Sunday 30th was our last day in Cairo. We had to check out at noon, but we spent the whole day at the rooftop restaurant/terrace of our hotel just chilling while looking at the pyramids. We will never forget that view. Later in the afternoon we got in the taxi to the airport (price of the taxi was covered by the accommodation!), ready for our long night: 3 flights, 2 stop overs in Saudi Arabia.
It was about 40 degrees outside, so we were both wearing shorts. As we approached the check in desk of Saudi Arabia airlines, we were told that we should both wear long trousers to enter Saudi Arabia, even if we are not leaving the airport. We expected this for girls, and I had long trousers in my backpack. But we did not expect that Richard would have to change, so we had to un pack to find his trousers again and get changed. Oh well, lesson learned!
So now, wearing long trousers, we approach again the check in desk. A few minutes of silence, the guy walks away, and comes back to tell us that we can’t fly with our tickets. Apparently, because we had a connection flight which was within Saudi Arabia, we would need a visa that we did not have, and could not get anyway. Funny thing is that I had called the embassy before buying the tickets, to ask about this and be sure we could fly through and we were told our connections were less than 12 hours so we would be fine. No matter what, the only option we had was changing our flights. We kept our last flight, from Jaddah to Nairobi, and bought a new ticket from Cairo directly to Jeddah .
This new flight was a couple hours later, so we had to wait longer. All of a sudden, I get a cough attack. I couldn’t stop coughing, until I could drink some water and get to breath again. This called the attention of an Egyptian guy who very kindly tried to help me by bringing me a bottle of water. Unfortunately, the bottle wasn’t sealed, so it was tap water, which I can’t drink because I would get sick. He saw I wasn’t drinking it (I was drinking my own), and came to try to explain us in Arabic why I should drink it. We understood that it was some kind of holy water and I would get better with it. Also, he blew over my body. I know for sure he was trying to help me, but I wish I knew what exactly he was doing… he even asked the airport stuff the bring a doctor! But really, I was just coughing!! Luckily, the doctor never came, and it was finally time for us to check in.
So we head to the check in desk, once again, and with new tickets. And again a surprise… the lady wanted to see our return tickets to fly out of Kenya. We did not have them, and guess what? I had also called the embassy and asked if I would really need a return flight and I was told that doing the online visa, we would be fine without the return flight. We could not convince the lady to let us fly. So we went on skyscanner and bought a flight from Mombasa, Kenya, to Zanzibar, Tanzania, on an approximate date. Went AGAIN to the counter, showed it to her, and after looking and looking at everything, we FINALLY got our boarding passes and we were ready to fly to Nairobi!!!
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