An Inconvenience necessary - visa request on Africa Trans -
Here the second tranche (it is a long - sit with a cup of tea) from Cade, tour leader on our Trans Africa Expedition. Anyone who may have or has had to apply for a visa should read
Episode II - An Inconvenience necessary
get a visa to get in the west African countries and get the tracks are both considered a necessary inconvenience for all shipments Trans Africa. In fact, the two are in Morocco in the first two weeks of the trip is literally a way to get all your sh ** out of the way before you are able to transcend the continent with more confidence. Visas are obtained in embassies that are in a state of Ritz to rubble, while officials the concept very fluid results of officialdom in the visa application process is a very long period and often painful persistence and patience. So it was in Rabat where we had to spend nine days to get the visa for Mauritania, Guinea and Ivory Coast.
On a daily average side street suburb Rabat potholes litter two roads and trails. Alley cats living on parked cars, stray dogs scrounge through bins and waste plastic pieces Jumping and dancing in the breeze. There is no numbering of homes, a few sign posts and the odd pedestrian. However, there is a side street in Rabat is considered quite unique. Although this particular side-street does sports all the qualities mentioned above, along this particular street-side is a wall which extends over a block and a halfway point along this wall is a quality in particular, that defines this particular street-side to share everything; rarely spotted a metal door.
The street itself is so small that to the naked eye or uninformed the importance of the rarely spotted metal door could easily slip under the radar. In fact, to identify clearly the importance of this metal door, there are two ways to do it.
The first way is through the large crowd of angry hundred and fifty who constantly surround her. The crowd spills onto the road and spends his time talking, fighting and internally hosted for prime position in front of the door. In fact, very similar scenes can be found around our campfire every morning where the twenty-fourth of us Bustle each other on the way to the first toasting positions. Although both scenes serve as the point of explosive violence boiling, the only real differences are the number of people and the fact that the focal point is not a campfire, but rarely spotted a metal door. It is for this reason that, like our campfire, the door can be classified as "rarely spotted."
The second way to clearly identify the importance of the door is the small sign next to it that reads simply "Mauritanian embassy."
Although the preferred door not everyone has time displayed beside him opening, it also seems to be capricious in that the door really opened when the door really wants. in our arrival, we were informed that the previous days, the door had simply chosen not to open at all. as long as the holder chooses to remain closed, the rise of the crowd and slapping their way forward in the if they could be first in line when it chooses to open.
to join the crowd, you are first given a small piece of torn paper with a number written on hands on it. the idea is that you expect in the crowd for three days for your number to be called and when it is, you have to beat the other forty people who have cleverly scribbled your number on a piece of paper and are now vying for your hardware won position. Once you finally do enter and go through the door, you are then in a small dark room the size of a closet where a man sits behind a cracked glass. You give this man your precious travel documents as soon as possible with your money and leave you before it has a chance to take them back to you. You are returned to the door the next day to see if your application has been accepted.
People are rarely seen emerging behind the metal door, soaring through the ocean of chaos slapped with smiles on their faces and waving their passports victoriously over their heads as a Olympic flame, the large open visa page. But more often they are seen slowly emerging from the raucous drag their lower lip at the edge of the crowd, taking another number and restart the long wait. There are really two options; see, you can put yourself through this long and tedious test or you can just be a woman.
Although women are treated as secondary citizens in many West African communities , there seems to be just the opposite regarding Embassy Mauritania. Here, women are given priority and called for the first. There are so few of them, instead of waiting three days, they are made to wait only fifteen minutes. But get your foot in the big metal door does not mean a thing we discovered when Marianne came armed with our twenty-four passports and simply told to take the passports and return the next day. In this case, all our smiles Colgate collars and were immediately rendered as useless as the men figures had in their hands.
because there is no campground in central Rabat, we had to bush camp in a nearby forest every night for the duration of our test. Every morning we would wake up and put on our big fingers shoes, jeans and a collared shirt - clothes overlanding generally appropriate, but even much for visiting embassies. We commute in city with traffic in the morning, spend the day at embassies and when working hours were over, we Switches back to the bush camp we called our house every afternoon.
This means that while we thought we had left the rat race behind to explore the African continent , the ironic reality is that within two weeks of the trip we had found us -Same immediately thrust back into the world of nine to five, and a real sense of routine. It also meant that by the time we got our visas Mauritania and Guinea and entered the embassy Ivory Coast, our skin has a bronze tan dirt, our facial hair now stood the rest of our faces ransom and we were discovering that there are only so many odors, you can hide with a deodorant box.
contrary to the Mauritanian Embassy, the Embassy Ivory Coast is like walk in a serene slice of paradise. To start, rather than a metal door, it's just an open door with a welcoming mat. There is a calm, serene atmosphere interrupted only by the overwhelming welcome greetings from the staff and their enthusiastic cheers at the prospect of granting visas for tourists to visit their countries. There is a comfortable waiting area with virgin soil so you can eat outside. The diplomat gave his mobile phone number of staff for you to stay in touch with him and when the visa processing time seems to take longer than expected, is pleased to open the embassy Saturday. What is most attractive in particular to those who have spent the last week bush camping, their own and functional toilet.
The visa process is surprisingly highly technological as they opted for biometric visas which means the scanning of the finger and the pictures are taken and sent to the main office in Abudjan before visas are granted. However, despite this, it is still using one index finger enlisted by the diplomat to manually enter all forms of application in the system. When this painfully slow process seems to take longer than expected, he chose not to seek the assistance of its nine remaining digits, but instead uses his index finger to dial a friend confirming by telephone that he is arriving five minutes. Typically by "five minutes", it actually means the next morning.
Unlike Mauritanian visas that look like used coasters slapped on blank pages in passports, visas Ivory Coast comes with a color photo, barcode and color holograms. Rather than slap them, they are carefully cut and glued individually by diplomat working hard over a period of four hours. The only problem comes with the fact that they are actually stickers that can be simply peeled and pressed in minutes.
Following bush camping during our extended stay in Rabat our showers only took the form of a box. Our shoes had become a simple way to hide our muddy feet while our jeans and shirts simply used to hide the layers of dirt forest that were agglomerated on our skin every day. Like the rings of a tree when counted are able to determine its age, on receipt of our third and final visa, these layers of dirt were counted and determined that our test tallied nine nights.
It was all cheers and smiles at the exit of Rabat and take the African route. only grunts who came from the group were that of some of our stomachs. Despite our victory in the visa department and despite having left a deposit of heavy minefields around our bush camp forest near Rabat, our insides were a reminder that we still had work to do in for our other "necessary inconvenience".
Read Cade Episode I of the Trans Africa Expedition
We are really pleased to have helped Mark in the planning of parts of his journey that we made trips between Cairo and Cape for many years, following a similar way - but not as direct or fast 
The new prices are: 
Our 40 days Exploratory Silk Road trip Bishkek to Beijing starts on 10 e in August 2012, but reservations must be received by the following dates for submission of visa applications 
If you want a really quick getaway, we have a few places left on our 21 days Deserts & Gameparks of the trip Victoria Falls to Cape Town, from 7 e July 2012. 
If you 're interested in joining the 17 e seven from our travel Kingdoms & Carnivals South America and want to hike the classic Inca Trail, then you need to book as soon as permits are the fast sale. The trek is included in the cost of the tour but we need to receive a booking confirmation from you before we can ask your driver's trekking Peruvian authorities. 
to use his full name, Waleed Mohamed Maksoud Abel Kamouna is 36 and in addition to his degree, he holds a bachelor's degree in tourism and hotels in the Helwan University in Cairo. He is a very experienced guide, working for a range of businesses and leading many types of tours to Egypt - families, festivals, special interest and of course our adventure trips. He has received countless travelers through its efforts worldwide and was named in the Price Wanderlust World Guide. 
in recent years East African parks have seen a number of similar price increases of which could be interpreted by tour operators and tourists as excessive, especially when most foreign tourists are experiencing the most difficult economic problems for many years in their own country . It is natural that African countries should want maximize income of their natural resources and, while foreign tourists continue to visit future security their wildlife and national parks is a little more certain.