Mali: If they can reduce it once, they can reduce it twice!!

Entering countries is always fun! At the Malian customs, I showed the Carnet de Passage and they replied "Ce bon, ce bon!"... but they didn't have the stamp... I should go to the next city to get it stamped. After the Customs, I went to Immigration. Their answer "You need to do it at the next village. We don't have ink!" Mali was not starting well…

It took us 25 km of driving and another 20 minutes looking for the police station, but we finally found it. Surprised on how we got there without a stamp, they stamped the passports. It costed us 15000 CFA each, no bargaining (we found out later it could have been cheaper if we had done the visa in advance…). 

Next, the customs. After a careful inspection of the Carnet, he said "It is not valid in Mali. You need to pay for a laissez passez. It costs 15000 CFA". We had just paid 30000 CFA for the visas so we tried to save some money. "Oh my GOD! We don't have that money!! We can't afford it". It took us 10 minutes of begging and he reduced it to 10000 CFA. We understood we could go further and offered 5000 CFA... Upset, he left the office and wished us a safe journey.

This time the carnet didn't "save" us

Perhaps we had gone too far… We went back to the motorbike and, when we were almost ready to go… he called me. “Give me your documents!” Ten minutes later we were ready to go!!

We had been warned before: If they can reduce it once, they can reduce it twice!