I’ve been posting about West Africa for 11 weeks, and the trip itself was wrapped up in a little over three weeks. My memories of it have benefited from going through the photos and writing about it here – it was amazing, even in the moment, but it was also full of long days and not enough sleep and terrible roads and swimming in a pool where crickets jumped in my hair.
There are reasons that West Africa is not the most touristy region out there. One of the ones I haven’t talked about much is the visas. As an American, 9 of the 10 countries required me to have a visa to enter.
- Only Senegal was visa-free, which was nice since that was the one where I entered and exited twice.
- I went to the embassy for The Gambia, where I paid $200 to get the stamp in my passport.
- We applied for Guinea-Bissau at the embassy in southern Senegal, as there is no Guinea-Bissau embassy in the US – it closed in 2007.
- Guinea was an e-visa. It was pretty fast for me, although others in my group had trouble.
- Sierra Leone was an e-visa, and was one of the smoothest ones.
- For Liberia, I paid Wander Expeditions to handle it, because their fee for helping wasn’t that much more than the embassy was going to charge me and I wanted to take something off my plate.
- Côte d’Ivoire had an online form to get a pre-approval, and then we finalized the visa at the airport when we landed in Abidjan. They took an absolutely terrible photo of me that now lives in my passport with an otherwise cool visa that has an elephant on it.
- I applied for Ghana at the consulate in DC. Theirs was annoying because they require you to not only have a hotel booking, but you need a letter from the hotel confirming that you’ve booked, which felt like a lot of work for something that I already had provided documentation on.
- Togo was the worst for me. This seemed to be an outlier opinion – most people in my group had a smooth time with the e-visa. Unfortunately, the website didn’t work very well for me. After SO many communications with their IT support team on the chat that didn’t seem to solve anything, one of the other travelers recommended I try it with a fully new phone number and email, which ultimately did work. Still, I only ended up getting my visa approved a few days before we were actually meant to enter the country. It was super stressful.
- Benin was the best – they were an e-visa as well, and I got their approval on the same day I applied.
It was an absolute marathon of visa applications. I do not intend to do anything like this again, to be honest, but as someone who does actually make my living in helping others with visa paperwork, it was a nice test of my skills. I had a color-coded Google doc that I was using to keep track of what documents I was waiting on or needed to gather, and what applications were pending and who had my passport.
The American passport is generally pretty strong. I’ve needed visas before, but nothing like this, and it is such a stark reminder of passport privilege. I understand why they’re doing it, for reciprocity, and I can’t be mad about it. I’ve helped people fill out the business visitor visas to enter the US, as well as the UK and Schengen ones, and they’re awful. They’re so intrusive, they need details that seem entirely irrelevant to a short visit, and I can’t begrudge a country for making us do something similar to enter their own borders. Still, it was both expensive and challenging for this trip.
After reading that, it does beg the question of whether that all was worth it. It probably isn’t, for everyone. There are certainly travelers who I’ve spoken to for whom this is their least favorite region because of the visas and other logistical challenges. But for me, I love seeing the places where other travelers don’t. It was not the easiest trip I’ve ever taken, but I did love the payoff of going to the villages and seeing the cultural practices and learning about places that aren’t as widely discussed on an international stage.
If you are interested in the region but aren’t quite as willing to be without creature comforts, there are options. Senegal and Ghana have probably the most tourist development and I would highly recommend either country, although out of those two I preferred Senegal. Côte d’Ivoire had some very modern places as well and some of our nicer hotels across the board, although it felt like you had to search a bit harder to get to the places that made it cool and unique. Benin did not have quite the same level of hotels, but was an amazing payoff that I think was worth a couple nights without air conditioning or a great shower.
I loved my time in West Africa. It was exhausting, but worth it. That said, I moved apartments immediately after I got back and that was the worst experience ever – I definitely wished I’d had proper recovery time afterwards to sleep in and veg for a weekend instead of immediately having to move all my possessions. So, you know…. plan better than I did!
