Chapter Sixteen: The Road to Rwanda
A long day of travel in store
12.12.2021 - 12.12.2021 75 °F
View Morocco + Uganda + Rwanda on paulej4's travel map.
Bwindi - Entebbe - Kigali
Alarm at 5:00, coffee at 5:15, breakfast at 6:00 (with wonderful Patrick and jackie who will soon be on the same flight), Abdul collects me at 6:30. Before we can depart there is the tip box for the staff and the guest book into which comments must be entered. If you are wondering, my comments were of high praise.
We drive, just Abdul and I, to Kihihi airstrip for my scheduled flight to Entebbe airport. Along the way I am hoping that I am booked for 2021 and not 2022. Abdul and I, new friends who might possibly not meet again, speak of many things--but not gorillas. He is a fine man, a man you would want for a friend and I am proud to call him that. He took to calling me Papa and it stuck. The 1.5 hour drive passed quickly--if bumpily.
At Kihihi, we learn that there will be an intermediate stop on our flight at Kasese, 24 minutes away. Along the way, I am told, we will fly over the equator. A vehicle pulls up. It is Des and Kim, my hosts from Cloud Mountain Gorilla Lodge. They are headed for Belize to gather up some belongings left behind when covid turned our worlds upside down. Another vehicle comes. It is Kristin and Thomas, the other couple from our "easy" trek yesterday. Kristin excitedly tells me, "The gorillas visited our lodge." I am happy for her as she and Thomas came to Uganda for the same reason as I did: gorillas. Still another vehicle makes its way through the gate and parks next to all the others. I don't know them but introduce myself and have a fine conversation with two Italians (from near Venice) who now live in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. My theory is that on an aircraft this small we may as well be friends. Even our Captain, Roman (an introvert) and our First Officer (an extrovert) Leonard tolerate this group of muzungo. Muzungo is the word for "white people." We may be in the minority in Uganda but on this clear morning we will be the majority above it.
After buttoning up the Cessna, we begin our taxi down the gravel runway where will make a 180-degree turn to take off into the easy wind. Along the way, a flock of guinea fowl graze on the runway. Roman steers our plane in their direction and revs the engine until they scatter. There is no sense in slicing and dicing a guinea fowl on our takeoff roll. We are wheels up at 8:36
Flying over this part of Uganda one is struck by a simple fact. The homes below have no driveways leading up to a garage because there are no cars because there are, for vast stretches no roads. Paths dominate and travel by foot is the only option. True to his word, Leonard turns to me after twenty minutes and points: the equator. Sadly there is no sign of the reality that this is the girth of the planet beneath us. Six minutes later we are wheels down on the grass airstrip at Kasese to pick up a single passenger and then quickly continue our now one hour journey to Entebbe. Cruising at 8,800 feet, the flight is smooth in clear air. Volcanic craters, elephant, fields, forests and more are beneath us. At one point we fly over what is exactly like a Maasi boma, a circular arrangement of thatch topped mud and dung huts arranged in a circle to allow for confinement of grazing animals--goats and cattle--overnight. It must be something else, I think, but it reminds me of safari in Kenya.
At exactly 10:22 were are wheels down on asphalt at Entebbe International, taxiing by two big Boeing Dreamliner, one Ugandan Airways and the other Qatar Airlines. Parked at a remote parking stand occupied by other AeroLink Cessnas, we are bused to the terminal. What follows is comical.
Remember that we are a domestic flight. We have not left Uganda. We muzungo are not international passengers even though we all look like it.
First an official directs us into the covid entry hall checkpoint that I traversed a week ago. It is empty. Des explains that we don't need to be there. We continue to the passport control area and, as a group, march through like we own the place. Again, remember we are not international traffic. Next, there is the obligatory x-ray machine where we comply with instructions to place our bags on the belt. There is no magnetometer to walk through, however. We gather our bags and are "THIS CLOSE" to exiting the terminal only to be turned back by a final guard who wants to see our covid negative permission slips.
To get one of those, we all, like a family of gorillas following silverback Des, retreat to the covid entry hall where we are each individually handed a slip of paper remarkably similar to the fortune inside a fortune cookie. Each so armed, we again march through passport control, replace our bags onto the belt for screening--even though it was screened about two minutes earlier--retrieve it and make our way to the final guard. We hand him our fortune cookie slips and we slip the noose that Entebbe terminal had become.
Outside a representative of my travel arranger greets me, the others all had their different receptions. We all bade fond farewell and entered our vehicles for the trip to dayrooms or overnight accommodations, whichever was appropriate for our itineraries. My driver turned this way and that, dodging Uganda speed bumps (potholes) to make a stop at the Parking Pay office. It is a nondescript building on a dead end drive. We all find a spot to park the herd of vehicles all simultaneously departing and our various drivers jump out, trot into the office and return a couple of minutes later with what I assume to be a parking payment receipt. We back up, maneuver around the other vehicles, dodge the same potholes we just passed except we are going in the opposite direction and make our way to the parking gate. The drive ahead of us fumbles for the paper to insert into the machine but the gate--which required his receipt to open--lifted for us automatically. It is airport exit theatre at its finest.
It is a short drive to Hotel No. 5 where Peace--the clerk from a week ago--warmly greets me and instructs the bellman to carry my two backpacks to Room No. 1, the same room I occupied overnight when I was here before. I am told that I will be debriefed at 3:00 and that the driver will call for me around 7:00 to take me back to the airport. My flight, as best I know, is at 10:30 so I realize that I will have a lot of time there. Only one last detail needs to be taken care of. "Peace, did you get me my stamps?" I was given two postcards when I was here last, wrote them up for grandsons Miles and Elliot, and, since no stamps were available at No. 5, have kept them with me with the promise that stamps would await me upon my return to No. 5. They do not await me.
It is too early for lunch but I know where I must go: poolside where I can write these words in the shade of a vine covered pergola. One detail that could still trip me up: covid precautions for entry into Rwanda eleven or so hours from now. The backstory is simple one.
On Wednesday (it is Sunday now) I received a WhatsApp communication from Grace Namyalo, one of my travel gurus: "Hello Paul. Hoping all is going well? You are required to fill out a Rwanda locator form before arrival into Kigali on the 12. I have emailed you the link and document required to be attached." They didn't arrive but she resent it and it made its way into my inbox.
It is not the kind of form that requires a printer; you fill it out online, uploading images of the required documents. I began: passport number, check. vaccination certificate, check. Hotel reservation in Kigali, check. Covid test results, stop. I don't have those yet and it wouldn't matter anyway because that was Wednesday and even if I could have gotten a covid test in the jungle, it would have been to early to be of any use next Sunday.
You will recall that Abdul made his magic--with help from the office I think--and I got a covid test yesterday at Bwindi lodge and then the results last night: Negative. So last night I repeated the completion of the Rwandan Passenger Locator Form and, after having paying the required fee of $60 online, and, wonderful news, received this email overnight: "Dear Paul Russell, Welcome to Rwanda. Thank you for completing the Public Health Passenger Locator Form. Your Case Unique ID is EK0764969."
Then, of course, there is more. "All travelers arriving in Rwanda will be screened upon entry. All travelers must be tested for COVID-19 upon arrival at the Airport. Once at the Airport, the following shall be the process:
1 Step 1: You will be screened for COVID-19 symptoms and check for the validity and authenticity of your COVID-19 RT PCR test certificate.
2 Step 2: You will be tested for COVID-19 upon arrivals.
3 The cost of 60 USD charge for COVID-19 RT-PCR test upon arrivals at Kigali International Airport. For further information on payment method, please follow these instructions.
4 All travelers are required to wait 24 hours for the results of their COVID-19 test taken upon arrivals in a designated transit hotel.
5 All travelers transiting for more than 12 hours through Rwandair will be screened and take a second RT-PCR test and waiting for the results at the designated hotels at his/her own cost. The results of COVID-19 test will be fast tracked so that passengers can get the results before the next flight.
6 Step 3: All COVID-19 preventive measures announced by the Ministry of Health must be respected during waiting period of the results.
7 Step 4: If a traveler's test result is positive for COVID-19 (even if asymptomatic) while in Rwanda, they will be treated as indicated in the National Covid-19 Management Guidelines until they have fully recovered, at their own cost. We encourage all travelers to have international travel insurance.
Once again, we thank you for your patience and cooperation and wish you a memorable stay in Rwanda."
If you followed all of that then you can see that Rwanda is thorough. I have to have a COVID test within 1 day or arrival and then another one of the day of arrival. When I get to Kigali, I will feel safer than I have anywhere, anytime in the past 18 months.
During a so-so lunch on the fine veranda at No. 5, I am serenaded by background music somehow inappropriate in equatorial Uganda: "Dashing through the snow In a one-horse open sleigh," and "Frosty the Snowman is a fairytale they say. He was made of snow, but the children know
how he came to life one day." The melting part of that particular tune is surely more appropriate. To pass the time remaining, I simply sit and read between bouts of dozing off.
I am collected by Jonathan at 7:00 to return to the Entebbe Airport. This time, no bribe was solicited to enter the airport grounds. Check-in for Rwandair WB423 leaving Entebbe at 10:30 and arriving at Kigali, Rwanda, at 10:30 is smooth except for the fact that excessive documentation is required and it takes quite a bit of time to verify it all: Passport, Negative COVID test, proof of hotel accommodation in Kigali, East Africa Visa, onward flight documentation to Brussels and Rwanda Passenger Locator confirmation number. (This is a one hour flight crossing one time zone and it takes nearly as long to check in for it) So, too, is immigration not a problem other than the fact that I choose the slow line of the two available. My guy is very thorough, or, all the people ahead of me are suspicious characters while all the upstanding citizens are in the neighboring line. I am lucky that there is a Priority Pass Lounge (The Karibuni: Swahili for "Welcome"), giving me a nice place to pass the more than two hours before we board.
Aboard a De Havilland DHC-8 400, usually just referred to as a Dash-8, I will be in business class. The initial version of these babies first took to the skies in 1983, between the births of son Cianán and daughter Megan. I wasn't paying too much attention to turboprop-powered aircraft in those days. You can squeeze around 68 passengers inside one of these twin engine, overwing, high-tail workhorse aircraft. The sound and the vibration, as I recall, takes you back to an earlier time in aviation. My Natural World Safari itinerary warns me about my arrival in Rwanda saying, "Please note that you will need to pass another COVID test upon arrival to Kigali international airport (cost 60USD payable directly)..."
I think I will save my arrival in Kigali for tomorrow. I will be too spent to spend time completing this documentation. I just hope it won't be too exciting. I'm up for being bored.
