So the last day ended up being an adventure of a different sort. We were all up and about in time for the trip to Songwe (the main airport) at 7am, and were checked in and waiting by 8:30. The plane arrived shortly afterwards, but had a software fault. We waited for nearly an hour before the pilot made an announcement to tell us that, although the fault on the aircraft was minor, it needed an engineer to reset it, and there wasn't anyone qualified to do this in Mbeya. As such, he had arranged for an engineer to come out on the later flight, due to arrive at 4pm.
This caused problems for Nancy who would then miss her connecting flight to Kenya – ticket non-transferable, so Sharon went off to sort this out while the rest of us waited around a while longer.
The airport paid for everyone to have a meal at the airport restaurant (but not a drink!) and you couldn't help feeling sorry for the guy who ran the place as he dealt with what looked like a week's worth of business in one lunchtime.
It did mean we missed out on the beach, but Richard came and found us at the Airport, and we were able to enjoy a few hours at Mbeya Zoo before things changed again.
About 1:40pm a small jet landed at Songwe, and a short while later news reached us that the plane would be leaving at 2:30, so we all double timed it back to the airport, re-checked in, reclaimed our boarding passes and identified our luggage, before heading through to the waiting room where we waited to board until about 3pm, and finally made it into the air by 3:30. Quite organised for this place.
Despite having a further slight delay in Dar while they found a boarding tube to connect to the plane, we did arrive in time for Nancy to catch a reasonably early connection to Kenya.
We had a bit of a wait for our connection (about 11 hours). With evening coming on, there was no point in going to the beach, so we settled on a three hour meal in the airport restaurant, which took us a little closer to check in time.
Four hours later and we're all checked in and waiting. See you all soon (probably before some of you read this).