Sunday, May 8, 2011

Day 77 – Don’t believe everything the guide book says!

Kampala (Uganda) to Kigali (Rwanda) – Step Town Motel

Quite a civilized departure time for the bus today of 9am, so we were waiting patiently at 8:15am for the taxi we’d booked the day before. As we should have known it didn’t arrive as expected, and after much mucking around we managed to convince someone at the hostel to drive us there (even though we kept being told the taxi was “coming”). Lucky it wasn’t far – we made it to the bus with about 10 minutes to spare.

We found out en route, at around 12:30pm, that what we’d read in the Lonely Planet about being able to get a visa at the Rwanda border was no longer the case - so we spent the next three hours worrying and working out what we’d do if we couldn’t cross the border.

On arrival at immigration our fears were confirmed – visas aren’t available at the border any more, and we were meant to have applied in advance and had a letter with us. Fortunately the officials were very nice and allowed us to get our visas there, but they did make a point of telling us not to do it again! As a result of the delays, we missed out on the customs inspection that was still going on when we made it back to the bus – so maybe we could have kept our plastic bags after all.

We finally made it to Kigali, and headed to our pleasant hotel and had a dinner while we looked over the city from one of its many hills.

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