We were meant to have caught up with Mme Auguy in Abidjan but it was a busy few days apart from Tabaski on 19th.
Thanks to Nicolas offering his spare room where we camped out for a few nights which meant we were able to go visa hunting in earnest without having any accomodation worries. JB refused to leave our sides. He was so good to us, it worried me as his father was in hospital but he wanted to make sure that we were OK before heading off to see him.
First thing on Monday we went off to the Ghanaian Embassy for a visa we sat in a room in the Embassy before being thrown out whilst filling in 4 identical pages for each of us ... tedious is not a word I'd use! Dani tried to fill in one page of hers but I couldn't run the risk of her making a mistake so did all 8 pages alone and handed it all over to them with 15,000CFA for each single entry visa. With a bit of pleading we managed to get them to promise it to be ready for Tuesday morning so that we could run up to the Benin Embassy by 10am Tuesday to get our passports back Tuesday at 2pm as Maddy was flying into join us at 3.30pm from Dubai (some people are intelligent when booking flights!)
We walked up to the Benin Embassy about a 1km away and got our paperwork so that I could be ready for the following day and jumped in a taxi to head back towards Nicolas' flat. We spent 2 hours in a taxi from Les Deux Plateau down to Marcory Zone 4, traffic was horrendous, smog & pollution even worse! We had lunch at a friendly maquis (restaurant) the St Christophe opposite the most enormous supermarket I've ever seen in sub-Saharan Africa - Prima (the prices were horrific too!). Followed by little doughnuts from the ladies outside!
The following day, we went through the same rigmarole, getting a taxi back across town to Les Deux Plateau, grabbing our passports and walking as quick as we could to the Benin Embassy to hand them in again. Whilst in the queue, I was asked by the man behind me what visa papers I had, I explained the VTE (visa touristique d'entente) as he'd never heard of it but agreed for 25,000CFA it made sense to have a visa covering 5 countries. I'd done a lot of research into getting one and found that Burkina had turned down my request for one whilst Togo + Niger seemed to be on a weeks holiday due to Tabaski.
Thanking me for my explanation we went our separate ways. JB wanted to meet up with his friend Moussa while we had 4 hours to kill, Moussa is a tennis coach at a club nearby. Walking back down the main road, we heard a horn and someone waving at me ... it was the man from the queue at the Embassy. He told us all to hop in and asked where we were going and instructed his driver to drop us there! Typical of the kind of hospitality we were met with in Cote d'Ivoire. 
Moussa took us off the main road into a muddy market type area, we had an omlette sandwich & coffee (Dani reckoned it was the tastiest she's ever had!) and we sat in a bar for a while before having an early lunch, Dani had asked where she could get her hair braided. 
Moussa walked us back up to almost opposite the Embassy and got one of the girls who were offering to braid on the side of the road to go into his club and braid her hair in the garden! She was on a bit of a mission as we had to be back at the Embassy by 2pm in order to get across town to the airport.
Finally Dani's hair was braided, we had our visas and we were on our way to the airport to collect Maddy. Getting to the airport was horrendous, the Tabaski sheep market was taking place just at the intersection of the main road out of Abidjan and the airport; our 4 lanes became 6 with our taxi and thousands of others spilling over into the oncoming traffic - thats where the dark glasses came on and I pretended not to notice!!! Dani was busy inspecting her new braids we had had done outside the Benin Embassy - her hair had a pink tinge to it!
We found poor Maddy waiting patiently outside the airport; we were an hour or so late. I jumped out of the taxi, who then shot off as he was being screamed at not to park in front of the airport.
Knowing he wouldn't go far as he hadn't been paid the four of us wandered out of the airport area and saw him waiting for us at a garage. But lo & behold, a gendarme had spotted him too & decided to try to fine him for picking up passengers illegally in the airport area.
I jumped in and told the gendarme he'd done nothing wrong, we'd been in the taxi all along, I got some supicious looks from the gendarme & luckily he let him go. We got Maddy back to the flat, where our room became a little smaller with one more person & pack! We took her up to Patrick's maquis (restaurant) St Christophe for dinner and chilled out back at Nicolas' flat.
The following day was Tabaski, that night JB & I were talking on the balcony of Nicolas' flat and some firecrackers went off, JB ducked, shook and then stood back up looking a bit sheepish. The effects of the war are still etched on everyone's minds! The block opposite Nicolas modern expat flat was once Orange Telecom but completely destroyed in 99 and stands as testimony. Nicolas himself was evacuated in 2004!
Tabaski was spent incredibly lazily, the morning we watched the neighbours 3 sheep that had been grazing happily for the last few days having their throats slit ... with a lot of laughter and smiles all round . The whole afternoon was spent in the pool that's part of Nicolas apartment block. Then Maddy & I bravely found our way around Nicolas' kitchen to cook dinner as a small way of saying a big thank you to him.
We went back into visa mode the following morning, the four of us got a cab up to Les Deux Plateau, JB jumped out and left us to sort out the visas alone promising to catch up with us later in the day. We got to the Ghana Embassy early, Maddy had her papers ready that I'd picked up earlier in the week and our visa lady hadn't arrived yet ... when she did arrive she was astonished to see Dani with braided hair, holding the door open for her, we got quite a reception! Promising to have Maddy's visa ready in a few hours we headed off to find breakfast and an internet cafe. Breakfast was back in our market area and then I found by chance a small internet cafe with 3 PC's ... it was at the rear of a Lebanese restaurant. The PC's were useless, only one worked properly and as I was typing an e-mail three cooks came racing into the room - chasing a mouse out of the kitchen. I wasn't too worried, mice are OK, rats are not. Satisfied that it had vanished they left us; but I soon heard scuttling around my feet and jumped up screaming out of the front of the restaurant much to the amusement of Maddy & Dani!!! The cooks came back in, Maddy confirmed it was a rat and I shivered & shook outside until they killed it, my e-mail was finished incredibly quickly after that little episode!
Desperate to be back on the road, we caught up with JB, had lunch together then he & I went off to find a bank and we experienced some interesting racism. As we approached the door talking together they opened it and closed it immediately afterwards. I looked back at them & JB and motioned that he was with me. He was eventually let inside and explained that they'd told him he couldn't enter. Coming out I gave the guards a bit of a mouthful, I still don't quite understand what they thought was going on!
We were all fed up with city life; the traffic was terrible, the smog was suffocating but Abidjan has a lot going for it - very well thought out in terms of infrastructure but its lost such a lot since the coup detat and subsequent war. We waited for JB at Nicolas' flat whilst he went off to see his father in hospital (who died a few days later from stomach ulcers & other complications aged 53).
We all got a taxi to Treichville bus station and caught the bus to Bonoua, a taxi down to Samo and another very wet taxi to Assinie, we later discovered that this taxi had just done the Ghana border 'run' along the beach at low tide!
First thing on Monday we went off to the Ghanaian Embassy for a visa we sat in a room in the Embassy before being thrown out whilst filling in 4 identical pages for each of us ... tedious is not a word I'd use! Dani tried to fill in one page of hers but I couldn't run the risk of her making a mistake so did all 8 pages alone and handed it all over to them with 15,000CFA for each single entry visa. With a bit of pleading we managed to get them to promise it to be ready for Tuesday morning so that we could run up to the Benin Embassy by 10am Tuesday to get our passports back Tuesday at 2pm as Maddy was flying into join us at 3.30pm from Dubai (some people are intelligent when booking flights!)
We walked up to the Benin Embassy about a 1km away and got our paperwork so that I could be ready for the following day and jumped in a taxi to head back towards Nicolas' flat. We spent 2 hours in a taxi from Les Deux Plateau down to Marcory Zone 4, traffic was horrendous, smog & pollution even worse! We had lunch at a friendly maquis (restaurant) the St Christophe opposite the most enormous supermarket I've ever seen in sub-Saharan Africa - Prima (the prices were horrific too!). Followed by little doughnuts from the ladies outside!
The following day, we went through the same rigmarole, getting a taxi back across town to Les Deux Plateau, grabbing our passports and walking as quick as we could to the Benin Embassy to hand them in again. Whilst in the queue, I was asked by the man behind me what visa papers I had, I explained the VTE (visa touristique d'entente) as he'd never heard of it but agreed for 25,000CFA it made sense to have a visa covering 5 countries. I'd done a lot of research into getting one and found that Burkina had turned down my request for one whilst Togo + Niger seemed to be on a weeks holiday due to Tabaski.
Thanking me for my explanation we went our separate ways. JB wanted to meet up with his friend Moussa while we had 4 hours to kill, Moussa is a tennis coach at a club nearby. Walking back down the main road, we heard a horn and someone waving at me ... it was the man from the queue at the Embassy. He told us all to hop in and asked where we were going and instructed his driver to drop us there! Typical of the kind of hospitality we were met with in Cote d'Ivoire. 
Moussa took us off the main road into a muddy market type area, we had an omlette sandwich & coffee (Dani reckoned it was the tastiest she's ever had!) and we sat in a bar for a while before having an early lunch, Dani had asked where she could get her hair braided. 
Moussa walked us back up to almost opposite the Embassy and got one of the girls who were offering to braid on the side of the road to go into his club and braid her hair in the garden! She was on a bit of a mission as we had to be back at the Embassy by 2pm in order to get across town to the airport.
Finally Dani's hair was braided, we had our visas and we were on our way to the airport to collect Maddy. Getting to the airport was horrendous, the Tabaski sheep market was taking place just at the intersection of the main road out of Abidjan and the airport; our 4 lanes became 6 with our taxi and thousands of others spilling over into the oncoming traffic - thats where the dark glasses came on and I pretended not to notice!!! Dani was busy inspecting her new braids we had had done outside the Benin Embassy - her hair had a pink tinge to it!
We found poor Maddy waiting patiently outside the airport; we were an hour or so late. I jumped out of the taxi, who then shot off as he was being screamed at not to park in front of the airport.
Knowing he wouldn't go far as he hadn't been paid the four of us wandered out of the airport area and saw him waiting for us at a garage. But lo & behold, a gendarme had spotted him too & decided to try to fine him for picking up passengers illegally in the airport area.I jumped in and told the gendarme he'd done nothing wrong, we'd been in the taxi all along, I got some supicious looks from the gendarme & luckily he let him go. We got Maddy back to the flat, where our room became a little smaller with one more person & pack! We took her up to Patrick's maquis (restaurant) St Christophe for dinner and chilled out back at Nicolas' flat.
The following day was Tabaski, that night JB & I were talking on the balcony of Nicolas' flat and some firecrackers went off, JB ducked, shook and then stood back up looking a bit sheepish. The effects of the war are still etched on everyone's minds! The block opposite Nicolas modern expat flat was once Orange Telecom but completely destroyed in 99 and stands as testimony. Nicolas himself was evacuated in 2004!
Tabaski was spent incredibly lazily, the morning we watched the neighbours 3 sheep that had been grazing happily for the last few days having their throats slit ... with a lot of laughter and smiles all round . The whole afternoon was spent in the pool that's part of Nicolas apartment block. Then Maddy & I bravely found our way around Nicolas' kitchen to cook dinner as a small way of saying a big thank you to him.
We went back into visa mode the following morning, the four of us got a cab up to Les Deux Plateau, JB jumped out and left us to sort out the visas alone promising to catch up with us later in the day. We got to the Ghana Embassy early, Maddy had her papers ready that I'd picked up earlier in the week and our visa lady hadn't arrived yet ... when she did arrive she was astonished to see Dani with braided hair, holding the door open for her, we got quite a reception! Promising to have Maddy's visa ready in a few hours we headed off to find breakfast and an internet cafe. Breakfast was back in our market area and then I found by chance a small internet cafe with 3 PC's ... it was at the rear of a Lebanese restaurant. The PC's were useless, only one worked properly and as I was typing an e-mail three cooks came racing into the room - chasing a mouse out of the kitchen. I wasn't too worried, mice are OK, rats are not. Satisfied that it had vanished they left us; but I soon heard scuttling around my feet and jumped up screaming out of the front of the restaurant much to the amusement of Maddy & Dani!!! The cooks came back in, Maddy confirmed it was a rat and I shivered & shook outside until they killed it, my e-mail was finished incredibly quickly after that little episode!
Desperate to be back on the road, we caught up with JB, had lunch together then he & I went off to find a bank and we experienced some interesting racism. As we approached the door talking together they opened it and closed it immediately afterwards. I looked back at them & JB and motioned that he was with me. He was eventually let inside and explained that they'd told him he couldn't enter. Coming out I gave the guards a bit of a mouthful, I still don't quite understand what they thought was going on!
We were all fed up with city life; the traffic was terrible, the smog was suffocating but Abidjan has a lot going for it - very well thought out in terms of infrastructure but its lost such a lot since the coup detat and subsequent war. We waited for JB at Nicolas' flat whilst he went off to see his father in hospital (who died a few days later from stomach ulcers & other complications aged 53).
We all got a taxi to Treichville bus station and caught the bus to Bonoua, a taxi down to Samo and another very wet taxi to Assinie, we later discovered that this taxi had just done the Ghana border 'run' along the beach at low tide!
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