What in the world were we thinking??

We’d both read the Lonely Planet postings that talked about how surly and expensive the country was, how crappy the hotels were, how the few attractions the country had were really better visited at cooler times of the year. But we just couldn’t let that stop us. We had to find out for ourselves….the hard way!

The proper beginning to this adventure starts at Dubai airport. As we board the bus at the gate which taxis us out past all of the other departure gates and then past the cargo area to the ghetto part of the airport and our Daallo airlines flight. Never heard of Daallo airlines?…not shocking. We’re not sure half the airline staff had either. The flight was only something like 3 hours long, but it seemed more like 12 hours. The airplane was packed and I found myself in a middle seat for this 3:00 am departure. Highlights of the trip included:
* A flight attendant that looked like Luther Vandross

* A woman who did her best to pass some sort of communicable disease on to Jen

* The first and last time I will try to eat an egg wrapped in a pancake – trust me its worse than it sounds

* A disgruntled passenger who went on a tirade up and down the aisle midway through the flight. Thankfully Luther Vandross wasn’t taking any of his shit and got him seated after some tense words that I couldn’t understand.

Part two of the adventure begins when we land safely in Djibouti City (aka Djiboutiville). After walking off the plane, we take a bus to the arrivals area where we queue to get our passports stamped. But before we are allowed to enter the building, we have to wait to have our temperature checked by a medical official…or at least someone who had been given a white lab coat and a mask. The “doctor” wasn’t able to tell us exactly what they were checking for, but whatever it was, we passed and they let us in. Of course they also allowed the woman in who was hacking up a lung on the plane, so perhaps their methods of evaluation were a little lax.

Onto the next hurdle – the entry tax. That ended up being $60 US Dollars/person. And ONLY US Dollars. Crap! I only had about $24 on me. Luckily, Jen had planned a little better and had extra to lend me. We pushed our combined $120 across the table to the official and then he promptly pushed back 3 or 4 of the bills. They were too old. What?? Too old?? He didn’t like the way they looked so we had to give him newer ones. No bills that were printed before 2005. UGH! Luckily, Jen had a few more $20’s that were on the newer side which he agreed to take, but when we asked him what was wrong with the older bills, he just laughed. When we asked what would have happened if we only had older bills, he just laughed again. That was our first lesson – in Djibouti, its better to just laugh.

Next we had a ridiculously long wait to retrieve our luggage. The airport was the size of a small middle-school and at most there were two flights that landed all morning so I can’t imagine why the luggage took nearly an hour to come out. I’ll just blame it on the Khat. More on that later. With luggage in hand we found our way towards the hotel shuttle…rather a taxi on its last leg with a driver that agreed to be paid by the hotel when we arrived.

I’d booked a room at the Djibouti Sheraton before leaving for the trip. Aside from the 5-star Kempinski hotel, it was the only place in the city where we could make an on-line reservation, so we decided to give it a shot even though all the reviews claimed it was a dump. By some luck, we were given a room on their VIP floor which meant that they did a better job of hiding the faults in those rooms than on other floors.

There are a number of military bases in Djibouti and the hotel lobby/bar area was constantly filled with soldiers from the US, France, Germany and Sweden. They all looked rather unsavory and surly and smoked heavily which did not exactly cheer the place up too much. Other features of the hotel included a rather sketchy looking casino, a night club that we avoided based on the clientele lounging by the door, a decent looking pool that was surrounded by 10 year old astro-turf and a beach that smelled like sulfur depending on which way the wind was blowing. Oh, and our favorite…the “Free” internet service that we got with our VIP Floor room. FREE that is, once you pay the 2000 Djibouti Francs to use it. Hmmm…doesn’t paying for something make it not FREE? Not at the Sheraton Djibouti. Just ask Melissa at the front desk; she’ll be happy to explain it to you.

After settling into our room, we decided to take a nap since we didn’t get any sleep the night before. That was only delayed slightly while I waited for the hotel to come up and change the sheets that had blood stains on them (nope, not kidding). We slept for a few hours and then decided to check out what the city had to offer. In short, not much. If you walked slowly (which is advised given the high heat and humidity), you can see most of the city in an hour or less. We eventually wandered into the marketplace with stalls selling fruit, clothing, house wears and whatever else you might need. We were visiting during low season so we were probably the only foreigners in the whole market. Needless to say we were VERY popular. After 5 minutes in the market we turned around and realized we were being followed by at least 10 men trying to get us to buy just about anything (including buying them a beer). We both bought a couple of t-shirts (which cost waaaay too much money) and then high-tailed it out of there. On to dinner at a French owned restaurant – our only requirement was air-conditioning – and then back to the hotel because….well, we ran out of things to do. And that was only day 1. After a beer at the depressing lobby bar we headed back to our room to watch back-to-back fairly atrocious movies on the free movie channel.

Now, we were completely aware of the fact that we were visiting Djibouti in the slow season – most reasonable travelers head there between October and January when the weather is a bit more tolerable and there are more things to do. But even during the high season there seems to only be three main attractions in the whole country. 1) Scuba diving with whale sharks, 2) Driving to Lac Assal which is the lowest point on the entire continent of Africa and 3) Driving to Lac Abbe where they filmed Planet of the Apes. Diving with whale sharks was unfortunately not an option because the sharks didn’t show up until October. And anytime we asked about getting a guide to take us to Lac Abbe or Lac Assal, they looked at us as if we were nuts. We might as well have asked to go to the surface of the sun…which probably would have been cooler. Needless to say, we were bored…very very bored. I can honestly say this is the first country that I have actively tried to leave early. Unfortunately, the flights earlier in the week were already full, so we had to stay for all 4 days.

It was probably around this point that Jen came up with t
he 30-minute increment system. Rather than try to tackle something to do for the entire day, we would work in 30 minute time blocks. For example, breakfast at the hotel, that would take 1 – 30-minute block. Laying by the pool, perhaps 3 – 30 minute blocks, assuming the sulfur smell didn’t waft in and cause you to cut the activity short. Taking a walk to the train station for a photo op, another 30 minute block. It made the day a little more manageable when you broke it down like that. We hit the jackpot by watching two more bad movies the next night – a whopping 8 – 30 minute increments.

But there was one more surprise waiting for us…an attraction that none of the guidebooks (wait, there are no Djibouti guidebooks) told us about. DjiboutiBOWL! This place is awesome. About a 15 minute ride outside the city center near the military bases, you will find this palace of entertainment. Of course there is an awesome bowling alley as the name suggests, but that’s not all. There’s a bar, a restaurant, a karaoke room/dance club and if you meet Mr. Right while in Djibouti, you can also get married there. Fabulous! We definitely used up a lot of 30 minute blocks in this place. The only disappointing thing is that it was too expensive for us to go there every night. While Djibouti was about 50 years behind Dubai in development, we found the prices to be unjustifiably equal.

One of the local customs we decided to avoid is the taking of Khat. This is the local drug of choice. The khat arrives in twig-like bunches from Ethiopia every day and when its Khat time, everything else gets put on hold. We were advised not to even bother taking a taxi during the middle of the day because most of the cab drivers are hopped up on khat. It appears to just make everyone really slow down and chill out, but neither Jen nor I wanted to do anything that would further slow the passing of time in this country. In fact we might have been tempted to try crack, just to speed things up a bit (just kidding mom!!).

While in Djibouti, we pretty much survived off a totally carb based diet. The veggies looked a little suspect and we were afraid to eat anything washed in the local water. We were also wary of any meat products. So, there was bread and pastries for breakfast and pasta for any other meal of the day. The one exception to this was when we decided to splurge at the 5-star Kempinski hotel. They had a delicious dinner buffet where I was able to fill up on fish, chicken, veggies and fruit. It was amazing…and that activity took up 6-30 minute increments! Well done!

Well, that pretty much sums up the highlights of this trip. Oh, but lest I forget…the flight back to Dubai. Needless to say we were anxious to get to the airport and be on our way. Of course the flight was delayed for awhile, but that didn’t shock either of us. We just scraped together our last Djibouti Francs and bought 1 beer to share while we waited. The cast of characters on the flight back was superb. The plane was much less crowded on this return trip (probably 15 passengers in total), but they didn’t disappoint. There were two passengers who we thought might have had hijacking plans on their minds, but then Jen and I relaxed when we realized there was no way they’d want to waste their time on a two-bit airline like Daallo. The other passengers were fairly normal, but this time the crew provided the entertainment. First of all, they must have all been rejects from other airlines because not one of them seemed to speak the same language and they didn’t seem to be wearing uniforms from the same company. There was the Korean woman who clearly had not taken classes in customer service. The flight attendant from some former Soviet-bloc country that only smiled when she gave us a cup of “pomegranate soda” which looked like it could have been concentrated jet fuel. The dinner was – well I don’t know. Neither Jen nor I had the strength to try it. And then there was the bathroom with the smoke detector that continued to beep for no reason and was fastened to the wall with a well-loved bobby pin. At this point I just decided to turn my iPod on and visualize an eventual safe landing. Luckily, I think the pilot did the same.