Freetown

Rolling into Freetown at the end of the first leg of West Africa, time to stop for a few days, say goodbyes to a few good people & meet our 6 newbies.

Cotton Tree, Freetown

The main attraction of Freetown as a city from the guidebooks is the cotton tree - essentially just a large tree in the centre of town...

Law courts, Freetown

We had a very interesting visit to the law courts though, chatting to the policeman at the gate he let us just wander in & then introduced us to a lawyer, who in turn took us into Court no.1 and sat us on the press bench while we tried to work out what was going on in the organised chaos of witnesses & defendants being called & huge files of papers being passed around.

Tribal costumes, National museum

We also managed a very interesting visit to the small national museum, with an excellent guide talking about the exhibits and European football.

The hotel we stayed in was particularly nice with a balcony view over the water (& rubbish dump)

Sunrise by the hotel

Freetown

Just a short motor taxi down the road from the hotel was the beach area of Aberdeen & a lovely setting for a final meal & beers watching the sun set & guys kicking a ball around.  Short break over & we were off on the road again heading for the boarder with Guinea.

pied crow

Football on the beach, Freetown

River No.2

Sierra Leone before the civil war was renown for it's beaches - including the location for the Cadbury's flake advert of the 80's.  With a couple of days in Freetown we had time for a day trip out to one of the many beautiful spots.  

The journey to get there however was typical West Africa;

River No. 2

beach at river no. 2

After some negotiation (over about $5) we agreed a price & 5 of us piled into the taxi - 4 squeezed across the back seat.  Typically as with most taxi's they need to fill up with petrol after having secured a fare, but the petrol stations in Freetown had particularly vicious slopes on exit and after a close call in the first, we grounded completely on the second.  Out we pile & push the taxi back onto the road and we're off again, leaving the tarmac roads for dirt tracks.  Half an hour later and we stop with the smell of petrol fumes, and a quick examination of the bottom of the car leaves no doubt as to the cause - a hole in the petrol tank and it's streaming out.  The driver disappears off & comes back with a plastic bottle to rescue his fuel & we decide to jump ship.  Within a couple of minutes on a pretty quiet road 3 motorbikes have appeared, so we hop on the back for a final few km's to the beach.  Our driver is keen to pick us up again later so at the end of the afternoon he appears with a couple of friends to take us halfway back to a small town where we can secure a minibus - with Reggae music blasting out the whole way we charter a return to the hotel..

football on the beach

Our only other companions on the beach were a bunch of footballers in the distance, some people selling t-shirts & trousers and a couple of guys running a restaurant & bar, from which we procured some fine lobster at a very reasonable price.

lobster on the beach

Monkey Island

Tiwai

Tiwai island is the place to go for wildlife in Sierra Leone, with chimps, monkeys, birds and the elusive Pygmy hippo. Nature walks and boat trips failed to get us a hippo spotting, but given the BBC spent weeks filming without success perhaps it's no surprise the best we saw were some tracks.

Birds at Tiwai

Monkey on Tiwai

Spider on Tiwai

Wherever you are in the country you can find out about the impact of the conflicts. Our main guide, the son of the village head is 28, aged 15 he spent 5 days running from the rebels through the jungle Split up from his parents he had no food only water, his brother died but he made it to the UN run refugee camps. Now back in their village they are trying to build Tiwai as a tourist destination as well as a research centre, & it may be working we met a Spaniard, 2 Croats & 2 Serbs.

Sierra Leone

Crossing the boarder from Guinea and the changes seemed to be large; Au revoir francais, hello English language (& undecipherable creole dialect). The road was tarmaced (EU funded) with road signs and the use of paint including a line down the centre of the road! The people less excited or joyful to see us as we drive past (young children excepted), the houses square, plastered and corrugated iron roofs.
But once we turned onto the dirt tracks we were back into the thatched villages and the double handed waves.  The aim was to visit some waterfalls and a damn providing around a third of the countries electricity at Bumbuna, but unfortunately after an abortive attempt to drive along the small road to the falls we were told to visit the chief for permission.  The chief was angry at our lack of stamped tourist papers & told us to be on our way so game over for the damn.

Abortive attempt at Bumbuna

Dinnner audience 

But we did get to stay the night at the transport site for the iron ore quarry - a potential cornerstone of one of Sierra Leone's exports for the foreseeable future.  The mountain they started mining last year is expected to take 70-90 years to mine & level it to the ground.  At present there are 4,000 people employed with at least 2,000 ex-pats from around the world.  They manage to produce around 18,000 tonnes a day which is then taken by train to the port, transferred from small boats to a big boat and then onto India for processing.  This arrangement means approximately 75% of the profit is also exported, and ends up in india.

Camping in a container yard

Ore-some train

We were lucky however when it came to crossing the train tracks, it must be the longest train I've ever seen; as the front end disappeared into the distance the carriages kept on coming

Driving the forest region

Driving through the heart of the Guinea forest region, bush camping, we've now entered the heart of the non-touristy areas of west africa. On their last trip Dave and Jimmy had spent 3 days in search of a vine bridge, so this time it was easy to head back and renegotiate with the village chief to walk through his land to an incredible feat of engineering.

Vine bridge, Guinea

Vine bridge, Guinea

We stopped at a couple of memorable spots for the evening, setting up camp, sometimes in the middle of nowhere, at other times somewhere close enough to habitation to draw an audience.

Sunset, bushcamping, Guinea

Honey bee camp, Guinea

 After a few days of camping it was an absolute treat to stop for the night at a waterfall & get a full power shower

Waterfall , Guinea

 Long drive days but stunning scenery and numerous little villages typically of mud brick and thatch construction.

Passing village, Guinea

Bossou Chimps

The roads have changed to dirt tracks & we even forded a small river (it would have been an entirely different proposition in rainy season.

Aminah heading for the river

The research centre at Bossou was the setting of our camp for the night before a morning trekking in search of chimpanzees.

Bossu chimps

Bossu chimps

The 7 o'clock start proved to be true african timing, at 9 the oldies of the group were selected to start with the first guide and it was another hour before the rest of us set off. After an hour of hot trekking through scratching vegetation and following chimp deposits we caught our of a mother and child. We soon lost them & the oldies joined us having seemingly just walked the long way around for an extra hour. We were hot on the trail of 3 males and followed them for some time through the bushes before they stopped to climb a tree.

Bossu chimps

Stilt dancing

If anyone asks me why i went travelling in West Africa, its for days like these. Driving for many hours waving to passers by, filling water from village pumps with the locals & arriving at the village of Silicora.
We were free to wander around the village in the afternoon usually followed by a trail of children. In just an hour we saw most of village life: making mud bricks & baking them in the sun, separating the wheat from the chaff, braiding hair, playing football, weaving hammocks, carrying water on heads... The most amazing thing though was the warmth of the welcome; men shaking hands, women dancing & laughing, children running around & imitating anything. The complete lack of a common language didn't really matter.

Separating the wheat form the chaff

Hammock weaving

We were then treated to show which incorporated most of the village. Drummers, singing, dancing & the grand finale a stilt dancer who span & jumped.

Drumming, Ivory Coast

Stilt dancing, Ivory Coast

After the show I was on the cooking crew, probably the strangest surroundings I'll ever prepare a meal in. 50+ people (mainly kids) watching on and creating a wall of noise. They stayed on to watch us eat - it gives you a small sense of what it must be like to be a celebrity and have everything you do scrutinised - it's not a life I'd want.


Post dinner the drums had started up again, with more singing & dancing continuing until well after midnight. The morning wake up call at 5.30 was the headlights of a van shining into the tent and a blast of the horn as people started to load up for market.

The Madness of Yam

Dictatorial presidents in small countries can lead to some absolutely crazy sights.

Aminah in front of the Basilica, Yamoussoukro

I present to you item number 1 in the case for jury the largest church in the world, with a bargain price of just $300m, that the former Ivory Coast president decided to build in his home town of Yamoussoukro.

The scale of the building is incredible, capacity for 200,000 people.  The pillars are 30m tall and there are lifts in the interior columns that take you to the roof.

Interior of the basilica 

Basilica, Yamoussoukro

Basilica of Our Lady of Peace

The dome of the basilica is impossible to capture in a photograph fully but the scale and colours are incredible from the inside.

Basilica Dome

To keep the religious balance we also visited the mosque, you can still see the basilica in the background

Mosque, Yamoussoukro

Mosaic mosque pillars

 Having seen the postcards of the Basilica at night a few of us decided to return at sunset and photograph it once it lit up.  Having arrived we found that it's always better to check things than assume as the lights are only switched on for special days.  Still at least the sun didn't let us down and set on schedule..

Basilica at sunset

One final amusing anecdote from the way of the overlander; in towns & cities we've often tried to camp in hotel grounds, so we pull into the presidential hotel, Yamoussoukra and Hatter goes into negotiate our overnight stay.  The big boss man in full seriousness demands one million CAF ($200,000) - so we quickly move on.

Drogba land

A successful border crossing from Bukina Faso to Ivory coast was a relief after some confusion in the application process in Accra meant we were all armed with visas dated for mid feburary and a handwritten note.  Fortunately we passed through without incident and that meant an earlier than expected arrival into Korhogo.

From the last point of luxury on the trip, i write this from the side of a hotel swimming pool with wi-fi the hotel has been kept going by the French through the civil war and so tourists really are unusual here.

We used this as a base for exploring the local villages and seeing the local crafts.  First stop some traditional Senufo painting on cotton

Senufo painting

Weavers nr Kohogo

At the cotton co-operative the weavers earn $2 a day with most of what they produce being sent onto the port of Abijan

Weavers

painting beads

Next stop a jewellery spot, we saw the clay being moulded which can then either be dried black or white using fire or the sun.  The skill was impressive in using a stick to spin the bead against his foot and a feather to apply the patterns.  The colours being obtained through various leaves.

the finished product for sale

Men of the village

Final stop for the day a traditional village where we were treated like minor celebrities.  We sat down to meet the chief (sitting down in the middle with the white beard) and as we sat it seemed like the entire village came to shake hands with the 6 of us.  We asked them for a photo and all the men gathered around

Cooking in the village 

Unfortunately Ivory Coast lost to Nigeria in the quarter finals of the African Cup of Nations so there was real disappointment in the air as at least half the town was decked out in bright orange football shirts and the women were just as into it as the men, with the 'nightclub' where we watched the game having tables of girls getting excited every time the ball went into the box.  Didier Drogba is the face of football in west africa and everywhere we've been so far has been full of chelsea and man u shirts - still waiting to see anyone sporting the famous blue & white hoops though.

Mosque at Korhogo

More peaks

Sindou Peaks

Still in the Banfora region and some more spectacular rock formations of the Sindou Peaks.  Again a handful of other tourists were spotted in the time we spent exploring.

Sindou Peaks

Sindou Peaks

Sindou Peaks

No series of posts from this region of the world would be complete without some pictures from the side of the road and the people we've met along the way.  The truck always creates interest as we drive past or stop for lunch at the side of the road.

funky hair

Young girl

A popular roadside pursuit