To get in, you first need a VISA
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- Download and fill out the visa form:
- Attach required documents
- Physical copy of your passport
- A 2×2 passport photo of you in front of a white background
- A letter of invitation
- A copy of proof of your yellow fever vaccine
- A letter from employer confirming that you will return back to your home country in order to resume your duties after the trip
- Prepare payment: Obtain a check or money order for
- $150 made payable to Freddy Arsene Kore Administrative and financial Counselor to the Embassy
- Return envelope
- Provide a prepaid return label and envelope with a tracking number.
- Use FedEx, UPS, or USPS with a valid return address.
- Submit your application
- Include your passport (must have 2 blank pages)
- Mail or hand-deliver to:
The Embassy of the Central African Republic
2704 Ontario Rd NW
Washington, DC 20009
Processing Time: Quick, just like Chad! 48 hours. Sent it out on a Monday, got it back on a Thursday of the same week!
If you want to risk getting your visa on arrival with a pre-arranged message porté, the document sent to you that you’d print out and bring with you for a visa would look like this:
After 2 days in N’Djamena, we returned to Addis Ababa. Due to Niger not working out for us at the last minute, we ended up with 2 and a half days all to ourselves to figure out what to do from January 4-6 (which was supposed to be spent in Niger). Ultimately Matt decided to go on his own for 2 days in Madagascar, and I got Young Pioneer Tours to arrange a last minute guide and letter of invitation for Letti to spend 2 days in Djibouti.
As for me? I took this time to recuperate to myself in Addis Ababa at the Hyatt Regency which I chose for 2 anniversary free nights I had to use before they expired for the year.
While in Addis Ababa, I enjoyed coffee by myself and with the locals at the OG Ethiopian coffee shop, Tomoca Coffee.
Last time I walked around Addis Ababa to get around, so this time I tried hailing a cab on my own with the RIDE app… but that became an ordeal without a working phone number. Once they accepted your fare, the driver then has to call you to confirm pickup, so you can’t just walk up to it. And I realized every cab I hired was calling me to get me to walk to them, but to no avail.
After an hour of this I eventually caved to sheepishly let the Hyatt Regency concierge get me their driver waiting within the property, who then tried to upsell me in the middle of the trip more than 4x the cost it would have been on the RIDE app. We met in the middle as I did not have enough cash to pay for his originally requested amount.
And wow, for the quality of coffee here, it was worth the fight.
They’re famous for their macchiatos, so I had both that and the original black coffee. And then grabbed a bag of beans to go.
On the way back, I was finally successful using the RIDE app without a working phone number by waiting at a nearby outdoor hotel café and watching for the car to drive by. Once I caught one, I ran up to it before the driver stopped to call me. Success!
This morning I got up at 6:30am for the hotel’s shuttle service to the international terminal in Addis Ababa. I had just been upgraded to Star Alliance Gold on United (thank you Pacific Island Hopper for getting me there!), so I took advantage of skipping all the airport lines starting from the entrance through entrance security, through check-in, through passports, and finally through secondary security screening:
Once through security I realized I had another 2 hours left, so I walked over to book ahead a night’s stay at the in-terminal Skylight Hotel for the next evening (which would on my way back from Bangui before my morning flight to Brazzaville), and then settled in at the Gold Lounge.
I walked over to gate B1 approximately 45 minutes before out 10:00am departure to meet the rest of the group — Matt having just returned from Madagascar and Letti having returned from Djibouti, as well as the 2 sisters on their first monsoon: Janet and Sandra!
After an uneventful 3 hour and 45 minutes in the air, we landed on time at 11:40am local time in Bangui International Airport to a runway filled with United Nations planes:
Once we disembarked, we boarded shuttle buses that first took us to this health depot:
We walked in and had to step up one by one in front of a camcorder device on a tripod that scanned us for a fever, and then showed this guy at the desk our proof of Yellow Fever vaccine pamphlets:
After that, we walked back out and over to the arrivals lounge:
Once stepping inside, we were handed an arrivals form to fill out:
This is where your guide should be able to meet you instead of outside baggage claims. Our guide Norbert was able to quickly find me as I was filling out the form and got us through the the first line quickly to get our passports immediately stamped first (they do everything in reverse):
Then after the stamp, you don’t cross through just yet. Instead you turn around and walk over to a corner of the room to then have your passports scanned, registered etc.
Yup, it’s all reverse here — my guess is that they don’t have the power cords yet to run all the way to the kiosks where they usually scan and register passports before stamping.
After our passports are registered by this guy in the corner wall, we got our visas checked again and headed to baggage claims.
Hello Central African Republic! I had thought you would be my last country considering how “dangerous” it is to be here. But alas, not quite!
For those of you not familiar with this part of the world, the Central African Republic is a landlocked and remote country, and a lack of both water and air access has made it an expensive destination. Costs in Central African Republic can be unexpectedly expensive for foreigners as most commerce and goods must be imported, flown and shipped into the country. The more “local” goods (such as rice, beans, water, etc.) are only slightly cheaper when imported from regional nations such as Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon.
It was on December 1, 1958 when the colony of Ubangi-Shari declared itself an autonomous territory and took the name Central African Republic. Their founding father, Barthélémy Boganda, died in a mysterious plane accident a year later in 1959, only eight days before the last elections of the colonial era. The Central African Republic gained its independence in August 1960, after which David Dacko won after a power struggle and by 1962 had established CAR as a one-party state.
Since then it’s been a series of coups, a notorious period of tyranny under a self-declared emperor, Jean-Bedel Bokassa, and occasional violence from both rebel groups and outside mercenary contractors, during, from and because of which the people of Central African Republic have suffered the most.
After getting to the airport parking lot, we loaded our luggage and drove past a long line of colorful and diverse markets along the road from and to the airport: Already more bustling and way denser than the more spread out N’Djamena of 3 days prior.
We then arrived 15 minutes later at Kitika Hotel, the alternative upmarket choice from the more chosen Oubangui Hotel.
My room was quite solid. Fast WiFi, great AC, and comfortable bed. The bathroom, however, needed some practice: out came brown water from the faucets when I first turned them on, and they then gestated more spurts of mist than running water; this hotel is either really really new, or not booked as often.
My favorite part was the great view of central Bangui from my room:
After we freshened up while Sandra and Janet managed to find their Airbnb 6 minutes away, we then reconvened at 2pm for a tour of Bangui. Norbert tried to have us begin our tour at a crafts market to buy souvenirs but without any local currency, that plan was scrapped quickly.
So we instead shuffled over across the street to the Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-l’Immaculée-Conception of Bangui, the largest cathedral in Bangui.
We made it just in time for their Coptic Christmas!
From the cathedral we then drove past their parliament:
…and stopped for a quick photo at the 50th Anniversary Garden (assuming it’s to commemorate their 50 years of independence) aka the Jardin Du Cinquantenaire, which has been left abandoned to its fate and disrepair.
To obtain more local XAF currency, we stopped at Norbert’s friend’s café to exchange US Dollars at a competitive rate:
Now with cash in hand, we were guided by Norbert through and around their frenetic central market 5 km (3 mi) further north in the heart of the residential area.
What I found unique is that their raw meat butchery and fish market is in the same giant, main room as their vegetables and farmer’s market. It’s all there in one big room.
And just to compare, after the central market we visited Prima Supermarket inside Bangui Mall that was flowing with UN personnel. Most of these supermarkets in Bangui are owned by Lebanese families, so you may find the presence of Middle Eastern goods and food here (expect them to be pricey as they all have to be imported).
We stumbled upon a dental clinic next to the supermarket where our very own dentist-in-residence, Letti, checked out for herself and found a state-of-the-art dental suite — She was impressed!
After that, Norbert starter to feel a little fever and sore throat and had us return back to our hotels to freshen up for a few hours while he went to the hospital. We then got back together at 6pm without Norbert to have dinner all to ourselves by the river at the Oubangui Hotel’s 2nd floor restaurant.
When we were about to eat our grilled river capitán fish dishes, we found out we were essentially served seared tuna as it was completely uncooked past the surface. I had a few bites in when I then noticed our local driver from Kitika Hotel asked to send his fish back to cook it a little more. Taking that a sign, the rest of us did as well much to the chef’s chagrin.
The next morning after breakfast Norbert returned, looking fresh and healthier as ever, and we set off towards the city center and central shopping district that lies near the river and features a large triumphal arch dedicated to Bokassa.
Continuing on, we encountered a checkpoint where the AK-47 wielding female police officers inspected each of our passports and visas while our driver (sent from Oubangui Hotel) argued with the male officer why he was being stopped.
After 10 minutes of yelling back and forth, we were let on our way and passed a ton of UN military presence (imagine tanks and APCs marked “UN” on the side with soldiers carrying assault rifles and manning turrets) to stop at the St. John Catholic Church.
A new cathedral is currently being built here.
We then drove back, stopping again at the Oubangui Hotel to walk towards the peninsula of Roche de Bangui.
Across an elevated walkway from the hotel pool, the rock allowed us nearly a third of the way into the river to take a little closer look at the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the other side.
It’s so close that a ferry ride across would take not even 5 minutes cost only 25,000 XAF.
From the rock you can get views of the coast of Bangui . . .
We then returned to our van and passed by the Renaissance or Presidential Palace from the outside:
Equally pretty is the modern architecture of the University of Bangui. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be a student here.
And some roadside modern art:
We tried to enter and visit the Boganda National Museum, but as always, it’s closed.
Nonetheless, you can still see its murals depicting the life of Barthélémy Boganda; they’re painted on the perimeter wall outside the museum beginning from his revolution to his mysterious death in a plane crash.
From the museum we drove around the corner passing by the Kitika Hotel again, and did our last minute shopping at the crafts market now that everyone there knew we had cash in our pockets.
Finally, to round out our tour, we took a photo of Bangui’s unique memorial built in honor of the Wagner Group.
There’s another one to Prigozhin and Utkin a few blocks away:
Then Norbert dropped us off at 11:15am at the airport where we took a group photo in the parking lot, having forgotten to do so the entire time in Bangui. Oops!
We then proceeded through the security outside of the airport first, beginning with a little house where they manually open and look through all your bags.
Then we went through a second house where they inspect your yellow fever vaccine.cards.
And then a passport check before you walk inside:
There we said our goodbyes to Norbert, wished him good health, and proceeded to check-in. Once at the check-in desk I was then guided to a back room past immigrations (never walked so blatantly past a passports area without getting stamped in and out) where I met a South Asian Ethiopian Airlines manager in the back to undo a system error they were finding with our reservations.
While Matt headed back after a single click of a button, I stayed behind to help a stranded traveler named Adam rebook his itinerary from Port Sudan (since he didn’t obtain a visa in time) to Cairo.
I’d then found out Adam was the same guy who I noticed on my way into Bangui yesterday having hired Norbert’s competitor as his fixer, William, and felt that we were meant to strike up a chat eventually. But the ‘when’ of it all, well, I usually try not to answer and leave that up to the universe.
I guess it would respond quickly as we’d find out in this room, we were both flying in and out of Bangui at the same time, on the same flight, to meet in this room, to find out he also just published a book about what I do for a living: Extreme Entrepreneurship!
This led me to help him find many different ways to get on our flight, after which he was able to get on with us.
We ended up chatting more on the flight, and finding out we’d had mutual travel buddies, that then led to him later interviewing me for his interview series at the Addis Ababa Gold Lounge in the airport before he had to run to board his onward flight to Cairo as one of its last passengers!
Where Janet and Sandra have now ventured outside the airport to meet a friend in Addis Ababa, Letti, Matt and I are now staying overnight in the terminal before continuing onwards to both sides of the Congo River.
- At time of posting in Bangui, it was 20 °C - Humidity: 94% | Wind Speed: 3km/hr | Cloud Cover: frying pan, so little to none