Arrival and visa chase

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arrival in Freetown and after some health forms & temp checks for Ebola screening it was time to face my fate armed without a visa receipt, they didn't like it,one of a group of chinese guys had made the same omission though I think a bribe sent him on his way fairly quickly. I was left with the unsurprising option by head of immigration (on the day) to pay 120usd for a new receipt, after a short wait I was allowed to return to the airport with a paper copy of the receipt in exchange for my passport, knowing full well there must be a printer in here somewhere, we ( legendary sweed Daniel) had 3 hours to kill anyway,i left Dan with the luggage in a relaced position talking to the most friendly airport security, sure enough I had found help office staff and had a copy in less than half an hour, only to realise he had left the building with the little rouge book, what insued after an hour of waiting for the local grapevine to retrieve his number or location, was a pretty cool tour, kindly by nithauiel IT technician, after he had finished his shift around sunrise. We drove through quite a bit of the local neighbourhood to 3 of his different houses, this man likes cars and diggers, third time lucky, he was politely woken up and appeared in an arsenal shirt and shorts, after demanding I must pay a new price he got bored of the silence and kindly retrieved his louie Vuitton clutch bag in which was my port and signed off the SL visa stamp, Job done. We then switched vehicles into another mercedes, a taxi driver who had been following us the whole way after Daniel had agreed he could take us to the the local ferry once it was light. A wicked jounrey through the neighbourhoods again, Only a short jury in a police post at the ferry terminal to go due to the distaste of the taxi driver at his fare Dan had paid, there was some grey area over what had been agreed but 5000 was over the norm local rate from outside the airport , 10000 was paid after the police influence , he had wanted 60,000, you have to admire his ambition. Either way it was less than 3 USD, fairly busy smokey ferry from tagrin to kissy and we were over the estuary in 40 mins, Dan caught a taxi to the main square, I opted to get hold of my host using a locals phone and Zik came picked me up in his big red sports car, we then switched into is pathfinder. tbc

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