Long, long road trip ...

Leaving www.busuainn.com at the crack of dawn we had a taxi organised to take us directly to Takoradi tro-tro station for 13 cedis and from there picked up a 'Benz bus' (Mercedes Benz minibus) to Kumasi. Our intention was to get to Tamale for the night so that we could stayed in Mole National Park for Christmas.

We sat in the minibus for 5hours to Kumasi, it was a long Sunday and listening to political speeches the whole way was incredibly boring hearing voices drone on and on!


Arriving in Kumasi we took a taxi to the other side of town to the Tamale tro-tro station to find another Benz bus that had 3 seats left. I was concerned that if we didn't take them up on the final 3 seats we'd be stuck in Kumasi for a while; but we decided that 30minutes sitting on the side of the street, getting some sustenance before getting back into a crammed tin box was preferable. I do my best not to travel at night; the best way to find yourself in an African hospital or worse due to the amount of accidents on the road.

Eventually the second Benz bus filled up and yet another argument started over the cost of our luggage with the driver wanting the same price for our packs as we'd paid for our seats ... I refused to give in and finally got the 'normal' price! On this part of the journey we met some lovely Ghanaians who helped us out, including one who decided to pay for the use of the loo & to buy more food for the journey, refused to be repaid; it was great to see there were some friendly Ghanaians!

It was a long dusty road from Kumasi with endless roadworks heading north, the dust covered us all. We finally pulled into Tamale at 9pm and wandered off to find somewhere to stay for the night.

We headed straight to the Al Hassan Hotel. I had my doubts when I asked the nightwatchmen at the National Bank of Ghana next door about the place; smirks on their faces. Passing a lamp post complete with a drunk woman dancing around it, my fears heightened. We walked in the door & it was spick & span .. polite guys on the desk .. Maddy & Dani went off to see the room and Maddy told me to get the phone out immediately as we'd better start ringing around. Dani's nose was screwed up as the room had smelt so bad ... we organised another place and got out to get a taxi. Only then did I tell Dani that she'd been to her first African brothel!!! We ended up at a great place the other side of town called Las Hotel, our room felt like it was underground but it was 'clean enough', had a TV in the room and a great chinese restaurant on the roof, so we had a good meal the night we arrived!

Akwaaba???

Ghana, has been put to the bottom of my list of 'must return to ...' in fact I don't think it even makes the list ...

The country is money obsessed. The new money system in Ghana SO confusing, it was changed in July and essentially they knocked off four 0's to try to copy the US dollar apparently .... They ask for 15,000cedis for instance but in fact they want 1.5C of the new system ... about a euro.


The following morning I went into Takoradi; now knowing the correct prices for a taxi up to Agona Junction and a tro-tro to Takoradi I didn't have too much bother on the way there. Exchanging euros for cedi's in a bureau de change, buying a SIM card, doing a spot of last minute Christmas stocking presents; I then wandered into an internet cafe to send an e-mail out to say that we were safe & sound in Ghana (but not particularly happy). I was amazed to see the guy next to me on a PC was 'creating' credit card numbers and putting them into some website ... and seemed to be doing well at buying stuff!! In all my travelling in Africa I've seen some scams, but Ghana seemed to thrive on scamming in any way shape or form ...



I wandered up to the STC bus station to see if I could buy tickets to Tamale or maybe Kumasi for the following day. All sold out! I made my way back to the tro-tro station and got one back to Agona Junction hoping to join Maddy & Dani for lunch (they'd been on the beach all morning!). At Agona I met two Ghanaian ladies also wanting to get down to Busua to see friends but we couldn't find the driver for the Busua taxi; it turned out the car had been parked there for weeks. However neither could we find a taxi willing to take us to Busua for the correct rate .. eventually after 45minutes in the sun one rolled in and we pounced on it; only to find 3 other ladies had spotted it too. I jumped into the front seat whilst 5 rather large Ghanaian ladies shoe-horned themselves into 3 rear seats - I felt a bit guilty but compared with CI or Guinea, there wasn't any 'courtesy' in Ghana; however I did pay for my two new friends fares!


That night I had news from JB in Cote d'Ivoire. His brother was a lot better, he drugged him up with Lariam as I'd said ... but his father died. He rang me and asked if we'd be back in CI for 26th December for the funeral. It was terrible, he spent so much time with us and everyday I kept saying to him we'd manage & he should go off to see his father at the clinic. We were all shocked to hear the news ..

Finally we're travelling!

I was thrilled to be on the road. It reminded me of Gianni's remonishons the previous year 'we're not doing the 'Tour d'Afrique' ... but I was so happy to be travelling again and able to move on despite JB's place being so idyllic!


We got to Assinie Mafia for 4,000CFA in a dodgy old car. We had been suprised by the relatively new cars on the road in Abidjan but out of town the cars weren't so polished, but nothing as bad as I'd seen in Guinea!.

Sadly as soon as we got out we got hassle, the first we'd received so far. Brushing it off, we got a table for the three of us to sit at with our packs beside us whilst waiting for the pinasse to be ready. The 'captain' (never to be seen again) told us it would be a while, so after a few drinks and an omelette each and endless hassle from a couple of 'Bob's' (our nickname /codename for anyone who's a constant pain in the posterior) we were called down to the pontoon to board the pinasse.

A short but stunning crossing for 250CFA to Quartier France where we wound our way through the village huts to find a fleet of pick-ups waiting for us all. Most of the Ivoirians had a lot of luggage with them and were having to argue the toss about the 'excess' to pay to the driver. We successfully got our 3 packs on for a total of 500CFA after a bit of negotiation.

On board our pick-up we managed to get 3 seats together along one bench. Dani between Maddy & I, luckily Maddy was nearest the front of the pick-up but I had two more beside me, which made it a bit of a squash with 5 of us on one side, 5 opposite us including a gorgeous little girl and her father and a ton of luggage between us all. We drove off through the village and down a very bumpy sandy track along the coast, it has to be one of the most gorgeous drives I've done, reminded me of Zanzibar's coast but better in some respects.

We got to a police barrage and trouble started, we met the nastiest, drunkiest, vilest gendarme I've ever encountered in W.Africa. He was completely drunk on palm wine and in his drunken state was disgusting to say the least. He told us all that he was a customs officier, he wanted Dani to stay behind with him and that she was a strong looking girl who would be perfect as his wife in 2 years time (after looking at her passport). I had Gianni's little Franco-Italian phrase going around in my head 'n'est pas un bon comportomento' ..

The 6 guys in the back did their best to protect us and told him to back off, I told Maddy & Dani to stay in the pick up as he wanted me out with the bags .. and the stupid, stupid idiot that I am, I spoke in French to him. However, the guys in the back with refused to let me out and dealt with the gendarme - by this time his French was just a lot of nonsense coming out of his mouth at bullet rate. He let us go and I almost sighed with relief as we thought we were on our way. No, the damn engine wouldn't start ... we were again told by the gendarme to get out and push, the guys told us to sit tight and jumped out and really put their backs into it and managed to get us 200m down the track when the motor finally coughed into life.

Another kilometer away was the border, we all climbed out of the back and into a hut on the beach. I refused to speak French, these guys were 'friendlier', sober but obviously after something. I was asked for 1,000CFA each for our exit stamps, I tried to battle it out in pigeon French, I refuse on principle to pay any bribes but Danika had been rattled by the gendarme and Maddy pointed out it might be 'easier' to pay up this time, so I backed down and paid the damn guys - who were very polite to give them their due!! The customs guy another 1km on was a sweetie and wished us luck (we didn't realise we would still need it!!)

Ghana - Akwaaba or so they say - we didn't get much of a welcome to Ghana, country of smiles??? Got to the immigration post, told to sit and they wrote out our entry cards, for almost 1hr we became the subject of a training exercise. First of all they said Danika couldn't enter as Maddy had a multiple entry visa and we didn't. I soon sorted that out ... they must have written the entry cards out backwards it took forever, I was getting more and more annoyed when a soldier came in and told me to leave and sort out customs who were chuckling about their incapable colleagues with me.

Finally we got away, I was still annoyed with immigration and Maddy was annoyed with me for being so annoyed ... but my concern was that we would have missed all the transport away from there as our 'previous' travelling companions from the pick-up would have headed off by now. We walked part of the 1.5km down to the tro-tro station to get a tro-tro (minibus) out of there, but someone stopped and offered us a lift, we then found payment was expected at the end well over the going rate!!!

Sure enough when we got to the tro-tro (minibus) station at Newtown there wasn't a seat in sight for the three of us, one was full and about to leave and two others were standing empty with not another passenger in sight! An hour in the tro tro station with tickets for Jewi-Wharf, I asked the guy to give us our Takoradi bus ticket money, we were all tired & hot, I was going to catch the next taxi that was on a return from the border. He refused. Eventually a tro-tro arrived and it was agreed to take us up to Half Assinie and got the change back. The road this side of the border was initially sand, but a lot wider and better graded than the narrow track on the CI side!

At Half Assinie, we were the victims of a scam. We bought 5 seats for the 3 of us to get the tro-tro moving immediately, then a woman turned up so a ticket was bought back. We got in and had 3 seats and not 4, the 4th was in the front but lo & behold a guy jumped in 200m from the tro-tro station. I asked the driver where our 4th seat was, he wasn't responsible and we drove back to the station. Massive argument between Maddy & ticket selling scam lady with Dani & I ready to go back to the border and Cote D'Ivoire. After 15mins of some serious agression scam lady gave us back our money for the 4th seat ... drama, drama!

Finally in the hot & squashed conditions in the back of the tro-tro with a driver who'd obviously missed his vocation as a Formula 1 driver, we reached Agona Junction. It was already 8pm or so and we got out at the roundabout, on the side of which there was an open air cinema with most of the village it seemed watching a film in earnest!

After more frustrating negotiations we got a taxi to Busua for 4 cedis ... we subsequently found it was well over the going rate, as each seat is 0.5oc ... Maddy took the front seat and half way there found herself hanging on for dear life as her door swung open on a bend ... we did crack a joke despite our tiredness - would we get a discount if we'd lost her???!!

Arriving at www.busuainn.com was like coming home; greeted by Danielle & Olivier, a French couple who'd been living & working in Ghana for the past two years. We were exhausted, it was 9pm and we'd been travelling for 10hrs .. Danielle put a lovely meal on the table in front of us, we had a chat and fell into our beds!

A little closer to the border ...

Arriving in Assinie we thought we'd gone to heaven!

It was dark but you got the feeling of the place immediately & it was beautiful! JB took us through a gap in a wall to his place. Further down the same plot was a larger 'building', I was sorting out packs beside his house while Maddy & Dani went off with him and I cries of pure joy coming out. I joined them and found that we had the most gorgeous but run down large beach shack to stay in. There weren't any locks on the doors, the floor was almost rotten, there wasn't any water but there was some electricity and for us it was perfect. A few old very narrow wooden beach loungers were there which we sorted out to give us three beds; Dani strung up my cord so that we could attach our mossie nets and with our sleeping quarters perfect we went out to join JB for dinner.

We walked up the beach with JB giving me a history of who's house belonged to who in the CI government and Maddy giving Dani a lesson in astrology. We got to the village and had dinner in a small cafe which any European or African Health & Safety board would have demolished, but the food was excellent, clean and didn't give us any problems! JB took us onto a bar with a Ghanaian lady owner, who advised us the best way to get to Ghana the following day - to get a car at low tide and drive along the beach ... problem was that low tide was around 9am and Dani wasn't giving up the chance of a morning swim in the ocean for anything!

Heading back to the beach shack with a couple of 'Drogba's' - an Ivoirienne term used for a litre of Solibra beer, we sat on the beach with the tide coming in around our feet, before finally collapsing into bed (or rather onto hard wooden sunloungers!)

I woke at 5am, due to my body groaning from the hardness of the sunloungers and not being able to get comfortable most of the night. The sound of the ocean and wind were penetrating through the room, realising that the mossie coils were almost finished, I decided to go for a wander with the camera and was met with the most lovely mist outside. Maddy & Dani were still snoring under their mossie nets.

A few hours later they finally got up and we went out onto the beach with Dani finding endless coconuts for JB to crack open for her, some nourishment for breakfast!
An hour or so on the beach and a quick swim later we packed up ready to head off again. The tide had turned and it was too late to find a vehicle to take us along the beach to the border. We would now have to go to Assinie Mafia by taxi and pick up the pinasse from there to cross the lagoon then another bush taxi up to the border. From what we'd heard the night before we should have made Agona Junction just east of Takoradi in 3hrs ... but luck wasn't on our side.


As we were leaving, JB got a call from his family in Abidjan to say that his younger brother wasn't well, they thought it was a mild case of malaria but seemed to have become more serious. Still not happy with what we'd done to repay his kindness and not sure how to repay him, I took out the anti-malarials that Maddy had brought for me from Dubai and told him how to dose up his brother in his fight against malaria.


We got a taxi together up to the canal bridge where JB jumped out to go to Abidjan and we continued onto Assinie Mafia. On the way there we met our first (of many) police posts, I got out ready for a ton of questioning but when they discovered we were on our way to Ghana we got a laugh and they let us continue on. Whether they knew the kind of journey we were in for or not, I'm not sure, possibly it was because very few tourists/non-Ivoirienne use this route to get over the border ...

Abidjan & visa hunting ....

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!

Grand Bassam

Waking a few hours after going to bed, Dani & I wandered outside where we met Ami, Marvin's maid. She prepared breakfast for us and we watched a few enormous lizards and then I headed back to bed. She came with me and locked us in the room whilst I slept for another hour.

A little later Marvin came down and we had a 'normal' conversation, ie. I was awake - he suggested we all go out for lunch in town. We got back in the car with our packs in the boot and headed into town, crossing the bridge over the lagoon to the old part of Bassam. A lovely restaurant on the waters edge where a wedding was being held, we ate a great lunch, Dani had her first taste of 'fufu' which in CI is plantain and not yam. He then decided that we should see some of Bassam, so visited quite a few hotels along the beach, the old area of town which was the French quarter in colonial times and then off to Bonoua a town about 20kms away.

Heading back to Bassam, we stopped briefly to buy pineapples and Dani relented & tried one having sworn blind in France she hated them. Realising they were delicious, Marvin treated her and bought 12 of them ... he took us & the pineapples back to his hotel www.marvinhotel.bravehost.net


We had an early night after supper, still feeling the effects of travelling through the night. A bombshell was dropped on me; Dani told me she didn't like it there, wanted to leave and return to France. She felt the staring was all too much and one of the kids on the side of the road when we'd bought the pineapple had tried to touch her arm ... I had a bit of explaining to do but she went to bed still feeling uncomfortable with being white in Africa.


The following morning we went out in search of a taxi to take us to the orphanage www.emsf.org
and the first taxi took us to the other side of town near where we'd had lunch the previous day. After asking the guys in charge I discovered I was at the wrong place, it was the National Orphanage and not the one I'd made enquiries about prior to leaving France. Getting our 20kg haul of clothes & shoes into a second taxi with sketchy directions to the one we wanted, we finally (with a bit of encouragement to get the driver to go down some rough tracks) found it and were amazed it was only several hundred metres from Marvin's home!
We spent an hour or so at the orphanage, meeting the kids & Eric who was in charge as Mme Auguy had waited for us the previous day, so we felt rather guilty! We were invited to their Christmas play but it was too close to Christmas and would interfere with our travel plans, so we promised to return in January. Eric and some of the children saw us down to the main road which we crossed and went to a little maquis (bar) for lunch, having cooked it several times in France, she finally agreed that she loved alooko or fried plantain! Going back into town, we organised a SIM card, sent an e-mail home and generally wandered about.


Later in the afternoon we heard from JB, someone I'd been in touch with for a few weeks, a long story but basically a friend of a friend. JB's a Burkinabe, born & brought up in Cote d'Ivoire he works in Assinie. He arrived at the hotel and introduced himself and had Nicolas waiting outside. I'd heard about Nicolas, a French guy who would probably prefer to surf for a living but actually does work in cocoa! We were offered a lift to Abidjan by Nicolas & JB announced that we were going to stay with Peter, a journalist in Abidjan.

We arrived at Nicolas' apartment in Zone 4, lovely building - typical expat block, very smart with good security. We took our packs up to his flat to wait for Peter; the heavens opened, a storm really brewed up and the road beneath us was flooded. Peter had been caught in traffic, broken down several times and having never been to Nicolas' place he wasn't going to attempt in the current weather conditions - I don't blame him!

So Nicolas offered to drive us there and once in the car with the packs back in the boot ready to go to eat and then to Peter's place, he came up with Plan B, why not stay with him! We were thrilled!

Cote d'Ivoire

Arriving at 4.30am in the morning at any airport does not fill me with joy.

Arriving at an airport that is fiercely protected by 100's of French troops following a war that finished a few months earlier, worried me.

Arriving at an airport at 4.30am, in a country that's just ended a war, with a 12yr old girl in tow, terrified me!

We got there. We got off the plane and walked down the stairs towards immigration and a man comes up to me wanting a handshake saying our names - WTF?!?!?! Suddenly the lack of sleep didn't seem to come into play, the fact that I looked a complete sight, probably something resembling a martian with my hair trying to look like something from the 70's really didn't worry me. What the hell was going on???

I had made a few calls prior to leaving; I'd decided that seeing as we were arriving early on a Saturday morning there wasn't much point staying in Abidjan, it would make far more sense to stay out of town on the beach. I picked Bassam, a town 40mins away on the beach used by a lot of people from Abidjan at the weekend to escape the city. I found a cheap hotel; Marvin Hotel and spent days trying to track down it's telephone number. Finally I rang and got hold of a guy who worked (note the past tense on that - he's been sacked since for stealing) there called Olivier. Olivier was full of promises to pick us up from the airport. However, on the phone from France, I got the feeling Olivier was one of Africa's many touts and asked several times to speak to the BOSS! Finally I got hold of the boss, who wasn't M. Kone but M. Marvin. He agreed to pick us up from the airport and get us to Bassam, which is a feat in itself as Abidjan has a curfew from 10pm and getting out of Abidjan is impossible by any form of transport.

So, this hand belonged to Marvin. Who introduced himself, I was confused, worried & concerned for Dani who hadn't slept all that much on the flight despite using my shoulder, stomach & arm as a pillow, keeping me awake in the process! We all made our way to the immigration booth, got our bags and wandered through the crowds of taxi touts (although some were sleeping on the floor). The airport is magnificent, I was expecting another Dakar/Dar Es Salaam/Nairobi etc affair, complete madness in a concrete box, Abidjan is very plush in comparison!

Marvin steered us outside to a waiting taxi. The fact that he had managed to get to the airport meant that he had got through the police barrage before 10pm, he was expecting our flight at 2am, it was now approaching 5am - but he looked a lot better than we felt without sleep! We hopped into the taxi, our codeword was exchanged which meant that Dani was feeling OK about the situation and the taxi drove us a few kilometres to the police barrage. Jumping out we got our luggage and walked about a kilometre to the end of the police barrage (soldiers fast asleep) listening to the early morning prayer call from a nearby mosque, the sea at the shoreline a few metres away and coping with the temperature which must have been in the high 20's whilst wearing clothes for the cold of France and the relative temperate climes of Casablanca.

On the other side of the police barrage, he'd parked his car. Luckily it was still there, we climbed in and were told that the hotel was full but not to worry, we'd be staying at his house! Twenty minutes later we were in Bassam and at his house. Lovely place and Dani suddenly woke up when she saw the pool, we sat down, had a drink a short chat and went to bed; we had struck lucky ... it had all passed without a hiccup and Marvin was proving to be very kind to us both.