Another transit day. It seems like most of our local flights have been late afternoon this trip, which sort of kills the day. Our flight back to Libreville was at 6:40pm which meant we had to be at the airport at 5pm. We booked late checkout at the guesthouse (for 35 EUR). Sat around the lounge area near the pool, catching up on my blog and reading. It was a pretty warm day and very humid. We had been spoiled by the cooler temperatures in Príncipe.
We still had the rental car (it was cheaper to keep it for the day and return it at the airport) so drove down to Papa Figo's for lunch. We were pretty familiar with getting around São Tomé by now and didn't even need to use google maps.
Ordered the seafood platter for two. One thing we noticed in São Tomé is that chefs ding the bell repeatedly whenever a meal is ready to be served. Not just a single ding and then back to cooking. They ding it quite impatiently until a server picks up the meal. Anyways it's quite funny.
Our food arrived, way too much fish for the two of us. But still enough room for a dessert (flan) and espresso. Then back to our hotel for a nap.
Packed up for the flight and drove to the airport. The car rental guy met us just as we finished loading our bags into the cart. He didn't seem too surprised about the flat tire. In fact he didn't really check the car at all - my assumption is that the fact we were able to drive it to the airport was good enough for him.
There was a line up outside the terminal, but it was for people way early for the TAP Portugal flight. We were able to check in right away. Another stamp in our passports as went through immigration to leave São Tomé and Príncipe. We weren't allowed to take water through (they're inconsistent here about that). Checked out the duty free shop, but there wasn't much. Bought a small wooden turtle as a memento.
Then we waited along with the 12 or so other passengers. At 7pm the TAP Portugal passengers started filtering in, it looked like they had a full flight back to Lisbon. Finally around 7:30pm, just when we were starting to wonder about our flight, they announced we could board. It was a larger prop plane than the domestic flights we'd had between São Tomé and Príncipe. We even had flight attendants and a snack served! Because there were so few passengers we were assigned seats based on weight distribution.
The flight and landing in Libreville were relatively smooth. We went through the AfriJet terminal, and picked up our luggage. We then had to wait for the Gabon immigration officials to arrive so we could get our passports stamped. Some of the other passengers were getting quite irate. A few of them were connected because they got on their phone, and within 10 minutes a couple of officials arrived, my guess is sent from the main terminal. The connected passengers continued berating the officials even as they were getting their stamps. The officials weren't too impressed when we handed over our blue passports but their tone changed when they saw we were Canadian and not American (this was shortly after Trump made his racist comments about Haiti and African countries). We'd have to be careful over the next couple days in Libreville, as there's not many English-speaking tourists here and the default guess is that we're American.
Anyways it was almost 9pm by the time we got to the Royal Palm. They served dinner until 10pm so we quickly washed up and headed down for dinner. Ate outside cause it was one of the last chances to do so before we headed back to Toronto and winter.
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