Category: West Africa Road Trip

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Africa Benin Côte d'Ivoire Ghana Guinea Guinea-Bissau Liberia Senegal Sierra Leone The Gambia Togo West Africa Road Trip

Reflections on West Africa

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.

  1. Only Senegal was visa-free, which was nice since that was the one where I entered and exited twice.
  2. I went to the embassy for The Gambia, where I paid $200 to get the stamp in my passport.
  3. 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.
  4. Guinea was an e-visa. It was pretty fast for me, although others in my group had trouble.
  5. Sierra Leone was an e-visa, and was one of the smoothest ones.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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!

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Africa Benin West Africa Road Trip

Beautiful Benin

Similar warning to my post in Togo – if you are sensitive to harm to animals, I recommend caution. There are less graphic photos here compared to what I saw in Togo but there will be a few photos and references to animal sacrifice here as well.

Our final land border crossing! Still smiling, somehow

Benin was an incredible finale to this trip. Even after nine other countries and several weeks in the region, Benin felt fresh and exciting, with unique rituals and dancing that we were lucky enough to experience. We started off with a voodoo ritual that involved a chicken sacrifice.

I saw a lot of chickens sacrificed in Togo and Benin. The first one did bother me, but most of the time, they died fairly quickly – I only had to look away in the few rituals where the chickens seemed to know and feel distress about their impending death. While there were parallels, the rituals themselves all felt pretty distinct, with different preparations and manners of death for the chickens.

We also saw a lot of different dances, which were very cool. I loved the elaborate costumes. Some of those looked challenging to dance in. Here were some of my favorites:

This whole performance was so cool! This one, along with many of the other dances we saw across West Africa, were always so high energy. The level of cardio you would need to learn and perform these would be intense. One of the other ones we saw reminded me a lot of capoeira, the Brazilian dance fighting, but they had blunted knives that they used in the dance as well.

What I loved about the dances and the rituals is that we saw a huge diversity of different practices. Sometimes, when you’re in a particular region for a long time, things start to blur together, and you don’t appreciate the new things as much because they feel too similar to what you’ve already seen. But in this case, Benin felt totally new and even within the country, there were a ton of cool types of dances that all felt unique.

Going to all of these dances and rituals got us out of the main population centers in Benin and out into the smaller towns and villages.

One of the rituals that’s unique to this region is the Zangbeto. They are voodoo guardians. In some of the rituals, they are overturned and there are other protectors underneath, like statues or snakes.

The one that shocked me the most was when they flipped over one of the Zangbeto and there was a baby crocodile underneath!

We also spent some time seeing the historic sites of Benin, like their UNESCO site in Abomey.

One of the other historic sites we visited was Benin’s Door of No Return monument in Ouidah, which was a bit different than the versions I had seen in Senegal and Ghana. Instead of a door that was part of a fortress, this one is designed as a memorial to those who were taken away from their homes.

We spent some time in Porto-Novo, the capital, and Cotonou, the seat of government and economic center. Porto-Novo had some beautiful architecture in their old town.

For one of our days in Benin, we headed to Ganvie! Ganvie is a lake village, and was originally a way for people to stay safe from the slave catchers, as they were somewhat “off the grid.” I love the chance to see a place by a boat ride, and Ganvie was definitely worth the visit.

One of the wildest experiences I had in Benin was the Python Temple. This was in Ouidah. The snakes are an important religious symbol, and it’s a huge honor to be one of the priests who cares for them. They even let us hold them and get quite close to the snake pit. This was my first time holding a snake!

All in all, Benin was amazing. One of my favorite parts of the trip! It was such a good way to end the trip across the region, and I would definitely recommend it to people who are interested in traveling to parts of Africa that are a bit more “off the tourist path.” It’s not a safari destination. Or at least, the parts we went weren’t – I think West Africa does have some safari opportunities farther from the coast. But if you want to explore somewhere that is safe, friendly, and has a fascinating culture, Benin should absolutely be on your radar.

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Africa Togo West Africa Road Trip

An Introduction to Voodoo in Togo

Starting this off with a warning – there are some fairly graphic photos of dead animals in this post. Togo and Benin are considered the birthplace of voodoo practices, which was fascinating to learn about and provided some of the highlights of the whole trip, but those practices do include animal sacrifice.

We started our day off with a drive to the border and a lengthy border crossing. Togo’s stamps took up an entire page in my passport. Thankfully I’d gotten a new one expressly for this trip. Most border agents were fairly polite about the way they stamped and made everything pretty neat, but there were so many visas and stamps and crossings that it chewed through a lot of pages.

We started in Lomé’s main market and visited the cathedral. You may be wondering about the prominence of a cathedral in a place where voodoo is practiced. We asked our guide, Isaac, about that, and he said that the people of Togo and Benin do not consider it to be an either/or. You don’t have to choose Christianity or voodoo, but you can practice both. The way he described it, it was Christianity during the day and voodoo during the night.

We ascribed to the same principles, I guess, because as the sun went down, we headed to the Akodessawa Fetish Market. This is not the way that most Westerners use the word “fetish,” just to be clear – there are no sexual connotations here. A fetish in voodoo culture is a powerful object, like an amulet or a talisman. Our guide basically said that this is where you would come if you needed parts of a specific animal for a ritual.

“Let’s say you went to the voodoo practitioner and he told you that you needed a chameleon,” Isaac said, choosing an extremely relatable example that I’m sure all of us have experienced. And yes, I did see dead chameleons at the market.

It was both heartbreaking and fascinating. Nothing really could have prepared me for walking behind a table filled with horns and feathers and skulls and skins, only to find a basket of dog heads staring back at me. And once we’d had a chance to explore, we got our first look at the kind of ritual that such a market facilitates.

First, we were taken to a room where they explained the various types of fetishes to us, including ones that helped travelers stay safe and ones that kept people healthy and ones that helped in the romance department. And then, once we had seen how those worked, we headed back outside for the main event: a chicken sacrifice.

We saw a lot of chickens get sacrificed as we traveled across Togo and Benin. Sometimes, the death was quick and the birds didn’t seem to know they were coming, and those were more or less fine. That wasn’t the case here – to be honest, I found this one pretty upsetting. I felt as though the chicken was in distress, and when he reached for another one, I wandered back through the market instead. The bones were even more unsettling in the moonlight.

From there, we headed to our hotel on the beach!

Togo was a fascinating introduction to voodoo culture. I have never seen anything like the Akodessawa Fetish Market and I can’t imagine that I will again. We didn’t spend too much time in Togo, as we were heading to Benin the next day, but it was extremely memorable! And Benin absolutely blew me away… but that’s a story for next time.

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Africa Ghana West Africa Road Trip

Gorgeous Ghana

And on to Ghana! At this point in the trip, I’d been traveling for 16 days and this was the 8th new country I entered. It was a punishing schedule. We often had full driving days and repacking almost every night. We skipped a lot of lunches and had protein bars, and the vegetarian options were “meh” at best at most of our stops. Most of the people I was traveling with got colds around this time, because we were all running on limited sleep. Still, Ghana marked the end of one tour and the beginning of another, and there’s something invigorating about meeting new travelers.

Of all the places we visited, Ghana probably had the most robust tourist infrastructure, with Senegal coming in a close second. We had nicer hotels and more dinner options across the board, which was a nice change of pace. After a short flight from Abidjan and a night out in Accra, we headed to Cape Coast.

Like Senegal, Ghana has a significant amount of historical sites related to the slave trade. We visited the Cape Coast Castle first and went through the details of what happened there. Each of these that we went to has its own version of the Door of No Return, where those who were enslaved last set foot on the African continent. It’s definitely a sobering piece of history.

From there, we headed to Elmina. We started with a walk through the town, including a visit to the harbor, which was very cool, and then headed to the Elmina Castle. It’s hard to do those visits back to back. They’re emotionally difficult places to visit, not unlike a concentration camp or a memorial to genocide. By the time we went for dinner, it was nice to get a chance to think about Ghana’s present and not its past.

Like many places I visited in West Africa, this one had a magnificent beach, and I enjoyed watching the sun set over the water.

The next morning, we headed to Kakum National Park! It reminded me a lot of the hanging bridges in Costa Rica, except it looked far more rickety. I would not recommend this to anyone with a fear of heights. It was gorgeous, but there was a part of me that wondered if the bridges would hold, especially when they creaked as we stepped onto them and rocked back and forth if more than one person dared cross at the same time.

I am actually shocked how tan I look here?

After the national park, we headed back to Accra! We started with the thing I was most excited to see in Ghana: coffin shopping.

Yes, that’s an absolutely wild sentence, isn’t it? Let me clarify. Ghana has a cultural practice that is completely unique across the world, where they build what are called “fantasy coffins” or “figurative coffins.” They build on themes that are important to the individuals in life. It can be related to that person’s job or calling, or it can be something that they loved, but it should represent them in some way to facilitate their journey into the afterlife.

I had read about the practice before but it was SO cool to get to see it in person. They showed us what they were working on, and then they had stacks of photos to show us all the amazing and intricate work they had done in the past. I’ve always wanted to be cremated, but if this was my option for burial I’d strongly consider it.

Once we were done coffin shopping, we headed to the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum, which was an interesting look at Ghana’s history and the way that they present their country’s founding.

We ended the day at Black Star Square, which celebrates Ghana’s independence. I’m glad to have seen the main sites in Accra, but I do think I got a better sense of the city going out to the bars on our first night in Ghana!

The next day, it was another drive across Ghana so we could cross into Togo. After the trouble I’d had getting my Togo visa, I was just excited that I had all my paperwork in order! I would definitely consider revisiting Ghana and spending more time there, though – it was a nice visit, and I think the country has a lot to offer. Ghana and Senegal are often spoken about as the gateways to West Africa for travelers who are looking to explore the region for the first time, and I can see why on both counts.

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Africa Côte d'Ivoire West Africa Road Trip

Charming Côte d’Ivoire

After a long plane ride, we landed in Abidjan! We found a dinner place near our hotel, which made for a great first night in Côte d’Ivoire. While we didn’t spend much time in the city of Abidjan, the impressions I did have were generally pretty positive. The city seemed pretty clean and modern.

From Abidjan, we drove out to Bouaflé to watch the Zaouli mask dance. This was one of my favorite cultural experiences of the trip – the dancing was amazing. I was so impressed by how fast and intricate the footwork was. The still images definitely don’t do it justice. It was really cool to get the chance to see it live. The people of the village were welcoming and excited to share their culture with us. I found this to be true across West Africa. These destinations that aren’t on the typical tourist trail aren’t tired of seeing foreigners, they’re often excited to get the chance to engage with you.

From there, we headed to Yamoussoukro. Yamoussoukro is the capital of Côte d’Ivoire, which is an interesting choice given it has a population of only about 400,000 while Abidjan is where over a fifth of the country live, with a population of 6.3 million people. Fun fact, Yamoussoukro is also the home of the largest Christian church in the world. It’s called Our Lady of Peace and it literally holds a Guinness World Record for its size.

For the record, it is 320,000 square feet // 30,000 square meters, and 518 feet or 158 meters tall. This was our first order of business. Also, I had to borrow a skirt from them, because I hadn’t realized we were going to a church and I was wearing shorts. We weren’t allowed to take many pictures inside, but we could take them from the doorway, and then we had a full tour of the church.

After the church, we went to an area where the local people were making the beautiful bolts of cloth that you find in the markets across West Africa. It was fascinating to watch. The construction of the looms was so interesting to me. It can sometimes feel strange to watch people who are just doing their jobs, but they did seem to like showing us around and explaining how it all worked.

Côte d’Ivoire was the end of a two week tour, so a lot of the focus was on the meals and going out for drinks and enjoying the last few days with the people who we had just befriended on the trip. Some of us were continuing on, heading to Ghana, Togo, and Benin, but most of the group was heading to the Abidjan airport to start making their way home. Saying goodbye was bittersweet, but I really enjoyed the sites and experiences we got in Côte d’Ivoire!

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Africa Liberia West Africa Road Trip

Monrovia, Liberia

Through various travel logistics, we had less time in Liberia than we’d originally hoped. Part of that was the flat tire leaving Sierra Leone. We hadn’t been able to fix it because we needed to make it to the Liberian border before it closed, so we had loped along on the flat for quite a while. Luckily, we made it!

Here’s the view while we waited for our visa stamps! It was time-consuming, but it went smoothly. While we were waiting, it ended up raining pretty hard, which was the worst weather we had all trip. Most of the time it was hot, humid, and sunny. Bordering on too hot, really, but I ended up buying a fan at a local market and that was a huge help. Still, the heat was better than rain on the rural roads, especially since we spent a lot of time outdoors when we weren’t driving.

Unfortunately, we were flying out the next afternoon, so we didn’t get much time in Monrovia. We were originally meant to have a full day, but the flight got rescheduled and cut into our time in Liberia. It was a shame – Liberia has a super interesting history. It was founded by freed African Americans who were funded and organized by the American Colonization Society. Modern day Liberia still has deep ties to the United States, from their similar flag design to aspects of their constitution, and Monrovia has an absolutely massive US Consulate downtown. Their currency, the Liberian dollar, is the same green color as USD.

Once again thanking Maria and her amazing drone shots!

Despite the short time frame, I was still able to see a lot. We started our morning at the Ducor Hotel. This used to be one of the only five-star hotels in Africa – anyone who was anyone visiting Monrovia would have stayed here. It was closed during the civil wars from 1989-1997 and 1999-2003, and now it had a sort of post-apocalyptic vibe as nature reclaims the structure. It’s much more difficult to visit now. We were not allowed to take pictures, and these were not taken by me, but they do capture what I saw during my visit.

From there, we headed to the West Point. This is considered Liberia’s largest slum. Compared to where we visited in Freetown, this area of Monrovia seemed as though it was more developed. Perhaps it was just the time of day we visited, but after we had passed through an area with stalls, we ended up in a residential area, and we saw families doing their laundry, and men sewing garments to sell, and children playing. It was nice to see a quieter rhythm of life.

From there, we walked through a bit of the center of the city. Some of the people in my group played a bit of soccer with some of the kids in the street, but we didn’t have long before we had to head out to catch our plane.

It was a quick visit. I wish we had gotten a bit more time in Liberia, but traveling is full of trade-offs, and considering I work full time, I didn’t exactly have more time to devote to this particular trip. As it is, I had to dip into next year’s allocation of PTO to make this happen. Despite the rush, though, I did feel like I got a sense of Monrovia.

The flight first stopped in Conakry and then continued on to Abijdan, so it took up most of the afternoon. That first flight over to Guinea was a bit trippy, since it took an hour and a half of flying to basically undo the entire journey over 3 or 4 days. Still, it was nice to have a break from the long driving days and we were off to our next country: Côte d’Ivoire!

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Africa Sierra Leone West Africa Road Trip

The Sights of Sierra Leone

From a tourism perspective, Sierra Leone has an optics problem. Namely, the 2006 movie Blood Diamond, featuring a young Leonardo DiCaprio and set during the 1990s civil war. I remember seeing the movie and quite liking it. Unfortunately for Sierra Leone, so did a lot of people, and they’re having a hard time shaking the reputation of being in an active civil war, even though it’s been over two decades since the conflict ended.

I had recently read an article about their push to get more tourists to see beyond their history, and I was excited to visit! First impressions were of a gorgeous, lush countryside. Sorry not sorry for the many photos out the car window.

Most of our time was spent in Freetown, which is their capital. Freetown, like its neighbor Liberia, was founded by freed African Americans and African Canadians, which led to interesting tensions between those founders, the local West African tribes, and the British, who were colonizing it at the time.

I liked Freetown. I found it very interesting. We started by exploring the city center and went to a lot of the historical sites, like the original Fouray Bay College building and the Cotton Tree. We visited a market and then went to the Kroo Bay slum, which is one of the poorer areas of the city. It’s sometimes strange to visit an area where everyone is working, and it’s not designed for tourists – I felt as though I was constantly in the way while we were there, and it’s hard not to feel as though we were gawking, just a little. As an outsider there to observe the local culture, sometimes our presence alone is enough to be uncomfortable for the locals. Nonetheless, I’m glad we did get a chance to see that area as well, and hopefully we weren’t too disruptive to the people who live there.

Freetown is surrounded by hills, which made for a very cool viewpoint to look at the landscape over the city. It was quite a trek up to get to that view.

After exploring the city, we spent a lovely afternoon at the beach! We were at River Number Two Beach, which is genuinely one of the funniest names for a beach that I’ve ever heard. After several very long days in the car, it was amazing to have a nice, chill time, and the beach was great. Beautiful, with drinks and food available, and we had it mostly to ourselves.

Fun fact about their currency – the denominations are quite small relative to the price of items, so every time we had to pay anywhere, it was huge stacks of bills. I watched a woman count the money from our dinner for easily five minutes.

The next morning, we headed east from Freetown. As might be obvious from the Blood Diamond reference, Sierra Leone is known for their diamond mining. They are still one of the top ten producers of diamonds worldwide, and the situation is much better now that the diamonds being produced aren’t “blood diamonds,” or conflict diamonds. We had a chance to visit a diamond mine on the drive between Freetown and the Liberian border, which was a really interesting experience.

What I didn’t expect was how much it looked like panning for gold!

After we left the diamond mine, we promptly got a flat tire. It was a little scary, actually – I’d never been in a car when it got a flat before, and the noise is pretty alarming. We stopped on the side of the road as the driver tried to fix it, but we ended up giving up and loping along on the flat, because the border with Liberia isn’t open that late and we didn’t want to get stuck on the Sierra Leone side.

Sierra Leone also wins for my favorite signs of the whole trip. Across the board, West Africa has great signs – names of shops often are many words long, resembling full sentences and referencing God or Obama or other famous people. The PSAs and the ads are all so different from what I’m used to. I had so much fun spotting the interesting types of billboards and store names out the car window throughout the road trip.

Luckily, after our flat tire situation, we did manage to get to the Liberian border before it closed, and we ended that day in Monrovia, Liberia. We got to the hotel very late, if I remember correctly. Honestly, that’s a safe bet for most of the trip.

I had a very pleasant visit in Sierra Leone. I’m looking forward to seeing how they develop their tourism as they gain more distance from the war and from the public’s perception of them as a war-torn place!

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Africa Guinea West Africa Road Trip

Chasing Waterfalls in Guinea

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Guinea is in an interesting place in its history right now. There was a coup in 2021, and they’re still figuring out what the new government is going to look like. There’s talk that it might look closer to Mali or Burkina Faso, compared to its other neighbors in West Africa. It’s had a somewhat tumultuous political history, only holding its first democratic elections in 2010 after a long history of coups. I’m curious to see where they land in the next couple of years (and yes, I could also say that about the US at the moment).

As I mentioned in an earlier post on the region, Guinea (or Guinea-Conakry) was formerly a French colony. They were one of the earliest countries in Africa to gain their independence, in 1958. This was in a transition of all of the French colonial lands. France held a referendum, in which pretty much all of their colonies either agreed to become “states of the French Community” or were strongly encouraged to do so. Guinea was the lone country that overwhelmingly rejected France in this measure. They refused the French constitution and took their independence. It was a very brave move, because France was super pissed about their choice. They not only left Guinea, but they actually took the time to dismantle as much of Guinea’s infrastructure as they could, to the level of unscrewing lightbulbs and burning medicine rather than leave anything for the Guineans. They even tried to destabilize Guinea with a covert operation called Opération Persil, where they attempted to flood Guinea with forged banknotes in an attempt to cause hyperinflation and economic collapse.

All of this to say – yes, the roads in Guinea kind of sucked, but I’m willing to give them a lot of grace on their lack of development. Their current political situation didn’t impact our visit, probably because we stayed out in the highlands and didn’t head to Conakry. I loved our time in Guinea, and it had my single favorite day of the trip, when we went to the waterfall.

If you look closely, you can see one of our cars driving through a giant puddle

The landscapes of Guinea were gorgeous. We would stop on the side of the road for car trouble or bathroom breaks, and the view would almost make you forget you had a flat tire.

Thank you again to Maria for the drone pictures!

A big highlight of the whole trip for me was the Kambadaga Waterfall. It was unreal to have this to ourselves – we didn’t see a single other tourist, and we were able visit multiple lookouts, go swimming in the river, and stand at the very edge of the falls.

It was such a fun day out, especially in the midst of long driving days through some of the worst roads I’ve ever been on. (On that note, big shoutout to anyone who drives a commercial vehicle through those passes? We saw trucks driving alongside us, and all I can say is, how?)

We visited a market in a town called Koundara, which was interesting but also oppressively hot. We tried and failed to find a shop that sold cold drinks and changed our money into Guinean francs.

We also spent a morning in Kindia visiting their market. The strongest members of our group challenged some of the Guineans at arm wrestling, which made for a fun spectacle.

Fun fact, in Kindia, I rode on a motorcycle for the first time! We took mototaxis back to our hotel from the city center. My guy had to get a little more gas and promptly lost the group, which made me very nervous that we wouldn’t actually know how to get to our final location, but as it turns out, there aren’t a lot of large groups of tourists in Kindia and every passerby on the street could point us in the direction that we needed to go to catch back up.

Guinea is not for every traveler. But for the ones who are willing to forgo some of the traditional comforts, it can be rewarding. Some of my favorite memories of the trip were from this section, despite or even because of the challenges. And when we got to our nicer hotel in Freetown the next day, I appreciated it way more!

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Africa Guinea-Bissau West Africa Road Trip

Driving Across Guinea-Bissau

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Ok so… this is a bit out of order, since some of happened before we got to Bissau, but it made more sense to me to keep the photos of the smaller towns and countryside together. This starts with our experience in the town right on the other side of the border with Senegal, where we refueled, made sure we had enough cash, and got to wander around a little to meet some of the locals.

Also, we saw more of the critically endangered vultures! I’m happy to see that they’re thriving somewhere, since apparently this is the only place they aren’t in population decline.

Across West Africa, the soil has a high iron content, so the soil is this amazing rich reddish color. It leads to some absolutely stunning landscapes, especially where it contrasts with the verdant green of the plants on the side of the road. Most of the roads we were on in Guinea and Guinea-Bissau were dirt roads, which… had its downsides, but was very beautiful when we would stop and take it all in. Or, you know, change a flat tire.

Big thanks to Maria for bringing a drone on this trip!

We spent a lot of time in small towns in Guinea-Bissau as well. One of the coolest experiences we had was going to this village for to watch them dance. This was our first of this kind of experience across the trip, but not the only one, and every time, it was amazing how welcoming the locals were. They were happy to see us, especially the children, and share their culture with us!

I think it’s easy, in today’s day and age, to focus on the overtourism. The locals in Barcelona de-listing their buses off of Google maps and using water guns on tourists; Venice adding extra taxes to try to keep their city from literally sinking; New York deregistering every single Airbnb in the city in one fell swoop. But that isn’t everywhere. In some places, the impact of tourism can be really positive. It’s nice to have that experience.

In one of the towns, we stopped and played soccer with the locals. It felt like every kid in the region showed up to play!

Back in the cars for another long day of driving

We also headed to Bafatá, which is the second largest city in Guinea-Bissau. And by second largest, I would say it still isn’t very large – Wikipedia tells me there are about 22,000 people who live in Bafatá. It was quiet when we arrived, and we didn’t really see anyone walking around during our visit.

Bafatá was the birthplace of Amílcar Cabral, who was very important in the African anti-colonial movement. He helped to free both Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde from Portuguese rule. There’s a small museum, which I believe is the house where he was born and/or grew up in when he lived there. It’s mostly photos, so it was helpful to search out more information on the internet to supplement what we were looking at.

Guinea-Bissau surprised me. Its colorful architecture, even where it was run down, was beautiful and the people were some of the friendliest I’ve met across all my travels. In the moment, when I was on the trip, it was overwhelming – Senegal, by comparison, is much more developed, and so the switch into dirt roads and the confusion around where our cars were taking us made for a bit of a strange introduction. As I look back across the whole trip, Guinea-Bissau didn’t have the “flashy” moments like some of the other countries we visited. We saw no sites that I would expect anyone to recognize and visited towns that most of my friends have never heard of, and that was its charm. Guinea-Bissau isn’t trying to be anything – unlike so many countries that are actively trying to put their best foot forward, the Bissau-Guineans simply are that friendly and open to foreigners. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

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Africa Guinea-Bissau Senegal West Africa Road Trip

From Banjul to Bissau

Once we left the Gambia, we crossed back into Senegal. The first matter of business was a stop in Ziguinchor to get our visas for Guinea-Bissau. This was a fairly long process. The visas are all hand-written, so multiply that by the number of people in our group and I imagine the workers at the Embassy were happy to see us leave.

From there, we headed to Cap Skirring! We had a nice day at the pool and on the beach, relaxing before the tougher part of the trip began. Guinea-Bissau and Guinea aren’t as developed, both in their infrastructure and their tourism industries. So we knew we would have challenging roads ahead.

A note about Guinea-Bissau and Guinea, since this seems as good a place as any. I often see comments about the number of countries with Guinea in the name, which is a fair question. The word “guinea” was basically a way that Europeans referred to darker-skinned people, which is why it has been applied to several places around the world. The other two countries are Equatorial Guinea and Papua New Guinea, which are both quite a distance away – PNG isn’t even in the same continent.

Guinea-Bissau and Guinea, in colonial days, were Portuguese Guinea and French Guinea, respectively. French Guinea became independent first, in 1958, which is one of the earliest in Africa. Therefore, they got to keep the moniker, and Guinea-Bissau added Bissau, after their capital, to be distinct when they got their independence from Portugal in 1974. In practice, Guinea is also referred to as Guinea-Conakry, after their capital, and sometimes the Guinea is dropped altogether to refer to them as Bissau and Conakry respectively.

Home sweet bus

My next post will include pictures from the countryside of Guinea-Bissau, but for now, I’ll focus on our first night there, which was in the capital of Bissau. Guinea-Bissau, by the way, is the only country on our trip that was Portuguese-speaking! Which was not helpful for my personal ability to communicate with people but was interesting compared to the rest of Francophone and Anglophone West Africa.

After a little research, this is a memorial to the Pidjiguiti Massacre, which took place on August 3, 1959. Between 25 and 50 dockworkers were killed by the police while on strike for higher pay, which was a major turning point in the struggle for independence in the African colonies who had been colonized by Portugal. Ultimately, this led to the realization that non violent protest was not working, and after an 11 year armed struggle, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, and the rest of formerly Portuguese-Africa became independent. We didn’t talk about this while I was there, but I thought the memorial was interesting and took a photo. As I was going through my photos, I figured I should learn what it was before I posted it – thank you, Wikipedia!

We arrived after a long day of driving. We had a quick walk around and then headed to dinner. After dinner, we headed to the stadium, which acts as a hub for the city. There are several basketball courts and soccer fields, as well as dancing and a market that is set up outside. We spent the evening there, drinking beer and talking to the locals, which was really pleasant.

Our hotel was fairly nice and had a great pool. A few of us headed there before bed. We had a pretty wide variety of hotels while we were on this trip, but a lot of them had really nice outdoor spaces and pools, which made for some very fun nights on the trip.

The next morning was, in a word, chaotic. We were switching from buses to cars. We all got our assignments for the day, and the plan was to explore the city for a bit before we headed out towards Guinea. Unfortunately, there was some miscommunication, and several of the cars, including mine, immediately headed out of the city. We caught it fairly quickly and ended up stopped on the side of the road at a market for a few minutes while we re-coordinated. It was a nice detour to see a livelier part of the city – there were a ton of food stalls and shops nearby, so the four of us in our car took a quick walk around.

We did make it back to Bissau, luckily! Some cars had never left the city, and others had gotten even farther away than us before they turned around, so we sort of explored the city in waves as we waited for the whole tour group to get back to the same place.

I loved the colonial architecture and bright colors of Bissau – I found it very charming, and some of my favorite pictures that I took were from Guinea-Bissau! It was nice to see some of the capital, but we had a lot left to cover on our trip. Next stop, Bafatá!