A quick stop leads to missed flight in Nairobi

A stopover for the night just for a reliable flight out of Mogadishu was all I had in mind.

Luckily, it lined up right that a friend was in town, so we made plans to meet up for dinner with some of his friends.

My “trial offer” of Diamond status from Hilton got me a nice upgrade at the Hilton Nairobi. I like free stuff, and I got a nice room on the executive floor overlooking a park, and they picked me up at the airport with a van that had wifi in it (that’s a new technology I support!).

Traffic getting to dinner was unreal. I couldn’t believe it.

Dinner was at Food Train, which was quite good. I ordered too much food, to be honest, and it was all super delicious. I tried Krest, which is from Uganda I think, and it’s like Sprite but with even more lemon.

Food Train closed at 10, and we stayed chatting until 10:45. They never said a word. Something that amazed me was that the 2 local guys paid their part of the bill by texting a code to the restaurant. Amazing technology!

Back at the hotel, I confirmed my 4:45am ride to the airport and went to bed. I had a 7:15 flight to Burundi.

I woke up at 7.

The alarm hadn’t made any noise, the hotel hadn’t called me to ask why I didn’t come for the van, and I’d missed my flight. I went down to ask why they hadn’t called me when I was late for my scheduled van, and they basically said they don’t look at the list and don’t care. I found that pretty surprising. If you don’t look at the list, how is the driver supposed to run the van on time?

I changed my flight, huffed and puffed for a bit, and then got my free breakfast in the executive lounge before deciding to try to salvage my day. What could I do with an extra 3-4 hours?

I went to the Nairobi National Museum. It was super interesting, and I really like the idea of Uber boda (you get a ride on the back of someone’s motorcycle).

The museum had exhibits about animals native to Kenya and also about Kenya’s history.

Back at the hotel, the front desk manager found me after hearing about what had happened and informed me that, no, ignoring the list was not supposed to be how things go, and she was going to re-train the staff to simply pick up the phone and say, “Did you still need that ride?”

They didn’t charge me for the rides to or from the airport, which didn’t fully ease my frustrations, but using points for the room and free rides led to a 100% free stay, I just had to pay for my dinner …oh, and the cost of changing the flight 🙁

I emailed my hotel in Bujumbura, Burundi to notify them of my new flight arrival time for the pick-up and was off.

Nairobi seems really interesting. This is not a sufficient visit to Kenya for me. What I really want to see is the animal migrations in the Massai. I’ll be back for that.