My #BusinessTrip to #Kinshasa capital of #DRCongo Democratic Republic of Congo

By | December 14, 2021

As 2021 is ending I was starting to remember what happened this year in travel terms.

This year was my first year in the last 20 years when I did not board an airplane or left the country.

You can imagine what a change considering that my record is of 54 flights in a year.

Going through my archive of photographs I found some past trips I never mentioned on the blog.

It was April 2016 and the destination was Kinshasa, the capital of Democratic Republic of Congo.

How to get there:

Going to Kinshasa was quite easy as they have a good connection with Istanbul.

So my route was Cluj-Bucharest-Istanbul-Kinshasa.

The start of the trip was not so great.

I remember that I was going there with my project manager who called me when I was in Istanbul that he missed his flight from Paris to Istanbul. I do not speak french, just understand it and my PM, a native french speaker was supposed to be my guide.

Then from some weird reason the flight from Istanbul to Kinshasa got delayed for several hours.

I arrived alone around 23 hour in Kinshasa. Visa formalities took forever so ended up entering the country around 1 a.m. At least I discovered that I underestimated my ability to speak French when it is really needed 🙂

Usually when things go wrong they tend to go all the way and of course they did.

I had to search for my luggage and found it sitting alone next to a wall outside the arrival area.

The pick-up car of course understood incorrectly the arrival time, they were expecting me the next day !

In the end, after having a three way conversation in French through my PM that was still in Paris, we managed to get a car from the client to pick me up. It was already 3 a.m. in the morning when they arrived, just in time because the guards at the airport were trying to explain to me that I have to leave the airport because they are closing 🙂

Lodging:

Around 5 a.m. I finally arrived to my room at Pullman Grand Hotel de Kinshasa and got to enjoy the view of the Congo river from my window.

Congo river with fog

I also had a nice view of the bridge between Kinshasa and Brazzaville, the capital of the other Congo (Republic of the Congo).

Congo river bridge
Congo bridge

The room was a bit over the top in decorations. Not my style but seems that is a trend.

Getting ready for the office

Food:

The food was good at the hotel where I had most of the dinners.

If you do not mind the mosquitos and took your Malarone pill for the day, the hotel restaurant terrace was really nice.

Hotel restaurant terrace

During the day I went to several restaurants around the office with quite nice food or had some food at the office from the local cantina. Going to a restaurant was a hussle due to the weather. You do not feel like walking outside when is 80% humidity and 45 degrees Celsius, a bit too much for me.

Local beer was actually nice. I liked the very creative label.

Local beer

City:

The city was busy as any other capital, hot and humid but surprisingly crowded.

Local market 1
Local market 2

I really liked the National football arena. Looks like football is very very popular in DRC.

National football arena.
National football arena.

And finally the building of the Central Bank where I had my office for the time of my stay in Kinshasa.

Building of the Central Bank

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