When I heard ironmanjt was planning his next New Year in Dangerous Places trip, I decided to join up with him for a portion. We both were missing the two Congos and Angla. I'd jokingly made a comment last year about a FT Do in Kinshasa and now it would actually be happening! After a bunch of emails back and forth eventually it worked out that we would meet in Kinshasa and travel together to Brazzaville, Pointe Noire, Cabinda, Luanda, Sao Tome and Cape Verde. I planned on visiting Sudan before flying to Kinshasa while he visited Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon and Gabon. As a coincidence, Dem Congo would be both our #150th country visited.

The first challenge was arranging the visas, as each country required one. For Cape Verde you can get one on arrival. Sao Tome also has an online pre-approval site (http://www.smf.st/virtualvisa). It is also possible to pre-arrange visa on arrival for Sudan, but at a hefty fee. That left only three visas I needed to arrange, the Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola.

The Rep Congo visa is a jaw-dropping $200. I believe it is the most expensive basic tourist visa for US citizens. At least with a price like that the visa requirements are the easiest of the three countries. We both were able to get our visas in under a week with just a hotel confirmation.

The Democratic Republic of Congo requires an invitation letter for the visa. While I waited on the Congo visa I scouted around a few companies and eventually found one that would provide just the letter for $40. The invitation took a few days, even with my snafu of not only sending the wrong amount via Western Union, but also getting the receiver's name wrong as well (oops - I was watching Amazing Race at the time and obviously wasn't paying attention!). Once we received our invitation letters the DRC visa ($115) also was issued quickly.

That left the Angola visa.. notoriously hard to obtain. Angola also officially requires an invitation letter but they are also difficult to obtain. Both Jason and I were putting out feelers for several weeks. The only ones I found were a guy offering one for $300 or through a tour company that wanted $1000 for two days. We decided to try for a transit visa as we would be coming in overland from Congo to Cabinda, flying to Luanda, then flying to Sao Tome. A bit of a stretch for transit but we decided to try that route. I found a hotel booking site (http://www.hotelinluanda.com/) that was able to get a confirmed hotel reservation letter for one night in Luanda. Luanda hotels are crazy expensive as there is so much oil money there, even a basic hotel or guesthouse is $200+ a night. There aren't any chain hotels either to use points. Radisson, Intercontinental, etc have been planned for years but keep getting pushed back.

One problem of applying for Angola visas is you must apply in person to get fingerprinted. Luckily there is an Angola consulate nearby in Houston. When I got to the Houston consulate I had a long wait as there were ~20 people there (all oil workers) applying for their work visas. I finally get to the desk and ask about transit visa, and immediately she said we don't do transit visas... yikes! Something about their computer system 'doesn't go through'. I pleaded for a few minutes and eventually she accepted it and said she would try. ironmanjt was much luckier... he applied in DC and had his transit visa two days later!! Mine took much longer. When I called a few days later they said yeah the visa hadn't gone through. I don't think it was an actual denial, just something about how their computers work(?!?). They offered to give me a 30-day visa instead (^ ) but it would take a few more weeks (over Thanksgiving). Finally after calling the consulate a few more times (they kept saying it would be ready in a few days) I received my passport back with a visa! Bonus too as I got a 30-day visa ($140) for the transit visa price ($50). So persistence does finally pay off when it comes to Angola visas.

Meanwhile my Sudan entry permit was also getting down to the wire, 8 days to go before my trip and I had not received it yet (I had applied mid-November). I'd applied for it through a guesthouse in Khartoum, they say it takes 10 days or so to process, however there was some snafu there though they said process had changed, etc. It's an expensive service too, $180 for the entry permit then you must pay the $150 visa fee on top of that. I decided to use my UK passport for Sudan which reduced the visa fee to $100. The advantage is you aren't without your passport for 20+ days at the embassy. I also arranged a car+driver+photo permits ($220) through the Acropole Hotel to go visit the pyramids of Meroe north of Khartoum. Acropole Hotel is very responsive to email and can also arrange the visa entry for $160.. they are also central Khartoum so I would recommend them highly.

For flights I ended up booking a one-way United 60K J award AUS-IAH-ORD-FRA-KRT, one-way United 12.5K Y award KRT-ADD-FIH and USair 70k return award RAI-LIS-EWR-CLT-AUS-IAD-IST-JNB-WVB (I will fly to Namibia next year). I also booked CAB-LAD in Y and LAD-TMS-RAI on TAAG Angola airlines. LAD-RAI in business was only $100 more than coach so opted to upgrade that segment. Originally I booked KRT-ADD-FIH award, but a week or so before my flight I noticed they had cancelled the KRT-ADD flight, requiring me to make a 2000-mile detour flying KRT-CAI-ADD, ugh.