Lagos | Jason Around the World

Spent the first evening in Lagos just getting dinner and drinks out, before planning to crash to enjoy the just short of three full days I would have there. Of course, life had other plans. As we were at dinner, the friend I was visiting got paged by his client to deal with a major network issue, and I was able to go with. It’s always fascinating watching companies in crisis mode, but slightly less fascinating when it’s 2am and you need sleep. Fortunately, with the time change, it wasn’t so bad. It just resulted in a slightly later start on Saturday.

Unfortunately, the issue wasn’t fully resolved, resulting in him having to work the entire day on Saturday as well. Fortunately, his client didn’t have to work and invited me with him to a large Nigerian wedding. These are big affairs where pretty much anyone related in any way shape or form to the family is welcome, and it was a fascinating experience. I was actually called the “honoured white guest” by a couple people, and it was a great time. We only went to the reception, which I would say had somewhere approaching 1,000 people at it.

It was in a giant tent and catered with plenty of food and drink. To the point that when I asked for a red wine, I was brought an entire bottle. We asked for champagne, and you guessed it…and entire bottle again. We ended up staying about three to four hours, by which time my host and I were more than happy to say the least. A few pictures to tell the story:

Note the number of empty bottles…and I thought American weddings involved a lot of drinking!

So, yeah, this is a bit overdue, but things have been crazy with two trips to West Africa the last month, a trip to Provincetown, Mass. in between, and things being crazy at the office. Hopefully I’ll get these cranked out pretty quickly, since I have two trips to Hawaii and two more to San Jose, California coming up in the next month thanks to the United $10 mistake fare!

A couple of months ago, my good friend John (who’s written a guest blog here before on Air Canada) told me he’d be making two trips to West Africa for work in the coming months, and since I’d never been to any of the countries he was going to he suggested I come along. I didn’t have too much planned at the time, and it seemed like a good opportunity to get a bit of an inside view on the place, so I jumped at the chance. The first trip would be a long 5-day weekend trip to Lagos, Nigeria and the second trip would be Cotonou, Benin and Accra, Ghana for four days. I decided to extend the second trip while I was in the region, and planned stops in Togo, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Cote d’Ivoire as well. Soon, the time to go was near!

United flight 356
Washington DC, National (DCA) to Houston, George Bush (IAH)
Depart 15:17, Arrive 17:24, Flight Time 3:07
Boeing 757-200, Registration N523UA, Manufactured 1990, Seat 3E (aisle)

Not terribly much to say here – it was a standard domestic flight, a cheerful pre-merger United crew, despite the fact the aircraft was older than dirt. Arrived into Houston on time, and had a few hours to kill in the United Club. Boarding was delayed about 30 minutes for the flight to Lagos, but soon we were settled in and it was time to go.

United flight 142
Houston, George Bush (IAH) to Lagos, Nigeria (LOS)
Depart 20:15, Arrive 14:50 next day, Flight Time 12:35
Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, Registration N45905, Manufactured 2012, Seat 1D (aisle)

This was to be my first flight of any real length on the 787, and fortunately my three short 2-3 hour domestic flights had clued me in that row 1 was the place to be. All seats in business class have the same pitch/legroom, but the footwells in row 1 and row 4 have double the space for your feet due to the way the seats are staggered. It’s a good thing, because it was going to be a very long flight and I was planning to get lots of sleep. The planned flight path:

Jason Around the World

Visit to Lagos, Nigeria

DC to Lagos, Nigeria and First Day in Lagos