this opportunity to send out a bit.
Tue-Wed, Apr 9-10 Flying to Amsterdam
We packed Maddie off to the Cat House Hotel on Monday afternoon and she settled into her usual Junior Suite. Tuesday morning we got up at six, ate up most of the leftovers, put the rest in our worm bins, and set off in our rental car at 8:20 AM for LAX. KNX said the traffic was bad on 101, so we took the coast route, as did many others so we crawled into Santa Monica, and managed to get to the Budget office just before 11. We were delayed there a bit as the Budget official found a tiny nick in the windshield that I’m sure was there when we picked up the car…so who knows what that will cost??
We got into the line at KLM and wound around very slowly, finally checking in our bags to Accra an hour later. Bob got through the body scan with his money belt on and didn’t have to strip!
We got on our modified-for-cargo/passengers 747 and got our wonderful Economy Comfort seats: five across with three by the window and two next to a wall which we got. So great with extra leg room and a foot between me and the wall for “stuff”. Settled in, stretched out, ate some delicious pasta with tomato & olive sauce, watched “Amour”, not the best choice as I sat there weeping into my wine, but then dropped off to sleep for quite a few hours. Awoke at 7 AM for breakfast and landed in the fog at Schiphol Airport. This is supposed to be one of the nicest airports in Europe and it certainly is! Lots of nice restaurants, quiet lounges, a library, and a small branch of the Rijks Museum with about twenty paintings. With a six hour layover we decided to splurge on a one-day pass in the KLM lounge and so settled into the peace and calm and comfort of great chairs, open bar and deli & internet!
At three we took off in a KLM Airbus A330 (full!) in dense cold fog and flew due south for seven hours. The sky suddenly cleared over very southern France and northern Spain and I could see Dali’s coastal house that we had visited with Hilary a few years ago. Mallorca passed by looking like a promising place to visit in the future. We cruised over Algeria and into the Sahara for a couple of hours. At first everything was quite green in the stream beds, and then the wide washes were full of scattered palm trees. But finally all greenery petered out and we crossed beautiful sculptured dunes, and later bright pinks ones. It hazed up and we didn’t see anything until the lights of Accra appeared. (Bob said his GPS indicated that we circled around Mali).
We disembarked down a rickety ladder into the warm tropical night and worked our way through the crowds to enter the country and claim our bags.
Surprisingly Phil Gregory, our guide, was there to greet us along with five of our birding companions. We took off in a nice bus that will be our transportation for the next two weeks and drove for over an hour to the Alexis Hotel in the suburb of Tema. The rooms are named for fruit rather than being numbered - we’re living in “Melon” which turned out to be a large, A/Ch’d room with peeling paint and only one towel, but with a desk to sit at and a balcony (no lock on the door). We are going to meet at 6:30 for breakfast and then bird the grounds as we have one more companion to pick up at the airport tomorrow.
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