Now.. where should I begin.. Ok, well.. let’s go from the start. On the 4th of July, a travel journey of almost 24h awaited us. But I was excited, had prepared mentally for it, and with movies on my tablet and also even my nail polish was perfect and made especially for this trip – with some hand-drawn super-realistic elephant, giraffe and typical savanna umbrella trees we’d see later on in Serengeti. Everyone was commenting about it, including Fill who thought it was a sticker and the Himba tribe ladies looked at my nails as if it’s something alien, which it may as well be to them given the simple and beautiful life they live. Shoutout to Suzi, my nail art specialist.
The trip consisted of a flight from Amsterdam to London Heathrow (the WORST airport E-VER! Btw make sure that whatever you do, you have a minimum 2h transfer time there, we had more, but we, apparently (not), had to exit the terminal, take a train to another terminal and pass through all checks again, so just keep that in your mind), a few hours there, followed by a ~7h flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia which, along with South Africa, seems to be the hub in Africa, so all flights pass through one of these two countries, then a few hours in Ethiopia, too, and finally another 5 hours to Windhoek, the capital of Namibia. And just as I thought FINALLY everything would go back to normal.. well.. it was not.
When we arrived in Namibia, I went to the immigration, and the woman there told me that I could not enter. The process for applying for a visa was very horrible and weird, and long, I had applied THREE times for a visa and 2 of them I got rejected because I didn’t have a motivation letter and then because it was not addressed to the ministry of external affairs of Namibia (but rather to their embassy in Belgium, because I thought they’d be checking my application, I read online somewhere that they forward to the embassy nearest to your current residence), in the last, third attempt, already less than a week before our travel, I got another rejection BUT along with it, my email said I have to pay for my visa and I did and then it issues some document to download. So I wasn’t really worried – it allowed me to pay for it, it said “visa issued” so when this happened, the immigration officer told me that I, in fact, had a declined visa and handed me over to a male colleague of hers who quite openly treated me like shit. He asked me to show him my email where the visa was approved, and I showed him the following email:
After this he repeatedly asked me to show him where did it say that the visa was APPROVED, he wanted to see that word (“approved”), and I said I don’t have this in an email, I have visa ISSUED, which meant (in my head) that it was approved, who the F*CK would issue a visa if it is NOT approved?! In my other email, it says “Visa issued” and there was a remark below saying “Rejected, reason: not addressed to bla-bla-bla”. So I asked him why don’t just go through the Visa on Arrival process and be done with it, he checked and saw that Bulgaria falls into the VoA (Visa on Arrival) application list and agreed (or maybe that was his intention in the first place..). I knew that i can apply for VoA, so I did feel more comfortable because of that, but also didn’t expect it would be such a problem. There were hundreds of people when we arrived along with me at immigration, and by the time I was done with the visa on-arrival process, for which, OF COURSE, I HAD TO PAY AGAIN, not that anyone would refund me for the online application, it was 1h later and there was absolutely nobody left at the airport. I was sleep-deprived and tired and irritated and then got worried and angry because of this guy. Anyway, in the end, I was out, and luckily our luggage and all had arrived and finally, it was time to go to the hotel and just sleep till forever.
So we were expected by someone to drive us to the hotel and we just went to sleep. And in the evening we had dinner at the rooftop restaurant of our hotel and Fill wanted to try some fancy game meat, which ofc I didn’t support. But he ordered Oryx (gemsbok) meat, thinking that it wasn’t poached but rather farmed like farm animals. So when we asked just to confirm my statement that it was indeed a wild animal, he was surprised but still thought that the meat was good, just a bit dry. There was also Kudu meat on the menu for the next time we were back to Windhoek. Looks like at that hotel, they did not only buy game meat but also game products – there was a glass display of bags, wallets and various other items made of zebra, impala and ostrich skin 🙁 It was terrible. And surprisingly for me, the ostrich items were more expensive than zebra o.O
