-Jawaharial Nehru-
We leave Grand Bassam today, the lap of luxury that
didn’t have much power (not their fault) with a full day’s drive heading to
Yamoussoukro (phonetically Yam-mass-sook-ro) which is the political and
administrative capital of Côte d'Ivoire,
but most of the economic activity still takes place in Abidjan. We were on the road at 8.30am and we
travelled the same way that Zoe and I had travelled to the city yesterday. We had to make a supermarket stop for lunch
supplies and we both remembered seeing a large one not far from the city. We did find it again no problems and I needed
to stock up on truck snacks, well actually I needed to start my snack bag as
there hasn’t really been any places to buy stocks from other than Accra and a
few mum and dad shops that sold out of date biscuits, so I was very excited
about the prospect of getting to a proper supermarket for the first time in 4
weeks. I also needed to restock my
deodorant, so I got some extra money out of the ‘pub’ to buy my
provisions. As it turned out the
supermarket was pretty big, certainly compared to what we have seen and even
the Koala Supermarket in Accra and I was prepared to have a field day when
Ellie came over and said that the prices were out of this world. They bagged 4 tomatoes (and not even nice
ones) and for 4 of them it was costing 10AUD-for 4 tomatoes!!!!! You can buy them cheaper from a local market
than that and then we started to have a look at the prices and everything was a
big RORT and it can only mean that expats and NGO’s shop here for the prices to
be SO expensive, and there were plenty of western people in the shops. It certainly gives me a new appreciation for
the prices in Nairobi now, knowing that the western shops in Ghana and Cote
d’Ivoire are more expensive.
With that being said the prices were part of the reason I
didn’t stock up in Accra thinking I could find it cheaper on the road not
really thinking that we wouldn’t even see anything for 3 weeks. Even though I think Cote d’Ivoire will be a
little different, I am guessing Guinea will be back to basics and beyond. So I decided that I just needed to suck up
the prices here to just have some things as backup snacks on the long truck days,
which there are few coming up next week.
So I picked up a basket and found the chip aisle, the biscuit aisle, the
soft drink aisle and for good measure I checked out the cold meat section as I
had a thought about buying some cabana, as I could put it in the fridge. Well with 2 packets of Doritos, 3 packets of
salted chips, a 6 pack of Pepsi, 2 packs of wafer biscuits, a block of dairy
milk chocolate, deodorant, 4 pack of Mentos, and a 5 pack of Smartie tubes and
a pack of 4 small cabanas the total cost came to 27,010CFA (56AUD)!!!!!! I did
say I would have to suck up the prices, but my oh my. I checked the receipt after I paid and of
course it was right but the most expensive thing of the shop was the pack of 4
sausages which were 10.40AUD, a pack of Doritos were 3.15AUD a pack, the block
of chocolate was 4.15AUD and the Smarties were 5.80AUD (holy cow-but a taste of
home) and Zoe and I were only talking about them a few days ago so I bought
them and I would give a pack to her. So
when you add it all up the bill does come to 56AUD. But at least I am now stocked up, and that
little stash should last me at least 2-3 weeks-but what a shop in a western
supermarket indeed.
It was now time to get rolling, skirting the city of
Abidjan and all its traffic. It is an
impressive looking city that faces onto a river and looked a little like
Brisbane actually with us crossing a bridge and then following the freeway past
the point where we turned off yesterday for Plateau 2. The traffic really snarled up here as we
passed it looked like a truck stop with what seemed hundreds of trucks on the
side of the road. With that comes the
women and men selling stuff to them, small stalls by the side of the road and
then the drivers themselves working on their trucks, sleeping and washing and
it was, as they always are a hive of activity.
Add to that the people movers, the minivans that are collecting
passengers and the goods that they are strapping to the roofs, from bananas to
motorbikes and furniture, there is nothing that can’t be strapped to the roof
of the local vans. Then there are the
big busses, the taxis and bicycles that all content for the same space. I would LOVE to take photos as we pass
through places like this, but moving so slow and the thought of getting caught
and in trouble always stops me from snapping.
That is where Duckie was good, she was super sneaky with her photo and I
just don’t have the guts. It took us an
hour to get through the bottle neck as it turns out that on top of all that
traffic and chaos there were also roadwork’s that everyone was battling. THEN once we had merged with the traffic,
there was a police checkpoint that we were waved through and finally clear.
The roadworks were to follow us the whole day. It was a dual carriage highway that we were
travelling on, but one of the carriages was closed, so all the traffic was on
the same carriage way, driving in single lanes.
You could see for the first hundred kilometers where the work was being
done as we ran parallel to the other carriage way, some sections it was
finished and others it was still a work in progress. I am sure the local traffic didn’t mind that
it was closed as it made the roads safe for them as they used it for bikes and
foot traffic, but as the day would unfold it made it more dangerous for the
vehicle traffic as the accidents would show.
I was sitting on the left of the truck and for the duration of the 8
hour drive I saw 5 accidents on my side of the truck alone, and they were new
ones that had just happened today, and I missed one, but one of the accidents
involved a woman and a few people from the truck saw her body and lets just sat
it wasn’t all in one piece as she had been hit by a truck. It seemed to be a shocking road for accidents
and the other side of the truck said they saw at least 5 accidents from their
side. As there always are on these types
of roads, a lot of overtaking by speeding busses, minivans overtaking trucks
and other trucks over taking trucks-you really have to be on the ball all the
time and was thankful that I was in safe hands with Zoe and Sam.
The weather was hit and miss all day. It didn’t rain hard, it would just come in
showers and when the time came to stop for lunch, we found a section of the
road we could pull over and drive onto the non- used section of the new
carriage way. It seemed weird to be
parked on a road that was not in use, but it was the perfect place for us to
stop and with some showers outside we decided to eat again in the truck to save
time and to also not have to set up in the rain. It was a bit of a luxury lunch today with
Brie being purchased, fancy ham from the deli and fresh bread rolls and I think
they were the most luxurious lunch we have had on the trip so far! It is hard to go wrong with fresh bread and
we didn’t even miss the overpriced tomatoes either!!! It was also the perfect location for a
bathroom stop, and I have to say I am so impressed with my public toilet skills
now and I found a bush only a few meters from the truck and now I don’t even think
twice if I need to go, BUT as long as there is enough ‘coverage’ and no-one can
see me then I am a reformed public wee’er!!!!!
How far I have come, which is just as well as we have 6 bush camps
coming up, with 2 in a row, then a hotel and then 2 more in a row-it was on the
cards that I would just have to learn to live with it anyway.
Just as we approached the outskirts of Yamoussoukro,
after passing through around 15 checkpoints the last 2 days, we were finally
pulled over and this check point was actually an anti-drug check, so we were
asked to turn off the truck and they had an officer come on the truck to hand
search some of our bags. Suzanne was the
first one checked and she had a container of her malaria tablets in her bag
which Zoe was questioned on what they were and when she said they were for
malaria the officer said there isn’t malaria in Cote d’Ivoire and when again
she explained that we were heading all the way to Senegal, that seemed to
pacify him after looking at the actual tablets.
Rich also had his on him and again Zoe had to explain that they are
prescribed medications and after a bit of back and forth we were okay on the
malaria pills on us. He checked our
esky’s, checked some plastic bags in the overhead nets and then he got off the
truck. Zoe was questioned some more,
what seemed to me to be over a log book of some sort and 20 minutes later,
handshakes and smiles we were on our way.
It’s not a bad record to have this as our first checkpoint in Cote
d’Ivoire after passing so many and the one thing we have noticed is that they
all have whistles attached to their applets, most of them are green or pink in
colour and we get a short burst whistle when we pass, thinking it is a sign for
us to stop and when you look at the guy, he smiles and just waves us
through. Something has to be said of a
man in uniform with a pink whistle in his mouth! I am still trying to work out the uniforms,
as there seems to be at least 5 different ones at any one checkpoint and I am
guess they are all in charge of certain things, but they never seem to worry
about us which is a good thing.
We arrived into the town of Yamoussoukro just before 5pm,
and considering this city is now the current capital of the Ivory Coast it
looked like a ghost town, even at 5pm. I
was thinking that maybe we were in a quite part of town, but as we would find
out later, it is a strange town indeed and this was part of the actual city
after all. The hotel where we would be
staying for the next 2 nights had power (woo hoo) free Wi-Fi, air-conditioning,
a flushing toilet, hot water and a tap and a TV that had 15 channels (all in
French). I’m telling you, they guys from
the first section of the trip would not believe the ‘luxury’ that we have had
the first 8 days of this trip. It really
is a different tour, and I am certainly not complaining and making the most of
it, with Guinea our next country on the itinerary, the unknown and the camping
will be more like what I did in the first 3 weeks. Dinner was at 7pm and having pre-ordered our
meals (which is a GREAT idea), I spent the next 2 hours in my little
air-conditioned cave (there were no windows) pumping out blogs and trying to
load some photos at the same time. The
internet would go up and down, but I was quite productive and with a low key
day planned for tomorrow, I think I am going to be able to catch up a lot on
some of my ‘office’ work.
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