Crossing the border into Côte d'Ivoire (or CI for short), it became clear that my prayers for better roads had been answered. By a complete arsehole.
The route instantly disintegrated into an even worse mess of thicker, wetter mud, deeper ruts and ramshackle log bridges with tyre width gaps that threatened terminal damage in response to any driving errors. Coincidentally I bumped into Kev and Em (the two deadbeat Australians from Dakar; hi guys if you're reading this!) right on the border and although we made tentative plans to rendezvous 20km away in the next town, in the hour before sunset they couldn't even make it that far (and they are travelling in a beast of a 4WD!)
First stop in CI for me was Man, a small town slap bang in the middle of the most picturesque mountains in the country. I had to take that on trust as the dusty Harmattan wind made it difficult to see the most celebrated peak, the Dent de Man (google it if you want to see a decent picture). I did however make it to the top of the second highest peak in the country, at the top of which is a television tower with views over three countries (Liberia and Guinea as well as CI). Again, what I mainly saw was dust, which made me glad that instead of spending a whole day hiking to the summit I had cheated and ridden up the service road.
After Man the next target was Parc National de Tai, but what looked like a straightforward couple of hundred kilometres on the map turned into an absolute mission. Having been lulled into a false sense of security by a few tarmac roads, and by the fact that Tai was on a 'National Highway' I assumed that I would be there in time for lunch. However after the town of Guiglo the tarmac disappeared, along with any semblance of a flat surface. In its place I found a reddish-orange strip littered with bogged down trucks, metre deep ruts, and muddy puddles the entire width of the road with no way of knowing just how deep they were. Progress was painfully slow (I later calculated I was averaging 13mph) and with my top-heavy bike I spent a fair amount of time falling off into said muddy puddles (thankfully the local people are extremely friendly and always stopped to help me back up).
Despite the pain in getting there, it turned out to the worth the trip. The park is home to a 50 strong troop of chimpanzees, and guides/conservation workers will take you on treks into the forest to see them in their natural habitat. The first day there we spent without much luck, hiking around and listening but without finding the chimps (they move around daily inside a territory of about 26 square kilometres). Plenty of times I heard what I thought sounded like our hairy cousins, but was told that it was just some of the local birds. Then, just as the sun was going down and we had all but given up for the day we heard the unmistakable sound of a chimpanzee drummer. Chimps it turns out communicate not just with vocalisations, but also by beating the hollow base of trees in the forest. This also highlighted just how strong the chimps are (much stronger than humans despite their smaller size) as while their drumming travels for several kilometres, when I hit the same tree it barely made a sound. We marched at double speed towards the noise, and as we approached began hearing the familiar shrieks and hoots, and started to see small hirsute figures up in the canopy. The chimps were getting ready to bed down for the night (every day they make nests in a different spot); we spent an hour or so watching them move around and get settled, but with the light fading we had to head back to camp.
A 4 a.m. start the next morning meant that we were able to get back to the chimpanzee nest before they woke up, giving us the chance to see just what a day in the life of a chimp is like. And it goes a little something like this: the Chief (the alpha male) gets up first and clatters around making a lot of noise. When everyone else doesn't instantly wake up he starts banging on the hollow trees and shouting. The other chimps emerge, and if they are not suitably subservient to the chief he gets upset, jumps on them and pushes them into the ground to show them who is boss. Once everyone is up they set off, moving at surprisingly high speed either through the trees or along the forest floor looking for food. The chimps will eat fruits and plants that can be easily picked, but they will also dig up ant nests and either eat the eggs or fish out the ants themselves with a stick, sherbet dip style. They also eat nuts, using rocks to crack them open and get at the contents. The guides were amazing; having worked for several years for the WCF tracking the chimps they knew each of them by name, and were even able to give the history behind them (one had part of his face missing after fighting off a leopard attack, another was the former chief until he got too old and was usurped by a younger and stronger male). Sadly the photos were not so amazing - the low levels of both light and photography skill meant that the images I got were a bit blurry - you'll just have to trust me about how good it really was.
From Tai, it was another couple of hundred kilometres of horrible road down to the coast, this time compounded by the fact that I had run out of cash. I had just about enough petrol to get there but no food, and the only cash machine in 200km was out of order. I made it to the coast on an empty tank and an emptier stomach and was able to change a few dollars, enough to feed me and get me to the next stop, the small coastal town of Sassandra. Kev and Em had gone directly there from the border and had decided to take a couple of weeks to relax at the beach over Christmas and New Year, and being the lovely sort they are had invited me along, rather than spend Christmas Day on my lonesome. I found an inexpensive hotel and then for the next couple of days did....very little. We had a few drinks on Christmas Eve (followed by a trip to a very strange nightclub with an even stranger old man for me), and then on Christmas Day had a huge feast on the beach - langoustines, chicken, fish, kebabs, rice, chips, salad. Great food, acceptable company (just kidding, love you guys really!).
It was while in Sassandra that Colleen, my friend from New York, announced that rather than spend New Year with tedious and boorish Americans (her words not mine) she was flying out to Abidjan to visit for a few days. And I think that was a good choice. This gave me enough time to make a trip up to Yamoussoukro before heading into the big city to meet up. Yamoussoukro is technically the capital of CI though only really in name - it was the ancestral village of the first president after the French left, and apparently he decided that the country should come to him. He built a huge palace there, complete with a moat guarded by sacred crocodiles, and also the largest church in the world (inspired by but bigger than St Peter's in the the Vatican). The city never really took off though, and the rest of the place is relatively empty (population 280,000 compared with over 4m in Abidjan). It was here, while on a tour of the Basilica that I started to feel a bit ill. Feeling intermittently dizzy and sweaty, I had written it off as food poisoning, but an Ethiopian doctor on the same tour convinced me to visit the hospital and I tested positive for malaria (this is despite taking doxycycline to prevent it). Luckily it seemed we had caught it early, and after picking up some tablets and drinking a load of Coke (the dizziness was apparently the result of hypoglycemia) I felt well enough to ride the couple of hours to Abidjan, arriving at the hotel just before Colleen.
On doctors orders I was taking it easy, though timing wise this was terrible as it meant that I was not able to be the energetic host I should have been. Still, we managed to take a trip out to Grand Bassam (a popular beach resort near the city) for some good food and a look at the old colonial architecture, and ventured into the city (though the famed skyline was hidden by the bloody Harmattan). Colleen also brought such American delicacies as peanut butter and nacho cheese so that did make things better, and we were even able to make a Philly Cheesesteak at one of the roadside eateries, much to the bewilderment of the locals.
Because I was on the drugs I was off the booze, so New Years was fairly restrained, spent at a local bar with people dancing and shooting fireworks into the road (and then as we walked back to the hotel, shooting fireworks at each other), but it was on New Year's day that things took a turn for the worse. I had picked up a niggling pain in my side, but as we got into the evening it started to get worse to the point that I couldn't really move or breath without pain. We went to a clinic nearby, who after a cursory examination just wrote me a prescription for tramadol and then sent me on my way, but an hour later the pain was not better and so we went back to another, larger hospital. This time they did a few more tests (blood, EKG) but when they came back negative they seemed to run out of ideas, wrote me a prescription for tramadol and then kicked me out, and I had to limp out of the hospital and into a taxi, all the while struggling to breath without pain. Thanks for nothing!
Thankfully, the owners of the hotel were able to call a doctor who came out and gave me something in a drip that helped with the pain, after which things seemed to settle down and I could manage with the tablets prescribed. Colleen was due to fly out the next evening, but being the superstar she is (and much to mum's relief) she opted to stick around longer to make sure I was ok. Sadly for her this was all happening in Abidjan, not the most interesting place in West Africa (it's fine but it is just like a lot of other big cities), but despite my failing body we managed to go to the Parc National Banco, see a local market, catch up with Kev and Em, and have a few nice meals (I am not including the Philly Cheesesteak in that tally).
There was one final sting in the tail - the day before Colleen was due to fly out the Ivorian military, unhappy about pay and conditions, mutinied and took to the streets, first up north and then later in Abidjan. No one was quite sure what was going on all day, and while things had reportedly cooled off by the evening (including the release of the defence minister who had been briefly held hostage) the streets were still deserted, making for an eerie ride to the airport. In the end, Colleen flew out without any problems, and the next morning I was heading for Ghana.
The route instantly disintegrated into an even worse mess of thicker, wetter mud, deeper ruts and ramshackle log bridges with tyre width gaps that threatened terminal damage in response to any driving errors. Coincidentally I bumped into Kev and Em (the two deadbeat Australians from Dakar; hi guys if you're reading this!) right on the border and although we made tentative plans to rendezvous 20km away in the next town, in the hour before sunset they couldn't even make it that far (and they are travelling in a beast of a 4WD!)
First stop in CI for me was Man, a small town slap bang in the middle of the most picturesque mountains in the country. I had to take that on trust as the dusty Harmattan wind made it difficult to see the most celebrated peak, the Dent de Man (google it if you want to see a decent picture). I did however make it to the top of the second highest peak in the country, at the top of which is a television tower with views over three countries (Liberia and Guinea as well as CI). Again, what I mainly saw was dust, which made me glad that instead of spending a whole day hiking to the summit I had cheated and ridden up the service road.
After Man the next target was Parc National de Tai, but what looked like a straightforward couple of hundred kilometres on the map turned into an absolute mission. Having been lulled into a false sense of security by a few tarmac roads, and by the fact that Tai was on a 'National Highway' I assumed that I would be there in time for lunch. However after the town of Guiglo the tarmac disappeared, along with any semblance of a flat surface. In its place I found a reddish-orange strip littered with bogged down trucks, metre deep ruts, and muddy puddles the entire width of the road with no way of knowing just how deep they were. Progress was painfully slow (I later calculated I was averaging 13mph) and with my top-heavy bike I spent a fair amount of time falling off into said muddy puddles (thankfully the local people are extremely friendly and always stopped to help me back up).
Despite the pain in getting there, it turned out to the worth the trip. The park is home to a 50 strong troop of chimpanzees, and guides/conservation workers will take you on treks into the forest to see them in their natural habitat. The first day there we spent without much luck, hiking around and listening but without finding the chimps (they move around daily inside a territory of about 26 square kilometres). Plenty of times I heard what I thought sounded like our hairy cousins, but was told that it was just some of the local birds. Then, just as the sun was going down and we had all but given up for the day we heard the unmistakable sound of a chimpanzee drummer. Chimps it turns out communicate not just with vocalisations, but also by beating the hollow base of trees in the forest. This also highlighted just how strong the chimps are (much stronger than humans despite their smaller size) as while their drumming travels for several kilometres, when I hit the same tree it barely made a sound. We marched at double speed towards the noise, and as we approached began hearing the familiar shrieks and hoots, and started to see small hirsute figures up in the canopy. The chimps were getting ready to bed down for the night (every day they make nests in a different spot); we spent an hour or so watching them move around and get settled, but with the light fading we had to head back to camp.
A 4 a.m. start the next morning meant that we were able to get back to the chimpanzee nest before they woke up, giving us the chance to see just what a day in the life of a chimp is like. And it goes a little something like this: the Chief (the alpha male) gets up first and clatters around making a lot of noise. When everyone else doesn't instantly wake up he starts banging on the hollow trees and shouting. The other chimps emerge, and if they are not suitably subservient to the chief he gets upset, jumps on them and pushes them into the ground to show them who is boss. Once everyone is up they set off, moving at surprisingly high speed either through the trees or along the forest floor looking for food. The chimps will eat fruits and plants that can be easily picked, but they will also dig up ant nests and either eat the eggs or fish out the ants themselves with a stick, sherbet dip style. They also eat nuts, using rocks to crack them open and get at the contents. The guides were amazing; having worked for several years for the WCF tracking the chimps they knew each of them by name, and were even able to give the history behind them (one had part of his face missing after fighting off a leopard attack, another was the former chief until he got too old and was usurped by a younger and stronger male). Sadly the photos were not so amazing - the low levels of both light and photography skill meant that the images I got were a bit blurry - you'll just have to trust me about how good it really was.
From Tai, it was another couple of hundred kilometres of horrible road down to the coast, this time compounded by the fact that I had run out of cash. I had just about enough petrol to get there but no food, and the only cash machine in 200km was out of order. I made it to the coast on an empty tank and an emptier stomach and was able to change a few dollars, enough to feed me and get me to the next stop, the small coastal town of Sassandra. Kev and Em had gone directly there from the border and had decided to take a couple of weeks to relax at the beach over Christmas and New Year, and being the lovely sort they are had invited me along, rather than spend Christmas Day on my lonesome. I found an inexpensive hotel and then for the next couple of days did....very little. We had a few drinks on Christmas Eve (followed by a trip to a very strange nightclub with an even stranger old man for me), and then on Christmas Day had a huge feast on the beach - langoustines, chicken, fish, kebabs, rice, chips, salad. Great food, acceptable company (just kidding, love you guys really!).
It was while in Sassandra that Colleen, my friend from New York, announced that rather than spend New Year with tedious and boorish Americans (her words not mine) she was flying out to Abidjan to visit for a few days. And I think that was a good choice. This gave me enough time to make a trip up to Yamoussoukro before heading into the big city to meet up. Yamoussoukro is technically the capital of CI though only really in name - it was the ancestral village of the first president after the French left, and apparently he decided that the country should come to him. He built a huge palace there, complete with a moat guarded by sacred crocodiles, and also the largest church in the world (inspired by but bigger than St Peter's in the the Vatican). The city never really took off though, and the rest of the place is relatively empty (population 280,000 compared with over 4m in Abidjan). It was here, while on a tour of the Basilica that I started to feel a bit ill. Feeling intermittently dizzy and sweaty, I had written it off as food poisoning, but an Ethiopian doctor on the same tour convinced me to visit the hospital and I tested positive for malaria (this is despite taking doxycycline to prevent it). Luckily it seemed we had caught it early, and after picking up some tablets and drinking a load of Coke (the dizziness was apparently the result of hypoglycemia) I felt well enough to ride the couple of hours to Abidjan, arriving at the hotel just before Colleen.
On doctors orders I was taking it easy, though timing wise this was terrible as it meant that I was not able to be the energetic host I should have been. Still, we managed to take a trip out to Grand Bassam (a popular beach resort near the city) for some good food and a look at the old colonial architecture, and ventured into the city (though the famed skyline was hidden by the bloody Harmattan). Colleen also brought such American delicacies as peanut butter and nacho cheese so that did make things better, and we were even able to make a Philly Cheesesteak at one of the roadside eateries, much to the bewilderment of the locals.
Because I was on the drugs I was off the booze, so New Years was fairly restrained, spent at a local bar with people dancing and shooting fireworks into the road (and then as we walked back to the hotel, shooting fireworks at each other), but it was on New Year's day that things took a turn for the worse. I had picked up a niggling pain in my side, but as we got into the evening it started to get worse to the point that I couldn't really move or breath without pain. We went to a clinic nearby, who after a cursory examination just wrote me a prescription for tramadol and then sent me on my way, but an hour later the pain was not better and so we went back to another, larger hospital. This time they did a few more tests (blood, EKG) but when they came back negative they seemed to run out of ideas, wrote me a prescription for tramadol and then kicked me out, and I had to limp out of the hospital and into a taxi, all the while struggling to breath without pain. Thanks for nothing!
Thankfully, the owners of the hotel were able to call a doctor who came out and gave me something in a drip that helped with the pain, after which things seemed to settle down and I could manage with the tablets prescribed. Colleen was due to fly out the next evening, but being the superstar she is (and much to mum's relief) she opted to stick around longer to make sure I was ok. Sadly for her this was all happening in Abidjan, not the most interesting place in West Africa (it's fine but it is just like a lot of other big cities), but despite my failing body we managed to go to the Parc National Banco, see a local market, catch up with Kev and Em, and have a few nice meals (I am not including the Philly Cheesesteak in that tally).
There was one final sting in the tail - the day before Colleen was due to fly out the Ivorian military, unhappy about pay and conditions, mutinied and took to the streets, first up north and then later in Abidjan. No one was quite sure what was going on all day, and while things had reportedly cooled off by the evening (including the release of the defence minister who had been briefly held hostage) the streets were still deserted, making for an eerie ride to the airport. In the end, Colleen flew out without any problems, and the next morning I was heading for Ghana.
