Cote d'Ivoire to Guinea to Liberia

This could be a long post as we had only just reached Cote d’Ivoire when I last wrote, and since then we’ve been to Guinea and are a few days in to Liberia.

When I last wrote we were in Yamoussoukro, the capital of Cote d’Ivoire, where a former President built a basilica to rival the Vatican in Rome. A stunning building yet totally out of place. One could question where the funds came from to build such an incredible structure but apparently it was “a gift from God”!!

From Yamoussoukro, we had a day long drive before finding a bush camp in a logging clearing. The forests of Cote d’Ivoire are seemingly being felled at quite a rate. Next stop was a remote village, with no running water or electricity, where we watched a stilt dancing performance. We had quite a welcome with the whole village turning out to greet us and never leaving our sides. An audience of at least 100 watching us eat meals, wash up, put our tents up, brush our teeth, etc, etc. To be honest, you couldn’t even go to the toilet in peace as the pigs follow you into the bushes and are rooting around your feet ready to provide a clean up service!! 

Time to leave Cote d’Ivoire behind and head to Guinea. The roads heading towards the border crossing were nothing more than dirt roads and got progressively worse the closer to the border we got. As you may recall from my previous post, we had to get special permission from the Prime Minister to cross this border. Consequently it took a while to get to the border because we got stopped at several police check points and even taken to the police station whilst they checked the validity of our document with the authorities in Abidjan. We finally made it to the border at sunset with the intention of camping at the border. The Cote d’Ivoire officials let us through to the Guinea side although they couldn’t stamp our passports to confirm our exit because they didn’t have a stamp to hand! Then the Guinean officials couldn’t be bothered to process us unless we paid a bribe and didn’t want to grant us permission to camp there for the night either. So we were rather stuck in no-man’s land between the two borders. However, a river runs between the border so whilst negotiations continued, we took the opportunity for a much needed wash and cool down. Ultimately we were allowed to camp the night and the Guinean officials said they would process us in the morning. 

Another waiting game the next morning as it was all obviously too much like hard work for them to bother stamping our passports, so they sent us on to the next check point. Here a very serious border official spent a couple of hours meticulously recording all our details into his ledger before we were finally stamped into Guinea officially and could get on our way.

Our time in Guinea was just five days in the south east corner as we will be returning to other areas of Guinea later in the trip. We spent two nights in the town of Nzerekore camping in the grounds of the best hotel in town - which sounds way more glamorous than it was. Access to showers limited to the outside showers by the pool, but at least there was a pool and a chance to unwind after a busy few days on the road. We also went dancing in the hotel nightclub which was lots of fun but probably the sweatiest place I have ever been. They don’t sell drinks - it really is just a place where people go to dance but the floor is wet from sweat - kind of like dancing in a sauna actually….!

Every day of this trip, it just keeps on getting hotter and hotter. I have never known such relentless heat and humidity. On leaving Nzerekore, it was time for a bit of activity with a walk to visit a vine bridge. Amazingly, bridges are built entirely of woven vines across huge rivers. We also went trekking in the forests of Guinea to see chimpanzees which was a highlight. They are now becoming increasingly rare as their habitats are under pressure from human impact. Such a treat to see them in the wild. We had a young male hurling sticks at us from a tree so clearly he wasn’t quite as pleased to see us!

All in all, I really enjoyed Guinea and look forward to returning. They really don’t get many tourists and we were met with huge smiles and hordes of children running out of schools to wave as we drove through villages. Dreadful roads but beautiful lush green forests which makes a pleasant change from the dry dusty flatness that we saw so much of in Ghana and parts of Burkina Faso.

And on to Liberia. Once again, terrible roads to get to the border and I seem to recall several hours of waiting around to complete our exit of Guinea - clearly they didn’t want us to leave because it took them a ridiculous length of time to let us through. I would love to have photos of some of these borders but photography at border crossings is strictly prohibited. Most of the borders are signified by a piece of rope across the road, a corrugated roofed hut or two, and a bunch of men wearing a motley selection of combat clothes, some wielding the odd AK47.

Liberia seems to be slightly more ebola aware than other countries as we had to wash our hands and have our temperature taken - luckily we were all recorded as “healthy” in the book. Unusually, there was also a female customs official who was very determined to do her job fully and for the first time, the truck was searched - not in any way a proper search but they made a token effort of opening a few bags! Interestingly, Liberia is the only African country that has a female Head of State. This might imply that Liberia is slightly more advanced than other African countries but far from it. Liberia, “land of the free”, is where the Americans freed their slaves who then, knowing no other life, went about enslaving the indigenous population of Liberia. Ultimately this led to a very unhappy state of affairs and a 20 year long civil war. The US pour in a massive amount of aid to Liberia but seemingly to no avail. The capital, Monrovia, is full of UN marked vehicles and this is the first country where we aren’t greeted with open arms. Liberia has no tourism to speak of so a bunch of white people are initially treated with some distrust. That said, it is a beautiful country. We headed up into the hills for our first night and had the most spectacular views over Cote d’Ivoire / Guinea / Liberia. Swam in a beautiful lake the next day, and some waterfalls a couple of days later. Shower opportunities are infrequent to say the least so any form of swim / wash is always a highlight! Now off to the beaches of Robertsport on the coast of Liberia and frantically rushing to complete this before we depart Monrovia so I will leave it there for now..