by Darcy » Fri Feb 12, 2016 5:19 pm
Cotonou.
We got off rather smoothly this morning but weather was crap all day, visibility mostly 700 to 2000 metres all day.
Fuel has been prepaid/arranged for the entire trip but everyone is trying to rip us off. I've been working and living all over Africa for years but it always makes me laugh.
First Port Harcourt, the handler we hired to facilitate our transfer said the money hadn't gone through yet, and one of us needed to go into town, find a bank, and sort it out, and that it would take all day. Or....we could just pay cash and be on our merry way!? I played along and claimed that we were in no hurry and that I'd love to go visit Port Harcourt, and you could just see the disappointment fill his face. He huffed and puffed and soon enough admitted it was all okay and we could depart as everything was just hunky dory.
Crawling low level through Nigeria's delta avoiding all the offshore helicopters, the radios going absolutely nuts, we eventually land in Benin, and the other Captain took all the paperwork and permits and headed off to the handlers office. In the meantime, everyone and their brother walked out to the helicopters and demanded who authorized us to land, what are we doing, and demanding payment, even a couple of military guys in full gear who obviously had their own agenda. We were busy trying to put the girls to bed and kept blowing them off telling them the guy with all the paperwork is in the head office, so lets go in there and see what's what. They all disappeared. BUT in head office, buddy spent an hour doing up a landing fee/overfly bill, which came to a few grand! I said last time we came it was $14, what the hell? He got all flustered and said he'd do up a new bill for tomorrow because his printer had just broken.
So off for G&Ts and Indian food.....