A tough immigration process

We landed in Kigali over an hour ahead of schedule. The airport was bustling with people. Since our continued travel route was going to Uganda and Kenya, we applied for the East Africa Tourist Visa ahead of time, a tourist visa valid for 90 days spread across the three countries. It needs to be applied for online ahead of time, and usually takes 3-7 days to be approved. Since we would enter through Kigali, Rwanda had to issue the visa.

The cost is usually 100 USD (instead of paying 50 USD at each border individually), but when I applied for the visa I had the choice to pay in either USD or RWF - Rwandan Francs. I got a bit suspicious at the exchange rate they applied, and decided to double check it. For paying in RWF, the total price was only 80 USD instead of 100 USD, a further 20% savings. Yes, please 😁 After applying at 10pm, by 10am the next morning our visas were approved and in our inbox.

We didn't know yet where we would be staying in Kigali, so when we applied for the visa we just used the local Impact Hub address as our intended residence. Wow, we had not been grilled this thoroughly for immigration purposes in a long time. Question after question, about previous travels, future travels, contacts in the country, planned stays, history of travel in Africa, motivation to visit Rwanda, etc. We even had to give a contact number of a local friend.

Ultimately, our immigration officers disappeared to a back room to fetch our visas. I had expected them to have a finished visa with the details we gave at the online application. Well, I was wrong. They just got a blank sticker template and copied my passport data onto it by hand 😅

But where would we actually stay now? We had found a quite literally perfect Airbnb in the previous days. It was available on request only. I had been in contact with the landlady and she had written that she looks forward to host us in Kigali. However, she never accepted the request to stay with her and it expired. That caused me quite some confusion. I was writing to her quite incessantly, both asking her to accept the request, or to at least share her exact address with us so we could go there and sort out details in person.

Despite my barrage of messages, we didn't hear back from her by the time we landed in Kigali. Plan B was therefore activated, and I booked an instant book property on Booking.com for one night, hoping that she'd respond in the morning with her address. It really was a perfect place. We got a SIM card at the airport and called a vehicle on the local taxi app, but after getting very frustrated with the driver who said he couldn't find the international arrivals terminal and discussing with him for 30min over the phone, we hung up and went with a random driver who poached us from the airport. We paid him more than the trip was worth, but we were tired and just wanted to go to bed.

When we arrived at the guest house, the 24h reception was of course closed 😑 Fortunately, we found a security guy who left and came back with the receptionist shortly after, who then completed the formalities with me. The room was super basic and uninspiring, a very stark contrast to how we had envisioned our stay in Kigali. We decided we'd leave it at one night and find another place in the morning.Meer informatie