Planes, trains & automobiles, oh, and a ferry…

Wow. What a trip. The flight was all of 5 hours and 45 minutes but the trip ended up taking 27 hours. Multiple modes of transport and many hours of waiting were involved. To sum it up:

3 hours in the airport shuttle van, 1 hour on the ferry, 12 hours at Lungi airport, 6 hours on the plane, 1 hour at Brussels airport, 3 hours on 3 trains, 1 hour on a bus, 15 minutes in a car.

Initially I thought it was the trip to Lungi airport that would take forever. In case you don’t know- to get to Lungi from Freetown you have to cross the river. Of course, there’s no bridge. And with the helicopters being grounded and the hovercraft not yet recovered from its near-sinking experience, the only option was taking the ferry; the ferry that is on the other side of town and often overcrowded. Fortunately there’s a new Airport Shuttle- a minivan that picks you up at home/work and takes you to the ferry terminal, on the ferry, and to the airport. This ended up being the quick part of my trip! Although they did show up at the center early and I had to rush around saying bye to the staff. There was little traffic through town so we got to the ferry quickly and amazingly enough, it left within 45 minutes of our arrival. I actually stayed in the van on the ferry- and enjoyed the open windows, with the see breeze and keeping distance from the hundreds of others on the ferry! I even managed to fall asleep…some of the only sleep of my 27 hour trip. It wasn’t until we got off of the ferry and drove to the airport that I found out this trip was going to take longer than expected. I heard from a co-passenger that the flight in Brussels was delayed. The wait in Lungi airport merits a blog entry of its own…so more on that later. Anyway, 27 hours later, I arrived in Middelburg…