Doha, Qatar
We knew when we booked our plane tickets for this trip that the first two days would be spent primarily in transit. Josh had found a mistake airfare listing for Johannesburg, South Africa with a connection in Doha, Qatar. We acted quickly and bought the tickets before the airline fixed the mistake and the flight went back to its normal price.
So, here we are. Our trip started early Saturday with a 9:00 a.m. flight from Charlotte to Boston. We had a full day layover in Boston so we went to visit a friend and spent the afternoon touring Cambridge and the Harvard campus – where he is in grad school.
We got to the airport a little later than we had hoped due to an Uber pool ride from H E double hockey sticks. We tried to do online check in at the airport because the line was so long when we arrived, but our account told us there was an issue with our tickets and we needed to see a gate agent. After waiting in line for over 45 minutes the gate agent asked us for our South African visas. To this, we responded with “WTF” looks first at him and then at each other. South Africa – as far as we know – does not require visas for US citizens staying less than 90 days. We checked and double checked this before leaving.
Josh told the guy we didn’t need visas because we were staying less than two weeks, but this guy disagreed. I immediately went into lawyer mode pulling up the State Department travel site for South Africa, as well as, the South African national visa office site – both of which confirmed no visas needed, We never actually resolved this issue and settled on the man telling us he would let us through without the visa but we needed to get one online before we arrived in South Africa. To that, I say, we’ll see about it!
Anyway, that was just the start of our troubles. The man then asked us for the card we purchased the tickets on. We had brought the card just in case.
Unfortunately, something still wasn’t right and we were sent to another desk where we waited another 30 minutes or so. Turns out the card we brought was the same account as the card we purchased the tickets on BUT it was not same card and this – apparently – is a huge deal to Qatar Airways,
See, the card we purchased the tickets on was cancelled a few months ago when I accidentally threw it away at a Sheetz gas station. Ooops. We were told under no uncertain terms that our options were to bring a statement showing the purchase of the tickets or pay full price for them AGAIN.
We eventually negotiated out an agreement by which we showed them the online transaction and that settled the issue for now. I am by no means confident that we aren’t going to run into this same issue when we try to leave South Africa at the end of our trip. My position is the same, I’m definitely not paying for another ticket – so we could be here for more than 90 days after all. . .
It has mostly been down hill from there. Our 13 hour flight from Boston to Qatar got delayed at takeoff. We ended up missing the city tour we had booked in Qatar and have had to – instead – spend 7 hours looking for things to do around the airport. It is, by the way, a beautiful airport – but we’re getting pretty bored. Our next flight from Qatar to Johannesburg (8 hours long) takes off at 2:45 a.m. but it is looking more and more like there could be a delay.
We did get access to a private lounge through one of our travel rewards programs and it offered a nice clean private place for showers. That shower has been the best part of my trip so far. Josh is taking his now, but I’m sure he would agree.
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