After three days of traveling (including one night stay in Doha and one night stay in Johannesburg), we finally arrived in Bulawayo. Alhamdulillah.
Now, I don't generally consider airports to be very interesting (at least not worth a whole blog post of pictures), but the Bulawayo airport is not like any other airport I've ever been to.
Actually, I should correct myself. It wasn't the proper airport that I went to. It was the "Temporary Terminal" (which has functioned as the airport for well over a decade -- probably closer to two).
Now,
that was not like any other airport or terminal I've ever been to.
To be fair, here is the official, new airport building, which, I've been told, is due to open very soon:
Here's the building that you actually go into after getting off the plane and taking a short bus ride:
Don't you love how they label the doors "Domestic Departure" and "International Departure"? There's a third door for arrivals as well -- I just wasn't able to get a picture of it from where I was in the bus.
This is a view of the airport building from the parking lot:
This is what it looks like from the inside:
And you know those doors labeled "International Departure" and "Domestic Departure"? I thought it was a typo that 'departure' was written singular instead of plural. But, I stand corrected. You see, here's the information board with incoming and outgoing flights:
It says there are exactly two arrivals and two departures every day. One plane is supposed to arrive from Johannesburg and then leave about an hour later (International Departure) and another is supposed to come from Harare and then leave a little while later (Domestic Departure).
Inside those little wooden drawers near the bottom, there are extra plastic letters and numbers that you would use to change the information on the board. Now, seeing as there is
actually only
one flight that comes in and out of that airport every day (i.e. the Johannesburg flight), they clearly don't update this board very frequently. On the other hand, seeing as everyone knows that the Harare flight no longer comes in and out of here, I guess there's no need to update the board.
This was also the only airport I've been to where your boarding pass and luggage tags are handwritten. You have to be quite vigilant when they're writing your luggage tags, though, because it's easy to get these airport and flight codes mixed up. On my flight out of Bulawayo towards Jakarta, the first luggage tag they gave me had my bags going from Bulawayo to Johannesburg to Doha and back to Johannesburg. Luckily, Aunty caught that mistake, had them rewrite my luggage tag, and my luggage traveled safely to Jakarta.
And just a couple more pictures:
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