Day 37… Monday 8th May
Short drive to the Ivory Coast boarder along a tarmacked road – very smooth and quite journey with hardly a passing car. The last section was an unmade road with deep crevices but Greta is very capable. Border crossing out of Guinea was very easy and no one else was ahead of us. The staff were friendly and slow but ‘no hurry in Africa’ is the moto here. The entry into Ivory Coast was smooth. They took our temperatures (COVID) and checked yellow fever certificates – all ok. The visa date was wrong by 2 weeks but no one picked up on that and passports were stamped. The easiest boarder crossing to date. Propper roads! The hotel tonight accepted visa payment – an absolute joy.
Allen’s perspective…
Rachael is polite about the condition of the road to the border. It was terrible! Given that this is meant to be a main road into a neighbouring country it either shows how poor Guinea really is or how bad relations are with it’s neighbour. The road started out as a sort of okay tarred road with the usual chicane of potholes requiring a reasonable level of steering dexterity. But the closer we got the more it descended into an atrocious mud track, with huge potholes, steep climbs, and barely passable. All the while this route was being used by normal cars and motorbikes. Given the smells from Greta I may be abusing the clutch a little at times!
At least when we arrived at the border the staff were incredibly relaxed. The Guinean officials got us to sit whilst they ssslllooowwwwllllyyy copied our details into a large ledger. Once we crossed the bridge into Cote d’Ivoire we were met with an incredibly friendly official who showed us around. A slightly more efficient border post but still on African time 🙂
Thankfully we escaped Guinea before anything kicked off!