The final leg of my Nouakchott-Kigali journey was on a new-ish airline called RwandAir Express. Now, I mentioned in a previous post that Royal Air Maroc was stuck in the ’90s, but if that’s true, RwandAir is stuck in the ’80s, complete with the non-smoking light that can actually be turned off (it wasn’t ever turned off, but still…) I definitely felt the plane rattle considerably on take-off and landing. The food quality was also kind of sketchy, but perhaps I was just too spoiled on Emirates Airlines and my perspective was skewed.
The plane was jammed with people, and the seats were crushed together in the style of U.S. domestic planes, except this flight was 8 hours, including a stop-over to drop people off in Mombasa, Kenya. The one saving grace was that I was so tired I actually slept, which I rarely can do on planes. And I needed all the strength I could get to contend with the crush of people getting off the airplane.
Bottom line – fatigue, cramped seats, icky food and pushy people all combined to make the final leg of the trip feel reeeeeeally long. Fortunately, the weather in Kigali was GORGEOUS, which perked me up immediately, as did knowing that the trip was finally over! After a confusing few minutes in the airport, where the airport worker first told the crush of people getting off the plane to wait in one spot, then changed his mind and made us all form a line in another spot (neither spot was conducive to a line, so it ended up just being a cluster of people shuffling from one side of the room to the other), I broke free and made it to passport control. Which was just one woman at a desk. The vast majority of folks on my plane were continuing on to Lagos, Nigeria – another example of the difficulties of African travel; we came from Dubai, and they were flying to Nigeria, but had to go all the way to Rwanda first!
But as I was saying, once I made it to the passport desk, everything else was easy peasy. Except the customs lady made me take my duty free items out of the plastic bag they were in. Evidently plastic bags are not allowed in Rwanda. I wonder what the customs people do with all those plastic bags they confiscate?
Toto...We're Not In NYC Anymore 