day trips | Jason Around the World

Two days in Djibouti

Djibouti, hotels, New Years 2011-2012 No Responses »

Jan 242012

So…Djibouti immigration. Turns out 99% of our fellow passengers were in transit to the Daallo Airlines flight to Dubai (I suspect on another plane, since I don’t think the IL-18 has that kind of range) so they were shunted off, and maybe 10 of us went into the immigration queue. Where they took our passports, told us to have a seat, and we waited…for 30 minutes or so.

Eventually, we were ushered into a small office, where for a charge of $60 each, we got a collection of stamps, stickers, and glue in the passports that passed for an official “visa” to enter Djibouti. We had heard $55 in advance, but with exchange rate changes were not about to argue over such a small amount. Before the trip, for some reason, I suspected Djibouti Airport would be much much bigger. It’s not. it’s essentially one giant room with a few different areas…this place is tiny!

Got outside, and the Sheraton shuttle was of course not there as we’d asked for. Taxi was cheap, and soon we were off to the Sheraton…where they had absolutely no record of our points reservation, and were completely clueless how to deal with it. Check-in took nearly two hours, when you count the time to figure out what to do, get us to a room, get us a stocked minibar, and have everything sorted. Oh, yes, about the minibar. Due to local “sensibilities” they leave it empty. However, for platinum guests, they are happy to deliver a more-than-adequate FREE minibar:

Day 2 in Hargeisa, Somalia

New Years 2011-2012, Somalia No Responses »

Jan 212012

Woke up, and decided to do what everyone else in the hotel was doing – have breakfast delivered! Can’t go wrong with coffee, eggs, and toast…and we had the hotel set to arranging a tour around the city before our early afternoon flight. Of course, this involved going to hire an armed guard of course, but we negotiated to give him a few wads of the Somaliland Shillings this time, everyone was happy, and we were off to see the city of Hargeisa itself.

The Ambassador Hotel is set just near the airport (presumably so frightened NGO types can flee the country asap should things go bad) and maybe a couple miles out of the downtown proper.

First stop was the Somaliland Independence monument – even if things get better in Mogadishu this part of Somalia has no interest in re-joining the federation.

Hargeisa, Somalia

hotels, New Years 2011-2012, Somalia 1 Response »

Jan 212012

I’ll start with a bit of background. I’m not sure anybody in their right mind goes to Somalia these days. Mogadishu hasn’t had a real government going on 15 years now, and the country is probably the largest breeding ground of terrorists outside of Iraq…or was that Afghanistan Nope, it’s Somalia. Anyways…back in “the day” Somalia was two countries – British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland. They were merged, and an independent Somalia was born…which didn’t last long. About 12 years ago, the western part (former British Somaliland) left Somalia, and has been relatively quiet, peaceful, and stable ever since. Their own government, currency (as you saw in my previous post), border guards, and all. Unfortunately, however, the international community isn’t buying it…and still considers it part of Somalia. For someone trying to visit Somalia, what better way to go!

I’ve already posted about our hotel…but when we got there, they informed us that all rooms had only one bed, and thus we needed, of course…two rooms. Fortunately, we got two across the hall and solved that problem. They were decent, functional, and since it was almost noon….we decided to grab some lunch in the hotel restaurant while the hotel sorted out the day trip we’d requested. So first, lunch! There were two things on the menu in Somaliland we hadn’t had yet…and we were determined to have them! The first was camel (which we had as a steak at dinner…and was pretty awesome!) and the other was goat. Soon our goat stew arrived, and it was actually really tasty and one of the best meals I remember from the trip!