Cutting It Close? Showing Up To The Airport With No Visa
Intro
There is cutting it close when it comes to situations in travel, and then there is leaving it up to a higher power sometimes. In all honesty, I wasn't sure this situation was going to work out, but it somehow did.
What Happened
This morning, I woke up extremely nervous but ready to fly to Juba, South Sudan. Last week I had applied for a South Sudan E-Visa, but due to a complication in the letter of invitation, my application wasn't properly submitted until a Thursday.
10 am rolls around, and my taxi is taking me to the airport. As we were rolling along the road on the way to Victoria Falls International Airport, I managed to load a page (my data hadn't worked all trip), and it showed that my visa had been approved. 2 hours and 45 minutes before departure...
But then came the next hurdle as we arrived at VFA. I had somehow found the data to see that the visa was approved, but I could not download the actual visa. So, I strolled up to check-in, hoping that they would take the picture saying "visa issued".
My head was all over the place since I knew from arrival that the "free airport wifi" doesn't actually work. We tried the lounge wifi (which I am writing about now), and it was so bad that it didn't work either. Thankfully, an Ethiopian employee came to the rescue and let me use his hotspot.
A boarding pass was presented, and my hotel accommodation for the night in Addis Ababa. ET has even put me up at the Radisson Blu!
Final Thoughts
I live by the motto, “It will all work itself out in the end,” but…
This was a little too close for my liking. Even a day before departure and not having a visa does not stress me out. However, taking a taxi to the airport with no data and hoping it would get approved was slightly nerve-racking.
I am grateful that South Sudan has an E-Visa program, especially compared to some other countries in the continent where you have to go to an embassy. Just be aware that visas do not get approved on the weekends!
However, now we have to get to South Sudan. Stay tuned!
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