Welcome to Rwanda – Hotel Hell, or: Melanie going nuts

Hardly landed in Rwanda and got off the plane, we went almost without detours to the renewed COVID test directly at the airport in Kigali. Security personnel, the police and military were everywhere. Almost suspiciously we were looked at as newcomers and potential virus carriers – that our last negative test was hardly 24 hours ago, nobody was interested here. We played along with the game and kept a close eye on the sample takers. From the test we went directly to our shuttle, which took us and other arrivals directly to our 24h quarantine hotel. The Great Season Hotel – a 3-star establishment with pool and spa.

Arrived at the hotel, we were greeted quite coolly and taken directly to our room. There were no explanations and other communication was also rather rudimentary – from such a hotel (for an affordable $60 per person per night) we had expected at least English-speaking staff. After a short situation check, Andreas decided to ask again at the reception how everything should go. Towels were unfortunately not available in the room, also the non-existent equipment for a 2nd person in the room irritated us a little. Welcome to the “Hotel Hell”.

Returning from the reception, Andreas could unfortunately only provide sobering information: they wanted to take care of the towels, the pool was closed and we were not allowed to leave the room until the test results arrived. Oh well, at the airport we had been assured that the results would come via SMS and email. What do you do all the time in such a cramped hotel room? Right! Turn on the TV and check the local program. Disillusionment again: one sports channel, one Belgian channel and otherwise just a lot of noise. Only the hotel’s own WLan can save the day. Most of you will guess what comes next … unfortunately, the WLan was not quite usable. Slowly, some resentment arose and we wondered how we would get our test results without Internet.

At least Andreas had learned at the reception that the room rate included meals. So we called room service, meanwhile it was already dark and we were hungry. In the absence of a menu and therefore overwhelmed by the question of what we wanted, the counter-question on our part (what there would be) led to the fact that here first had to ask – the phone call was abruptly ended and a callback came only half an hour later. Let’s make it a little shorter: the whole thing dragged on for about 3 hours. Andrea’s food was forgotten 2 times, the 3rd time came the wrong order, drinks forgotten and the quality … well. The stress level began to rise.

The next day should not be much better. At least we had towels in the meantime, which we also urgently needed in addition to the doormat to prevent the flooding, starting from our bathtub, of the entire hotel. WLan was still not available. Inquiries were answered by the reception only with “We know, we fix” – that was the end of the conversation. The day dragged on like rubber, interrupted only by the culinary delights that this 3-star hotel had to offer. In the meantime, they were probably also annoyed with us. Food was only available in aluminum and with plastic cutlery – quite good for the hotel staff and Andreas at this point … Mel had already reached a point where it was better not to give her a real knife in the hand.

In the meantime, we had also learned by chance that we would probably not receive any notification of the test results. We were supposed to check the results on a government portal by entering our data. After some research, we found said page – the WLan became more stable and broke down only every 10 seconds. There were no results yet and so the hours dragged on. Not to bore you and to shorten the whole thing: at some point there was a result for Andreas, Mel’s result came 1.5 hours later, which led to tears, despair and anger. The mood – also between us – was tilting.

Fortunately, after 28 hours, both results were in – the problem now was how to proceed. From 8pm there was a strict curfew in Rwanda and that was in 30min. The hotel could help here and brought us almost 10km for only 25$ extra to our accommodation, from which our short Rwanda tour should start the next morning at 04 o’clock.