I'm sure, when this trip is over, that these three days will rank with the dreariest in all my travels.
I was sitting in a cafe in San Pedro ruminating on how I was going to get into Liberia. The cafe was part of a hotel that looked interesting. I made tentative plans to shift my location to this place from my ritzy oceanside digs. As I sat down to eat an african woman of about 25 began talking to me. I smiled and told her, "I only speak English."
She was puzzled for a moment but then seemed to bristle. She turned and went back to a group of people sitting in front of the restaurant.
Then I noticed a group of three folks sitting near me. There was a pretty young african woman and a middle aged african man. The third party was obscured at first. Then the woman moved over a bit and saw that the other guy was a paunchy, middle aged white guy.
They drank some beer. Then they got up to leave. The white guy put his arms around the african woman and escorted her to his car. The other guy went his own way.
Suddenly a light bulb went off in my head. This hotel served as some sort of bordello! Are you lonely for female company, go to the Atlantic Hotel (for so it was named). "Woops", I thought, maybe it wouldn't be such a good idea to move to this place.
Meanwhile I took out my LP and began rereading the section on Liberia, especially the part about Harper, the city nearest San Pedro. The road to the border would be bad, the book said. The road on the other side would be worse. One internet traveler (from comments I'd read the night before) said the mud holes in Liberia during the rainy season (i.e. now) were as deep as a vehicle. There would be no buses or established vans to take me west. And the $131 entry fee charged by Liberia rankled.
I decided to investigate other options.
I looked in LP to see about Burkina Faso (to the north) and Togo (east of Ghana). The latter seemed the better option. I decided to abandon my plans for Liberia and go to Togo.
Next morning I took a taxi to the gathering place for vans to Abidjan. From there I planned to fly to Lome, the capital of Togo. The journey, over some rotten roads at times, took seven hours. I was spent. But I still needed a hotel in Abidjan. LP recommended a place. I found a taxi driver who knew* the place.
*(One thing I've learned is to not trust any taxi driver who says he knows where something is. Almost 100% of the time that has turned out to be false on this trip.)
It turned out the driver knew the neighborhood. He didn't know the hotel. We stumbled around a bit till someone told him, "Hey, see this empty building here? That's where the hotel was.) Now I was in a fix. The driver spoke no English. I tried to suggest other hotels listed in LP but he didn't know them. I tried to suggest he find a hotel for me; that went right over his head.
Then that light bulb went off again. I told him to take me to "Gare d'Bassam", the gathering point for vans to the Bassam neighborhood in the suburbs. Once there I grabbed a van for my old hotel from several days before. I still had the task of locating the hotel and telling the van driver to let me off at the appropriate spot. Those vans speed. My heart was pumping as I scanned frantically out the foggy window for the right place. Hotels whizzed by. What would I do if we missed the place? I'd be in an unfamiliar area late at night with no place to call home. I remembered my host telling me that hotels in Bassam had no electricity. That was why it was so dark, and why it was even more difficult to find my hotel.
Then I saw it. I screamed at the tout and the driver, "Here!!" They didn't get the message for a moment, but then realized it was the crazy foreigner. They slowed, the stopped. I had a refuge.
But I still had to find a way to get to Lome.
I tried making a reservation over the internet but got nowhere. Places like Expedia and Kayak didn't handle flights from Lome. Then I found a British firm, Edreams. They got me a flight. I was saved.
Except I wasn't.
Within an hour the company emailed me with a demand for a faxed copy of my passport and other documents. How was I going to manage that?
I told my host, Volcker, a German expat, about my problem. He solved the problem by photographing the required documents and faxing them on his computer. I was back in business.
Except I wasn't.
While I waited, next morning, for my confirmed reservation, I saw a little email two-thirds of the way down the search page for Edreams.
"Don't ever use this company," was what showed on the list of search answers. I delved deeper. It turned out there were many such comments on the web. For unfathomable reasons this company apparently makes a practice of taking reservations and then withholding them, demanding more and more documentation, till the traveler gives up.
I'd been conned, though I'm not sure what Edreams gets out of all this. They never got any of my money. They did email me one more time asking for another fax, but by that time I'd moved on.
I decided to go down to Abidjan airport and try to buy a ticket. There was only one ticket agency in the building. The woman there said she could not sell me a one way ticket.(Round trip was over $500)I was despondent. I began mentally making alternate plans. I thought I might head out via bus to the northern part of Ghana.
As I slowly trudged out of the airport I noticed an office with a faint sign saying, "Cote D'Ivoire Airlines."
"Oh well, what's to lose by asking," I thought. I went in.
Inside was a pleasant woman who spoke good English. She sold me a one way ticket. I went back to my hotel triumphant.
Except I wasn't. I checked the web. They won't give you a visa to enter Togo without a return ticket. This morning I went back to the airport and got the return ticket, which I will never use. Total price as almost $400. My decision to go to Togo was going to be expensive. But I was still happy I'm made the choice. Liberia was going to be very expensive, too, with added dangers. The costs were comparable.
In two hours I'm headed for the airport. I'm still not 100% certain they will admit me, but it's highly likely based on what I've read on the internet. (I did make an effort to go to the Togo embassy yesterday, but the embassy had moved.)
Next post I'll let you know if I got in
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