Cote d'Ivoire

Now, from time to time we all have bad ideas but rarely do the stars align in such a fashion as to allow our worst of ideas to come to fruitition. Sometimes, just sometimes, you find yourselves very close to the war torn border of northwest Cote d'Ivoire and more rare still are the times when you decide it would be a good idea to cross that border.


Let's rewind a moment to the safety and relaxation of the beautiful beach in Sierra Leone. This was where the idea was hatched. Maybe we were doubting our out of date guidebook, which had been researched five years earlier (turns out the new edition comes out this month!) or maybe we were just getting cocky. We all laughed about how wrong our book had been thusfar. We figured that the war in Cote d'Ivoire must be over by now since we hadn't heard much. Why would our security advisor have told us it was o.k. otherwise? We joked about how funny it would be if Steve was our head negotiator with the rebel army on his birthday. What a gas that would be! So we decided to cut right through Sierra Leone and Guinea to Cote d'Ivoire on our way home. We could cross another country off the life list and besides, what could go wrong?


Fast forward back to the Cote d'Ivoirian border. It is, ironically, Steve's birthday and he is immediately approached by the rebel commander, making him our de facto head negotiator. Turns out "what could go wrong?" is that the rebels are still fully in control of large parts of the country. We are heading to their capitol and they are not sure why we would want to go there (if we are neither spies nor diamond runners, as we claim), much less why we are sneaking in the back door. Touchy situation.


The bad roads just became the last of our concerns.


So we headed up to the rebel headquarters to explain our situation. They ended writing permission for us to procede through their territory right into our passports, giving them all the official rebel rubberstamp! We also got a laissez-passe from the rebel commandant, as you do, for safe passage which we were instructed to show at the numerous checkpoints (about fifteen) we would encounter between there and the Malian border. Looked like this: Worked like a charm!

We headed to the town of Man, surrounded by gorgeous hills. We checked into the only hotel left standing that was not a rebel headquarters. It just so happened to have the best chinese restaurant we'd all been to in a year! Turns out they are fighting for some pretty scenic areas. We went to a really cool waterfall that used to have a fantastic restaurant and bar at its base but is now returning to the jungle.













On the bizarre side, we stopped at the edge of a wood on the way back and a bunch of locals clapped and yelled and made noise until a monkey came out to find out what all the fuss was about. We fed this wild monkey bananas. Surreal.



Our time was coming to an end. We hopped on an incredibly crammed massa (a twenty passenger van that held thirty passengers on this day) and headed for the border. It was hot and dusty and Mark had a man named Abdoulaye sitting half on him all day but at least we got to pre-pay our bribes. Who says the rebels aren't accomodating.

Ludicrous footnote: when we returned to Mali we wanted to make sure we were legal so as to avoid hastles down the road when we had to get our visas renewed or something. So few tourists have come through there in recent years (read: none) that the Malian border guards had no idea what to do. They ended up turning to the page in our passports that the rebels in Cote d'Ivoire had written on and transcribing that onto the next page, changing the placenames. That is how we were granted safe passage from the border to Bamako, through completely safe territory!