I think I have Isio Wanogho to thank for this. It has been a tradition of mine to up sticks and go somewhere warm for my birthday which is smack in the middle of winter. Last year, I was dragging my feet about it, until I saw pictures from Isio’s holiday to Mauritius and I was re-invigorated. I always have a 3, max 4 hour flight frame for short holidays. No point sitting on a plane for upwards of 9 hours, only to spend a week. I might as well go to Lagos. After scouring the map of the Middle East and North Africa (the only options that had decent weather outside of the warm European countries I have already visited)
Jordan, Oman and Morocco came out on
top. Immediately, we chose Jordan but their visa conditions for
Nigerians, Chineke, you would think it would get me free pass to see the
King of Jordan. Oman’s consulate’s website may as well have been
written in Chinese, for all the information it offered, so I chose
Morocco because their visa conditions were a breeze. Marrakech to be
precise. I was so excited for my trip, not knowing it was going to be
the holiday from hell. How so? I’ll give you a little background story.
The term African time was invented
because of me. I am notoriously late. This time I told myself I would
leave the house early, I had a plan mapped out to raid the Mac stand (I
had Ruby Woo on my mind) and perfume shops.
I am a nervous flyer you see and it
doesn’t help that I always get to my flight late, by the time I get to
my seat, I am already frazzled with my nerves shot to hell. With no time
to compose myself, we take off (my absolutely worst time of a flight)
and the entire flying experience goes downhill from there. Once I land, I
thank The Lord in 7 languages (wait, I speak only 2) and congratulate
myself for surviving the worst flight ever. I wonder what will happen
when I do face the worst flight ever. Maybe I will finally get to be on
CNN, but it will be as a Nigerian woman who went berserk on flight.
Anyway, I told myself this time all that
won’t happen. I was meeting someone there who was flying in from
another continent, I had envisaged myself all smiley, cool, calm and
collected and not the tired, uncommunicative grouchy Dunni. I would get
to the airport early and mentally prepare myself for flying. Alas,
the holiday gods were having a laugh on my behalf.
I drove to the prepaid airport parking
area, dropped the car keys and hopped on the shuttle bus to the airport.
During the drive, I checked my ticket to congratulate myself for being
early. When I opened the page, I swear my heart stopped. It must have,
because it felt like an out of body experience, and I could see myself
in some alternate reality screaming. I was going to the WRONG AIRPORT.
You know how you try to convince yourself that the words on the paper
just can’t be true. How in the world did I not realise that I was taking
off from Stansted airport.
Why and how did I buy a ticket taking
off and landing at 2 different airports? I was asking myself questions
faster than my brain could process. It got worse; I had less than 2
hours to my flight and I was heading to an airport in the opposite
direction. That shuttle ride felt like the longest drive of my life. I
kept checking my phone with shaky hands (by this time, my entire body
was trembling) for the route to get to Stansted. The train route had
like 3 changes and knowing Transport For London, I wasn’t sure I would
make it, plus I couldn’t guarantee that I wouldn’t get lost in the maze
of the underground trying to find the next train. Okay, I will drive
there, oops wait, I just parked my car. Alright, I would rent a car,
after all it is just a 1 hour 25 minutes drive, it shouldn’t cost that
much. Oh dear, when I got to the car rental place, the price gave me a
migraine. It was going to cost me double the price to rent a
car (because I was dropping it off at a separate location) than airport
parking for 7 days. Okay, should I just buy another ticket taking off
from Gatwick?
The next flight was the day after,
at 8.30pm plus it was even more expensive than renting a car. By then
all my systems just shut off and I mumbled through signing the
documents. The guy over the counter said you look like you’ve just got
some bad news, are you sure you are okay to drive, coffee or anything,
or just sit down and relax. I told him sorry, I am at the wrong airport,
my flight takes off at 12pm, this was 10.05am. I got the keys and drove
like a bat out of hell. It didn’t help that the route to Stansted
airport was right past my neighbourhood. I actually screamed in pain. 20
minutes into the journey, the curse of the M25 came alive. A bus had
broken down on my route. Just my luck. If I was the type of person who
cried easily, I would have been bawling majorly. I just sat there
telling myself – ‘How? Me the master planner’. I plan vacations for
friends as a hobby, I am known as the travel agent. Visa, holiday
destinations, hotels, just ask me. How on earth did this happen? A
10-minute drive took almost 40 minutes. I finally got past the stupid
bus and drove at 90 (er the speed limit is 70). I just kept praying some
police car would not stop me otherwise, you would have seen me on TV
going through a high speed car chase.
Finally I got to Gatwick and the stupid
SatNav took me to the wrong part of the airport. In fairness to it, the
guy at the counter told me to ignore the SatNav, look out for the signs
for rental car drop off and follow it. By then, my memory had wiped off
and I just sat there, this time willing myself to cry. I was finally at
the airport and I didn’t know where to drop the car. Besides I was
trapped in a parking lot that needed me to walk like 10 minutes to go
pay for parking. At that point, I just gave up, only to see the parking
attendants patrolling the lot. I explained myself and they turned off
the barrier to let me pass. Phew!
5 more minutes of driving, I got to the
drop off desk, and the guy said ‘Oh wait madam you have to let us check
the car’. I told him to get lost. I have signed off the forms, nothing
happened to the car, besides you guys took a deposit from me. I ran with
my luggage through departures, jumped the queue like the Nigerian that I
am, apologised profusely that my flight was at 12pm.
Luckily they let me pass and I was
praying fervently, hoping I did not forget any liquid items in my
luggage or I’d truly be screwed. I went through security, found my gate
on the board and it was already flashing Final Call. Just my luck, I
needed the underground transit to get to my gate. It left just as I was
getting there, the next one was in 2 minutes. By this time I was praying
in Yoruba, English and a little Igbo. I was finally here, the devil is a
liar.
There were also 2 other men on the same
flight. They were like guardian angels. They ran ahead of me, and it was
only due to them running faster than my tired legs, that I made it
because the woman at the desk was already closing the gate. I kept
screaming ‘I am also going to Marrakech, I am also going to
Marrakech’. Then she saw my Nigerian passport and was looking at it like
it was the plague. I was in no mood to be polite, at least I was
already there, they can’t take off without me. She saw the Moroccan visa
and finally let me through. As the last person on board, they shut the
aircraft doors. We took off before I could even stop hyperventilating.
You would have thought they were handing
out money at Marrakech airport and suddenly the whole world chose that
weekend to travel. I found out later that the Marrakech International
Film festival was holding that weekend, and many huge names from
Hollywood were present. Ah that explains it. NOT.
Being stuck in a hotel, 5 Star or not,
is so not fun. After racking up a huge room service bill, the Ijebu in
me started doing the math. By Day 3, virtually abandoned and fuming, I
was ready to go home. One last effort to at least see the place, before I
bought a one way ticket home. I hopped on all those red tour buses and
was cursing everything and anything that I wouldn’t get to explore this
fabulous cultural city, not knowing that the mischievous holiday gods
had finally gotten off my case. I met these two beautiful Somali girls,
Sucaad and Busharat from London. Almost immediately we got talking, I
told them my predicament and they said, don’t go home, come hang with
us.
At this point my paranoid radar had
surprisingly shut off, and I agreed. I did not know these girls from
Adam, but thanks to them, my holiday was saved and I had an amazing
time. Plus I made new friends, hopefully for life. Here I thought being
stuck in Prague because of that Icelandic Volcano “Eyitfiyatlajokululu”
and spending 23 hours on a bus back to London was my worst holiday
experience ever. This one takes the cake.
Thankfully, the sun shone bright at the
end of the tunnel, and I can look back and laugh. I will be sharing my
pictures from Marrakech in another post.
What has been your worst holiday experience? Please share and lets have a laugh together.
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