To get in, you first need a VISA:
-
- Download and fill out 2 copies of the visa form
- Attach required documents
- 2 passport photos with the 2 visa forms
- The Letter of Invitation
- Copy of the hotel reservation
- Copy of your flight itinerary
- Prepare payment: Obtain a check or money order for
- $160 and leave it blank
- Why leave it blank? The Embassy had called me back telling me to resend the $160 money order but this time leaving the payee box blank, and that they would return my original cashier’s check back to me along with my passport and visa in my return envelope
- 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:
In case you missed it, continuing and reposting from yesterday
(since it’s important to know what can happen to you when you arrive at Brazzaville airport):
Probably to balance the impending bureaucracy and inconveniences we were about to face in The Congo, I thoroughly basked in the easy 3 minute walk from the in-Terminal Skylight Hotel where I had stayed overnight, to our 8:45am flight from Addis to Brazzaville at gate B7, literally right in front of my in-terminal hotel room window.
Even though I had woken up a mere 20 minutes before departure, I had so much extra time that I inspected and grabbed some coffee at the Silver Lounge by our gates.
We then boarded at 8:00am for the flight from Addis Ababa, landing about 3 and a half hours later into Brazzaville and disembarked onto a skybridge; our first so far on the trip. Things seemed to be going too smoothly.
As we came down the escalators, they inspected our yellow fever vaccine cards. And then it all went downhill: Letti had to be pulled in a room as she forgot hers in her checked luggage. They then made her pay $30 for not having a physical copy and reissued a new one based on a copy she had on her phone.
Then, as we all got stamped through, Letti once again got pulled to the side after they looked at her LOI (and for some reason skipping ours) and claimed that the LOI was “expired” even though we already all had our visas and stamps. Letti then made the argument that if we as a group were able to stamp in, so should she. As a result, they got to us at baggage claims (even through she was right, we all already had our stamps in), where were all then rounded up and had our passports taken to a backroom by immigrations.
We now know: show them less not more!
After nearly an hour of arguing between us, our local guide Carole, and 3 of the officers in French, the conclusion was they wanted a “fee” for having LOIs issued more than 3 months before the trip. This obviously did not make any sense, but what was more infuriating was that I got the tour company owner, Francel, on speaker phone where he told them he was not even in the country (he was in France) and that we should bear the responsibility of this “fee.” Without any attempt to take our side or make an effort to even split or cover the fee themselves (as we did not have any local cash), we felt like we were left on our own.
Not wanting to lose any more time for my group, I began the haggle. The “fee” began at a whopping $100 USD per person ($500 total!) in XFAs but eventually we tired them out one by one where it was now down to one officer, who relented to the equivalent of $22 USD per person ($110 total), or 75k XAFs.
I then headed to an ATM outside arrivals to grab the XAFs and once the exchange was made…
…we got our passports back.
All of that for this stamp.
So there you have it: it’s already been nuts and we still hadn’t even stepped foot in The Congo!
For info on crossing from Brazzaville to Kinshasa, go here.
Continuing on from yesterday:
From Kinshasa in the early morning, we were planning to head out first thing across the river back to Brazzaville once the border opened at 8am. And our guide and fixer, Terence, had one of his associates, also named Calvin, get to the terminal as early as 6:30am with printed copies of our passports’ front pages to obtain tickets but this proved to be unnecessary — once the border opened at 8am, we were told to still wait as they did not have enough people to fill a boat and leave the port.
So we waited as instructed and by 8:15am I was getting a little nervous (our onward flight out of Brazzaville at 2:00pm in the afternoon got bumped up 2 hours earlier to 12:10pm, leaving us very little room for error). We decided to head over at 8:20am and once arriving at the docks 5 minutes later, we were informed the boat had 9 people so far and they just needed 3 more passengers. By 8:45am our guides on the other side in Brazzaville were texting us asking for updates, indicating their nervousness whether we’d still make our flight.
Once 9am hit, Letti and I made the call to purchase the last 3 seats for $30 per seat to make it the 12 needed so we could head out. Then things began to get moving.
The associate came out, took our passports to get them stamped out of the DRC, took our $90 to confirm the boat could finally leave, and we were shuttled through the health desk showing our yellow fever cards. They then took our temperature and one of them remarked how they remembered me from yesterday about informing them how you only need one dose of the yellow fever vaccine.
After the health desk without a hassle, we moved on to a counter where we left Calvin (the fixer) our passports behind to help stamp us out.
As Calvin and the people behind the counter worked on our passports, we moved on to another desk to have our bags opened and searched.
Then they’ll ask: “do you have any cash” and if you say “no” they’ll press further in order to get you to give them your local cash as a “fee.” Whatever. Don’t play this game: we shrugged our shoulders and said variations of “I have nothing” or “You can ask the guide outside for it” or “do you want Ethiopian Birr?” and move on. Knowing we were not going to give them anything, they then let us round a corner where a guard let us through into the waiting room once our passports were done and ferried back from our fixer.
From that point they wouldn’t let Terence pass so we bid farewell, shaking hands through and above the guard’s shoulder separating us, and moved on to wait another 10 minutes in the waiting room as they handed us life jackets and took down our names from our passports. Then one of the guards in the blue shirts checked our passports and visas again and asked if we had any money on us.
When my guard wasn’t satisfied with my “no” answer he proceeded to ask in English if I spoke French. When I said I didn’t, he grilled me over why I didn’t speak French. So I replied in English that I spoke more Spanish and Mandarin instead, and that the French I learned had spilled out from my brain when that happened. He in turn asked why Spanish, and I replied that people in NYC speak Spanish more than French. He then replied, in Spanish, why not relearn French still, and I remarked how one of my former college-era partners is French, and that’s as much French I could learn during the whirlwind romance that we had.
Stunned at my answer, he laughed, shook my hand, and let me on my way.
There our fixer, Calvin, exchanged the ferry tickets for us and unlike from Brazzaville to Kinshasa, that was the only time I saw evidence of our tickets.
After an hour and half from the originally scheduled time of departure at 8am, we finally boarded our boat and set off at 9:28am for the 4km/2mi crossing.
Reaching Brazzaville across the river at 9:38am, we disembarked and gave our passports to our Brazzaville’ guides’ associates to stamp through, while an officer — also likely paid by our Brazzaville guides — escorted us through the health inspection where they took another look at our Yellow Fever cards and inspected our bags.
There we reunited with our Brazzaville guides again, and we waited another 5 minutes for our passports to get processed. With a multiple-entry visa into the ROC, we got stamped through again, this time without any of the drama we experienced yesterday at Brazzaville airport.
We then set off for a micro-tour of Brazzaville with only an hour and a half before check-in closed at the airport. Understandably, Janet, Sandra and Matt didn’t want to risk missing our flight out so they already had each taken a taxi from their respective accommodations to the airport to save time. However, when I informed this update to our guide, he looked shocked and said we still had plenty of time. After I conveyed this on the group chat, Janet and Sandra decided to have their taxi stop at the Radisson Blu for a pickup, trusting that we’d make it on time while Matt, having decided to rebook his itinerary last night to leave from Addis Ababa to Sierra Leone (instead of continuing on to Bujumbura with us), continued on to the airport just to be extra sure his last minute rebooking got though.
All of that…represents what traveling in the Congo can be like.
But beyond the drama, there’s also so much more: this country is also known as Congo-Brazzaville to distinguish it from its eastern neighbor, Congo-Kinshasa or more officially the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Its population is concentrated where we are now in the southwestern part of the country, leaving an untouched northern tropical jungle. Therefore with more than 85% of its population concentrated in a few urban areas such as Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire, and those along 330 mile/550km railway connecting Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire, this setup makes Congo-Brazzaville one of the most urbanized countries in Africa. Therefore, industrial and commercial activity has declined rapidly, impoverishing rural economies to become dependent on the government for their existence.
About 15,000 Europeans (mostly French) and other non-Africans lived in Congo before the 1997 War; now only about 9,500 remain.
Once we crossed the river and reunited with Matt, Janet, and Sandra, we heard about their quick tour of Brazzaville beginning at the Basilique Sainte-Anne of the Congo, built by Roger Erell in 1949 and one of the most beautiful modern churches in the world.
Next they drove to the Palais du Peuple, a colonial palace built in 1901 and is now the presidential palace.
The Cathédrale Sacré-Coeur, a Catholic church with views of downtown areas such as Poto Poto and Centreville, and Kinshasa across the river.
They then drove by Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza Memorial, a new marble construction in memory of Pierre Savorgnan and his family.
The tallest building in the ROC is the Nabemba Tower at 106m tall and built with a distinct Pan-African design in 1983.
And finally before we finished at the airport, we made time to experience La Sape subculture, a local movement embodying the elegance in style and manners of their colonial predecessors.
For a fee, the sapeurs will come out and put on their proud fashion show and dance-off for you. Mine was on the house.
Having done as much as we could that morning, we headed back to the airport for our return flight to Addis Ababa. Once we got to the airport, Matt was still standing in line, having been forced to wait 40 minutes at a standstill — even when on the Premier Access check-in lane — as he watched multiple groups allowed to pass ahead of him after they paid extra “fees” to avoid waiting.
Then as we finally were allowed to move and check-in, multiple security officers asked us if we had any local currency, ostensibly to then tell us (if we had said yes) that it is “illegal” to take foreign currency out of the country and must be given to them. You can either choose to be righteous, stand your ground, and inform them that it’s a weak argument how the currency is the XAF/Central African Francs/CFA and used in other countries …or just say “no, I don’t.”
And to add to a type of flair unique to The Congo, this was the only time I saw “Free” on the flight ticket, indicating, yes, this had become a Southwest flight and seats were a free for all much to the confusion of all the passengers.
We landed an hour later in Pointe-Noire for a refueling stop:
Within an hour we were back in the air, landing in Addis Ababa about 4 hours later where we said goodbye to Matt as he goes off to West Africa while the 4 of us remaining continue onwards to Burundi!
- At time of posting in Brazzaville, it was 31 °C - Humidity: 60% | Wind Speed: 6km/hr | Cloud Cover: humid, hot, and then some rain