This is the tale about how I was briefly stranded in Asmara but was able to get out quickly through some sheer luck, kindness, and quick thinking.
In my previous post I wrote about my arrival in Eritrea and the splendid first day that I had visiting the sites of Asmara. I was poised to spend another two days in the capital enjoying being off the grid and relaxing at cafes and checking out historical architecture. I awoke that second day feeling slightly more rested. I’d slept for about four hours, and I headed out in search of coffee. I had an espresso and was just walking down the Main Street when I ran into my guide from yesterday, Selihom. I said “Hello,” and she almost immediately asked me if I was affected by the flight cancellations. “What flight cancellations?” I asked. She told me that Air Ethiopia had, effective immediately, canceled all flights in and out of Eritrea after some perceived sleight. While Ethiopia and Eritrea aren’t technically at war, they are in sort of an administrative standoff and have been for decades. “Huh,” I thought, “that doesn’t sound good.” But I didn’t immediately panic. Yes, in two days’ time I had a flight out of Eritrea on Air Ethiopia flying to Addis Ababa and then to Djibouti, but that was in two days; “Surely things will get sorted out by then,” I thought.
I went and had a cigar and one of those excellent tiny little macchiatos that they make in Ethiopia and Eritrea and I thought about the situation. It quickly dawned on me that this was actually quite bad. There were only three airlines that fly in and out of Eritrea and Air Ethiopia was the main one. If the flights were grounded I had no way to leave. (Land borders were not an option.) And while sometimes I wouldn’t mind being stranded abroad, Eritrea is not one of those countries. It’s not that isn’t lovely, but it has certain disadvantages: the lack of Internet means working remotely is impossible, the very high price of accommodations makes it impractical, and the fact that they don’t accept credit cards means that my cash would very quickly run out. I realized that I needed to get out of the country right away before any remaining flights filled up with people trying to do the same thing.
Fortunately, I had downloaded an offline map of Asmara ahead of time and consulted it and found three airline offices in the city. The first was Air Ethiopia. That very quickly turned out to be a non-starter. The office was closed and there were about 100 people outside angrily yelling and demanding service. Then there was an Air Emirates and a Fly Dubai office side by side downtown. The Air Emirates office had two very stressed out looking representatives working and a massive queue of people waiting for assistance. These were all people that were affected by the flight cancellations looking to get out of the country. The Fly Dubai office only had one customer service representative but had slightly fewer people in the queue. So I decided to wait there. With me in the queue was a woman living in Tanzania who had come to Asmara on business; she was a conservationist working with the government. She was in the same situation as me. She was very pleasant, and we had a lovely chat while we waited. She travels to Eritrea a lot and confirmed that these flights were going to fill up quickly and once they did there would be no way, easily, out of the country.
When it was my turn, I went up to the representative and said that I was looking for a flight out of the country later that night or the next morning to Dubai or Istanbul or Addis. (I didn’t want to fly back to Cairo because I didn’t have a visa for re-entry.) From any one of the three cities I would be able to get a flight to Djibouti.
The woman said we have a flight to Dubai tonight at approximately 11:30pm. “Terrific,” I said, “I’ll take it. How much?” “$714 U.S. dollars,” she said. I froze up for a second and asked hopefully, “Do you take credit cards?” “No,” she said, “only local cash and US cash.” OK. I had an envelope of cash with me. I pulled it out and started counting out my US money. I started by counting the 50s, then the 20s, then the 10s, by the time I got down to the ones, I realized I wasn’t going to have quite enough. I was $7.00 short – but I had euros. “No euros,” she said, “only U.S. dollars.” I did have the option of leaving and exchanging the euros into local money and coming back, but she wouldn’t hold the flight for me. I tried to bargain with her, but she wasn’t budging and the others behind me waiting to book flights were getting impatient (I imagined). Thankfully my conservationist friend from Tanzania handed me a crisp US $10.00 bill and allowed me to make the payment. Hallelujah. The woman was booking herself on the same flight to Dubai later that night.
I paid for my flight and headed back to my hotel with $3 in my pocket.
A few pictures i took that day before i got the bad news
I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. I was able to act quickly figure out what I needed to do and get a flight out of the country, all without using the Internet or credit cards. Just old-fashioned map reading quick thinking and cash carrying.
I still had no idea how I was going to get to Djibouti, but I was going to figure that out once I got to Dubai and had the Internet access.
I exchanged €10, which gave me enough to have dinner and get a ride back to the airport.
At my hotel I ordered dinner. Some vegetable pasta. However, when they brought it to me it was meat pasta. I normally wouldn’t care about these things, and I would just send it back and ask for what I ordered, but I was running out of time before I had to go to the airport and there was no time for them to remake the dish. Nor were they willing to give me a refund. It was all very frustrating, but I didn’t have time to argue with them. So I just left my food and my money, hungrily, grabbed my bag and caught a ride back to the airport.
The airport in Asmara is quite bare bones. There are no lounges. There are a couple of souvenir shops that may or may not be open. Other than that. it’s just benches. Like an old-fashioned bus stop. However, the mood was fun. I saw the faces of many people that I had seen throughout the day at the different airport offices. We were all smiling at each other and happily saying things like “Oh you made it!” and feeling sort of a general camaraderie about having gotten out of a bad situation. I sat with my conservationist friend and chatted until the flight came. Oh, and I had a shot of Eritrean vodka from the small bar/cafe at the airport, which cost me about $1.
Once I was on the plane with the wheels were up, I felt a more relaxed. I didn’t get to spend my three glorious days in Asmara, but I got to spend one very enjoyable day of sightseeing and another rather exciting, albeit stressful, day of problem solving. Even though it was a bit stressful in the moment, I knew that later on I would look back on this experience fondly.
Plus, this really reinforced a lot of my travel habits, including: always have cash (more than you need); know your maps, and have a printed or offline one; know how to get around and generally do things without the use of cell phones and Wi-Fi; and be flexible.
As we left Asmara very late and we landed in Dubai at about 6:00am, I had little or no sleep again that night, which made probably five days of having less than four hours of sleep. I would land in Dubai without any fixed plans but knowing that I needed to get to Djibouti in about 36 hours so I would not miss out on the rather pricey overnight tour I had booked to visit Lake Abbé. I was up for the challenge.
Read on here for my overnight Dubai layover and how I managed to get myself to Djibouti.
As a postscript, about a month later, my Air Ethiopian flight was refunded in full. Although I ended up spending far more for my last-minute tickets to Djibouti than I had originally. Air Ethiopian flights eventually did resume to Eritrea, but I wouldn’t count on it. If I was doing the flight now I would probably pick a more reliable airline.
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