Free goodies thanks to the friendly locals.
We woke up very early this morning, the time change threw us off. We went to the US Embassy first thing. We walked around for a bit and couldn’t find it and finally ended up taking a taxi. It took us to a construction sight for a huge new compound they are building for the new site, that explains why we couldn’t find the old one. Ironically, when we spoke to the person at the embassy, he had actually heard about us over dinner. Small world.
We went straight over to the Gabonese embassy and were the first ones there. The consular officer there was a lovely woman, we ended up chatting with her for quite a while. She heard our whole story about our arrival in the Congo and we all had a good laugh about it. She was extremely helpful and was going to issue our visas all in the same day luckily.
Next mission was to purchase a phone card so that we can try to track down David and Peta. We couldn’t believe our luck, they were on the ferry from Kinshasa to Brazzaville just as we called and will arrive in Brazzaville in a few hours. We had run into the couple from the airport on the street and were invited to join them for dinner at the Hippo Camp tonight.
All of the people that we have met today have been fantastic, it is actually a shame that we only have 72 hours in the country. The people are really warm and friendly. Even just walking down the streets in Brazzaville we are greeted with smiles and “bonjour”. It looks like we will start our trip out to Gabon first thing in the morning.
