It was a short night, given that I was leaving for the
airport at 3:00 AM, but I had little trouble waking up when my alarm went off.
After getting myself dressed and fed and ready to go, I finalized my packing,
then focused on taking care of some of the last-minute details that I had run
out of time to do the day before. And just before 3:00, my driver showed up, ready
to take me to the airport.
That was a 50-minute drive, so I arrived just before 4:00,
then had to wait a few minutes to check in, as the kiosks were not active until
4:00. I was pleasantly surprised by how little time the check-in process took
because I had a new kind of visa for this trip—one I’d never heard of until I
received the instructions for getting my visa. It was an “e-visa,” and instead
of being a physical stamp in my passport, it was a PDF document emailed to me,
and which I printed out. I applied for it and paid for it on the internet, so I
didn’t have to mail my passport to an embassy anywhere. When I got to the
Charlotte airport, I simply showed that piece of paper and was allowed to board
my plane to Washington, DC. I had to show it again when my boarding passes for
the next two flights were issued at the gate in Washington, because I switched
airlines there. The e-visa didn’t even raise any eyebrows either time, and I
must admit that surprised me a little.
There were three legs on my trip to Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.
United Airlines flew me from Charlotte to Washington Dulles, then Ethiopian
Airlines took me from there on a 13-hour overnight flight to their hub in Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia, where I switched planes and flew to Abidjan. A couple of the
flights were somewhat delayed, but it was never enough to hinder me from making
the next one.
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