Getting a visa for a land border crossing shouldn’t be this hard.
So, while waiting for Monday to come to visit with the Nigerian High Commission and check on my visa status, I had some time to check out Windhoek and meet some very interesting people.
One of whom, was Timotheus. No, I am not making that name up just because I am a Timothy. He’s a proud father and Angolan, wearing a shirt honoring the work Fidel did in African, most importantly, Angola. If you don’t know anything about that, well – https://www.chathamhouse.org/2016/12/fidel-castros-greatest-legacy-africa-angola I’ll be in Angola soon. If Timotheus is any representation of the people of Angola, I’ll be in great hands.
Nigerian High Commission
Due to no fault of their own, Nigeria implemented an “e-Visa” program this past May. I started my standard visa process in February, but was told to hold off until this was live because it promised to make the process easier. After it launched, I immediately wen online and completed by e-visa.
Shortly thereafter, it was denied because an e-visa can’t be used for land border crossings. Yeah. So, I completed the standard tourist visa application, and it was approved! Yay – so I thought…. Turns out, I needed to schedule an appointment for the remainder of the process, but there were none available in the US before I as scheduled to leave. I assume that the e-visa rollout caused some major issues with visa application processing. No biggie. I looked online and found that there were plenty of appointments in Cape Town, so now all I needed was the date of my arrival. For those of you following along, it turns out that they don’t appointments in Cape Town – nor anywhere! The biggest issue with the high commissions is that they don’t have biometric scanners, which is required upon entry for fingerprinting.
So, what’s the plan? Right now I have 3 options:
- Visit all other high commissions in the remaining countries – well, I was planning on that anyway, so this really isn’t an option, just more of protocol, but whatever, you get it.
- Fly into Nigeria (e-visa is good for airport entry) and either take a bus to pickup my bike at the border, or have it brought across the border to me. This seems pretty straightforward.
- Put myself and the bike on a boat and skip Nigeria altogether. This sounds like a scary endeavor, but would make for a great story.
I’ll keep you posted….
Downtime
I worked on my bike, checking the chain, moving the microphone from the camera system due to noise, double-checked the insulation around my battery terminals – this was due to the new battery being much smaller and the bracket holding it in place is directly over the positive terminal which could cause a short due to grounding, cleaned the seals and zippers on everything – it’s going to get wet at some point =and the dust renders the seals useless.
I also decided to see what was going back home. This is what I woke up to.
It’s been less than 8 months since his inauguration. Hard to believe this is real.
Kapana
My wonderful hosts, Fran and Dillon, actually Fran offered up Dillon for this, took me to the part of town where Kapana is made “fresh” – the Single Quarters. I actually heard about this from one of the kids playing pool, Ryan, who said I can’t leave Windhoek without giving it a try.
Meat grilled over open flame, and some seasoning to give it a little kick.
Served with a side of salad (slaw) and some mielie pap, which is a sticky dough you grab pieces from with your hand to use as a wrapper for the kapana and salad.
We got back to Dillon’s place and enjoyed a glass of wine and watched the sun go down on my last night in Windhoek.
Time to get back on the road tomorrow!