The Road to Kigali

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 Rwanda is not an easy country to reach. 

Flight times from Sarasota to Atlanta, Atlanta to Amsterdam, and Amsterdam to Kigali, totaled 18 hours and 25 minutes, over a two-day period.

You can imagine my relief when we deplaned in Kigali, but things quickly took an unexpected twist, when one of the customs agents insisted I owed $50 for my Rwanda visa (especially considering I paid $160 for the full-page, full-color one attached to one of my passport pages). 

Finally her boss overruled her, and I thought I was on my way to baggage claim for my safari duffel bag, which thankfully made the journey intact. 

I and two other OAT travelers headed outside to meet our driver, and other weird things started happening. The first man had no OAT id - just 2 names typed on a sheet of paper (mine was not one of them.) When we pulled into the Park Inn, I realized there was an issue - my hotel was des Mille Collines. 

Apparently two different OAT groups were traveling to Rwanda simultaneously - a first for me in 15 trips. I had the Park Inn manager call the Mille Collines manager to confirm my reservation. The driver took me there, and fortunately my driver was there and we solved the puzzle. No harm, no foul - just weird.

Comments

  1. Adrianne PSeptember 15, 2022 at 3:42 PM

    What fun would it be if you didn't have these little diversions? They make for great stories! Hope the rest of your trip is awesome!

    ReplyDelete

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