West-Africa

It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog post, I survived the Guinea mountains and have now descended back to sea level and am in Sierra Leone. I left Labe back on 7th January and headed for a town called Pita. I really liked Labe, the place I stayed was nice and quiet, with good food, cold beers and little tweeting birds in the trees, but it was a little bit expensive, especially for Guinea. But they did have hot running water! Each room had a hot water tank fed by a home made boiler, copper piping inside an old oil drum filled with water, and heated by a big charcoal fire underneath. ...

Leaving Bissau I grabbed a coffee and egg sandwich for breakfast. It was Christmas day and everything was quiet, but the street vendors were already set up for serving food. I was running short on local currency and had heard that there were ATMs that would accept international visa cards. The first two didnt work. One only took local cards, the other was out of service, but the third worked flawlessly. Its now easy to get cash in Bissau city (and also up country in Gabu where I got some more before crossing to Guinea). ...

I felt really anxious about leaving Ziguinchor but I shouldn’t have been worried. Cycling south from Ziguinchor through The Cassamance region of Senegal. was great. Lovely scenery, friendly people, and lots more bikes than I’d seen in a while. I saw signs warning me of landmines, a legacy of the seperatist movement in this part of Senegal, however I’m not too sure how current these warnings are, the signs looked very old. ...

The past week has been a mixture of highs and lows. I’ve made good progress, got some important visas, but Gambia was hard because I encountered so much tourist hassle. The repair to my seat post survived the dirt roads south of Kaolack. The villages south of Kaolack on the way to Sokone seemed more traditional compared to those I’d passed previously. There was much less litter, more thatched huts/houses, less begging from children, although they still seemed to get very excited, shouting ’toubab! toubab!’ at me and waving wildly as I passed. ...

Senegal seems to have changed over the past few days. The countryside has become a lot more rural, with small villages full of thatch huts. The towns have been further apart, and people much less used to seeing visitors. I’m becoming acustommed to hearing people calling me ‘white man’, children pestering me for money, and even adults asking me for gifts or money if I stop for a rest or to buy something, or even as I cycle past. Its a strange feeling, I feel harassed by it, but I never feel in danger or that I’m not safe. ...

I’ve had a great couple of days. Leaving Dakar was fine, apart from the motorway esque road I needed to take. There was a big shoulder though and plenty of slower vehicles (horses and carts!) I was invited in for tea by some agriculture company workers. They had a little bag of charcoal and a small metal tea pot. They showed me the sorts of things they grew… bananas, carrots, fish. ...

I’m now in Dakar, the starting point of my journey. I’m sat on the roof of the hotel, nice a cool now that it’s dusk. I flew from Heathrow after a night spent on the terminal floor. I was able to fly with my bicycle in a big plastic bag. Air France made me sign a waiver form for it’s safety! The plane was delayed for 1 hour taking off (security problems with a piece of luggage that had to be removed). When we arrived, at about 21:30, the airport seemed overwhelmed. I queued for about 2 hours to get a visa. It was taking about 10 minutes per person, with 5 people working for a full 777 jet! ...

For the next few months I’m ditching work and will be exploring West Africa on my bike. In just over a week I’ll be flying to Dakar in Senegal and cycling south for 3 months until I reach Monrovia in Liberia. Source: Peter Fitzgerald, http://wikitravel.org/shared/File:West_Africa_regions_map.png I’ll be travelling through Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. I’ll try to find internet access along the way and upload a few posts about the journey. ...