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We landed at around 11 am at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, It was cloudy and foggy, and we were glad that we hadn't decided to try to go out of the airport for some sightseeing during our layover. It wasn't a very nice day for walking around the city. We got on a bus which took us to Terminal 2E gate 37. When we arrived at the terminal, we got into an incredibly long security line which snaked around some barriers and then continued down the hall. Luckily we were in no rush, and eventually reached the metal detectors. We were also hand-searched. We went to the rest room and then went to sit down at our gate. I checked and found that my cell phone had coverage here, so I sent a quick text message update to our blog. We knew that our parents would be wondering if we had made it out of Boston with last night's snowstorm.
The terminal was very modern looking; the building was cylindrical and the the interior was an aesthetically pleasing repetition of glass, wood, and chrome - very sleek and modern. We took a seat and looked around the terminal. Many of the passengers were wearing traditional Malian dress, and the women looked just stunning in their bright colors and West African head wraps. We chatted with a Belgian woman who was moving to Bamako with her young son to live with her brother. She felt that her son needed a father figure, and in Mali it is customary for uncles to take on that role. The son kept her on her toes in the airport by sprinting off down one of the corridors. Pam showed up after a little while; she had taken a wrong turn and ended up exiting the secure area of the airport. She was then told it was too early to enter the terminal so she went out to a cafe for coffee. When she came back, the huge security line had dwindled and she was able to come straight through. We met up with Tina, Pam's friend from Austin and the founder of Women Worldwide, who had set up the service part of this trip. Tina had us in stitches from the start, telling us about the corn dogs she had dressed in little outfits and smuggled to Venice before entering them in the most-traveled corn dogs contest in the Texas State Fair. Pam and Tina walked to the other end of the terminal to get a coffee, while Craig and I talked with the Belgian woman sitting next to us. Susan, the fifth traveler in our party, came over and introduced herself, and we knew that we had all arrived safely in Paris and the real journey was about to begin. Seeing "Bamako" on the monitor made it all seem real. While looking at our boarding passes, I noticed that Pam and I were both booked for the same seat (28 K). Craig and I had been assigned our seats in Boston, and were suddenly afraid that maybe the flight was overbooked. I started to panic and wonder if indeed I had a seat at all. As soon as an airline worker appeared at our gate, Pam and I went over to show him the duplicate boarding passes. He looked me up in the computer and said that Craig and my seats had been changed to 20 F & G. While relieved that we at least had seats on the plane, we noticed that these were not window seats, as we had previously requested. The attendant said that there were no more window seats available. Boarding the plane was a complete free-for-all as everyone boarded en masse. Luckily, we had room for our duffel bag carry-ons in the overhead bin. The seats were more roomy than the ones on the previous flight, and these actually reclined a bit, but I was on the aisle and Craig was sandwiched between me and a Malian woman. We took off at 4:40 pm. We had seat back TV's, but there was nothing which looked interesting and we simply rested. We were served another nice meal: Craig ordered chicken fricasee with pesto sauce accompanied by wild rice medley, broccoli, and carrots, while I ordered macaroni with a spinach and mushroom sauce. Both wereserved with camembert cheese, baguette, yogurt (with no sugar that tasted rather sour), and a pear tart with caramel sauce. Air France certainly is one of the best in terms of in-flight meals! Mali is one time zone behind Paris, and we landed at 9:30 pm. The plane parked on the tarmac and we walked down a staircase and onto a bus which shuttled us to the terminal. The building was small and crowded. We were immediately handed arrival paperwork and were ushered straight into a line which looked more like a disorganized mob. I hurriedly filled out our paperwork while we jockeyed to keep our position in line. When we finally got to the front of the line, two people cut right in front of us. People were pushing up against us and we felt really claustrophobic. A French-speaking employee spoke brusquely to Craig and we were afraid there was some kind of problem. He kept pointing to his bicep. What? Then Craig realized what was going on - he was signaling that he needed our "yellow card' - the documentation that we had had our yellow fever vaccinations. We handed him the yellow cards and he stamped our passports and let us through. Once we were on the other side of the gate, we saw a man holding up a card which read "Adventures in Rock." We walked over to him and he introduced himself as Assou from Saga Tours, the local operator. Susan, Tina, and Pam also made it through the passport line, and Tina went over to the luggage carousel to pick up her checked bag. The airport was very crowded and small, and it was very hot and close in there. We looked forward to escaping its chaos into the cooler outside air. There was a luggage scanner and we put our bags through, but nobody was manning it. As we prepared to exit the building, the security guards wanted to see Tina's baggage claim ticket. In all of the chaos she thought that she had lost her wallet (which luckily was not the case). But she couldn't locate her baggage claim ticket and started to tear her purse apart looking for it. When she came up empty, Assou talked to the guard. Tina showed her passport and her name was the same as on the luggage, so the guard let it go. We stepped out into the night and Assou led us to the waiting car. He introduced us to Bahini, who would be our guide, and Bouba, who would be our driver. Wow, after all of these hours in airports and in planes, we were finally in Mali. We were excited to start our adventure, and adrenaline kept us alert on the ride, despite our lack of sleep. On the 18km ride to the Azalai Grand Hotel, we drove through many roundabouts and passed many monuments. We passed small shops and gas stations, whose exteriors were lit solely by a single short fluorescent tube light. Assou told us that "Mali" means "hippo" and that "Bamako" is a combination of the words "Bama" (crocodile) and "Ko" (river). (This immediately brought back memories of the "Roots" miniseries, where Kunta Kinte passes down his knowledge from Africa to his enslaved offspring - "Ko means river.") It is obvious from the naming of the area how important and life-sustaining the Niger River is. We crossed a modern bridge over the Niger, but it was too dark to see very much. As we entered the city we noticed how modern it was. We arrived at the hotel and all filled out our check-in paperwork. The modern business hotel was decorated with tapestries depicting Malian motifs, and there were some colorful tropical flowers in the lobby. There was a crooked fake Christmas tree next to the elevator, decorated with red and gold garland and ornaments. There were a few shiny wrapped packages under its branches. It reminded us that it was still the holiday season, a fact which had slipped our minds in all of the chaos and bustle of the last 36 hours. We were shown to our room; a miniature carved wooden Dogon door mounted on the wall bore a "104" in brass. The room was very nice, with a sofa, television, king sized bed, and modern bathroom. We laughed as we looked around the room, and everything seemed to start with the prefix "Afri": We saw the AfriCable TV guide and the AfriPages telephone book - do you think that we were in Africa? There aren't very many places to exchange foreign currency in Mali once you leave Bamako, and there are no ATM's. As we would be leaving Bamako in the morning for more remote areas, we decided to exchange money at the hotel tonight. We went down to the desk and gave them our U.S. money. They disappeared with it into the back room. Pam came to the desk to change a smaller amount of money, and was given her Central African Francs (CFA) right away. Our man came back about 10 minutes later with a calculator and a stack of CFA notes. After all of the calculations were done and the transaction fee was subtracted, we headed back to our room with 1.3 million CFA. Wow, quite an exchange rate! When we got back to the room I turned on my cell phone and was amazed to notice that my T-Mobile network had found the local MaliTel network, and my phone actually worked! I texted a quick update to our blog announcing that we had arrived safely, and by the time we went to bed it was 12:30. View Larger Map |
 16:40 to Bamako, Charles de Gaulle Airport  Azalai Grand Hotel, Bamako  Azalai Grand Hotel, Bamako  Azalai Grand Hotel, Bamako  Azalai Grand Hotel, Bamako  Room 104 Azalai Grand Hotel, Bamako |
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