Financing West Africa

Our journeys in Africa until now have been pleasantly affordable, if not always pleasantly comfortable. We wanted to do the entire region at once, so here is what we can tell you about finances in West Africa. As a reminder, these prices generally include our visas (and visa prices may vary depending on where they are issued) and all expenses for the two of us. They are obviously a rough guide, but should be helpful to other traveling in the area.

Morocco- $47 per day over 15 days. Thanks to Morocco not requiring visas, cheap lodging and transport, and easy do-it-yourself tour options, this is one of the cheapest countries we have visited. We stayed in a few terrible hotels, but also a few rather nice ones, but you could easily stay in nice ones the whole time and not add more than $10/night.

Mauritania- $68 per day over 8 days. This reflects the $45 visa, but is lessened by us staying with a family for a few days. Hotels are a bit pricey in Mauritania for the quality, and most of the food is imported, so it can also be pricey if you want Western-standards. However, transport is cheap, with the iron ore train being almost free.

Senegal- $61 per day over 7 days. Senegal is the other country in this part of the world that does not require visas for Americans (or most Europeans), which reduces the cost. Hotels are reasonable except in Dakar, where you should definitely stay in the very nice Catholic Guesthouse or couchsurf if you are on a budget.

The Gambia- $106 per day over 4 days. This is skewed by the $50 visas and only being there for four days, but in The Gambia, you have to take tours (often costly boat tours) to see much. Guides can be hired very cheaply if you can find them, but boats cannot. We do have some good suggestions for bird and wildlife guides if you decide to go.

Mali- $76 per day over 8.5 days. Visas are $25 each. Mali has more tourists, so everything is a bit more expensive, especially tours of Dogon Country, which are costly, but interesting. If you are really on a budget, you can often get a mattress on someone's roof for very little money, which is actually your only chance to be cool enough to sleep if you are there in hot season unless you pay the outrageous additional amounts (normally $20/night) for air conditioning.

Burkina Faso- $66 per day over 7.5 days. Visas were $20 each at the border, but only good for 7 days. Transport is fairly cheap and often nicer than surrounding countries (even sometimes air conditioned on the main east-west road). Without your own car, you do have to hire a guide and car to see some of the interesting spots in the west of the country, which was not crazy expensive, but raised the average.

Ghana- $46 per day over 14 days. Visas were $30 each. Ghana feels more expensive than it is because at a few touristy places, you feel like you are being overcharged. Food on the street is good (if you can find it without fish sauce) and really cheap. Hotel rooms are very reasonable, though you may want to look at a few in Accra to find the right cleanliness/cost balance.

Togo- $49 per day over 4.5 days. Visas were $30 each. This is completely skewed by us staying entirely with Peace Corps volunteers while in the country. The average would have been about $30 per day more without that. Take the Post Bus, which is nice and reliable (and air conditioned) when traveling.

Benin- $65 per day over 5.5 days. Visas were $20 each. Good value since we had to pay $50 each for the car/tour to Pendjari tour and paid for hotels throughout the country. Take InterCity bus when possible--it was cheaper than most and air conditioned.

Nigeria- $80 per day over 11 days. Visas were $130 each. The visas make it expensive, but our couchsurfing in Lagos offsets that since hotel prices there are very high. Transport costs vary a lot from place to place in the country, sometimes with little reason. Street food availability also varies a lot, and restaurants are expensive. Make sure your hotel has a generator (almost all do) since the country is without power most of the time.

Cameroon- $59 per day over 15 days. Visas were $100 each. Hotels aren't that expensive, though the water and electricity in Cameroon is spotty, so you could find yourself without one or both even at decent hotels (good hotels have generators for power, but the backup for water is to give you a couple of buckets). Travel prices also vary a lot here in different parts, so just bargain hard and hope for the best.

Gabon- $78 per day over 7.5 days. Visas were $100 each. Gabon is expensive. Transport is two or three times more expensive than any other country in the region. Hotels are not cheap, though of a high standard (couchsurfing in Libreville greatly helps our expenses). If you venture to the national parks rather than Lope, they start at $300 per night per person. Yet, we have had a decent time here.

That wraps up expenses. As always, ask if you have any questions.

Obsessions of West and Central Africa!

This post is a long time coming, but we figured we'd wait til the end of this segment of the trip and do one big post covering all 15 countries we've visited so far! Either that, or we've just been lazy. You decide...


I guess we'll start with the three European nations we hit en route to West Africa.


Belgium - Chocolate. That one's easy. Brussels's streets are line with chocolate shops, each one fancier than the next. Luckily, if you hang around long enough and look serious enough about possibly buying something, most of them will give you a free sample!


Gibraltar - "Apes." They're actually baboons, which are monkeys, but all the tour guides call them apes. They were brought over from Africa by army soldiers in the 1800s (I think) for...um, company? Now they run "wild" over the Rock of Gibraltar, except they seem to know exactly where the tourists with the food congregate. Saying Gibraltar's obsessed with them may be a stretch, but hey, we only spent a few hours there and don't really have any other candidates.


Spain - Ham. Or jamon, in the local parlance. Brussels's chocolate shops are replaced in Spanish cities with shops with huge haunches of pig hanging in the window, selling all manner of pork products! In Madrid there is even one emporium called the Museo del Jamon. (It made for a strange gateway to the Muslim world, where pork products are impossible to find...)


On to West Africa!


Morocco - "Berber artisan cooperatives." A.k.a....carpet shops. A guy starts guiding you through the medina (old town) and you think you're just gonna see the sights. Then he steers you to the amazing "artisan cooperative" where you are in luck the Berbers are in town, selling their amazing crafts, just for one day only! (Except that miraculously, they're still there when you walk by the next day, and the next.) Suddenly you find yourself trapped in a carpet showroom, with carpet after carpet being unfolded for your "viewing pleasure" and a slick salesman countering your every objection to purchasing ("Can't carry a carpet around the world? We ship to America!"). And then you start thinking, to your horror, "Hm, that carpet does look nice, and shipping it wouldn't cost so much..." You barely escape. Luckily, this only has to happen to you in one city (OK, maybe two...) before you catch wise and just refuse to even enter such places!


Mauritania - Tea. We thought Morocco was obsessed with tea until we got to Mauritania! A super-strong blend of green tea, fresh mint, and loads of sugar, decanted over and over until your tiny glass is just basically filled with tea foam, and drunk in three rounds over the course of an hour with your new friends, tea is an unavoidable but excellent Mauritanian experience.


Senegal - Pretending to have Internet access. In no other country have we entered so many buildings that had the word "cyber" or "internet" over the door, only to find that the place didn't even have electricity, much less computers or a connection! Senegal's sign-painters are apparently afflicted with an optimism that they will one day have Internet access, and are painting for the future, not the present...


The Gambia - "Happy couples!" For some reason, Gambians like to shout the phrase "Happy couples!" at pairs like me and Andy (i.e. whities)as we walk down the street. This is then often followed by some sort of fairly innocuous attempt to sell you something. We surmise that there was some sort of tourism-promoting PR campaign at some point that proclaimed The Gambia the place for happy couples.


Most of the time it didn't bother us, but one time we had just lost a bunch of money to a malfunctioning ATM (since recovered) and Andy was really mad. Upon emerging into the street, we heard someone call to us "Happy couples!" and begin their approach. Andy barked, "We're not happy right now, leave us alone!" And you'd better bet he did.


Mali - Mud. A lot of West African countries have houses made out of mud, but Mali takes mud art and architecture to a whole 'nother level. It has the largest mud-brick mosque in the world at Djenne, a town filled with other intricate mud-brick buildings. It also sells beautiful bogolan, or mud-cloth, dyed with different pigments derived from, you guessed it, mud. If you don't like mud, you might not enjoy Mali.


Burkina Faso - Mobylettes. The Burkinabe are crazy about their motorbikes, or mobylettes. The nicest store in Ouagadougou is a fancy mobylette emporium. Mobylettes swarm through the cities, and you see pairs that have crashed sprawled across intersections. But if, like me, you are reluctant to take one (without a helmet, down a bumpy dirt road!), people just don't understand.


Ghana - Fish. All of West Africa likes fish, but Ghana is especially obsessed and puts fish in everything. This was a real bugbear to us as we tried to eat street food, because almost every sauce had at least a hint o'fish in it. Every market has a huge, stinky fish section...and it doesn't matter if a town is many miles from the ocean or river--that's what dried fish is for! There is one toll booth in the middle of nowhere outside of Tamale in the north where women with huge baskets on their heads swarm passing tro-tros to sell people dried fish. How this situation evolved, I will never know, but everyone knows the fish-lady toll booth.


Togo - Pate. This is more learned from our Peace Corps friends than directly experienced, but Togolese people are really obsessed with the starchy staple they call pate. It's made of pounded corn and is fairly tasteless (unless you get the fermented version...bleh) but if they have to have a meal without it, they'll go a little crazy. We had to try it, of course...not bad, but we (like most other yovos we met in-country) don't really get what the fuss is about.


Benin - Celine Dion. You know those immortal lyrics, "Near...far...wherever you are..."? Wherever you are apparently includes Benin! We heard Celine playing at the bus office, at the Internet cafe...well, maybe that's it, but it made an impression. Celine seems to be fairly popular in much of West Africa, singing in French, English, and even Spanish.


Nigeria - Locks. OK, we know that Nigeria has a poor reputation for security, but it seems to have an excessive number of indoor locks. In the apartment we stayed in in Lagos, every room had its own lock and key, and in two different hotel rooms we were given a refrigerator with a lock on it. You know, in case those dastardly thieves tried to steal your yogurt...


Central African obsessions:


Cameroon - Beans and beignets. Or maybe that's just what we were obsessed with when we were there. But in every town you can find at least one lady frying up beignets (balls of fried dough) and selling them for 5 cents US apiece. The same lady also always has a big pot of beans (a bowl costs 20 cents) and another big pot of a warm sweet porridge (a cup costs 10 cents). This magical trifecta was our dinner many, many times.


Gabon - Speeding. Good lord, those Gabonese drivers drive fast. Our guidebook features warnings about reckless drivers for several African countries, but only in Gabon do we feel like we're taking our lives in our hands every time we get in a vehicle. And it doesn't matter if it's a taxi or a bus. In most other countries, if a car is driving fast, it will at least slow down as it goes through a village, but not in Gabon--the driver just leans on his horn to warn all the children/goats/other cars to get out of his way. (Honorable mention Gabon obsession: mayonnaise.)

There you have'em, the obsessions from this first leg of our Africa travels! Take them with a grain of salt, of course, and feel free to let us know if you agree or disagree!

Beans, beignets, brochettes...foods of Cameroon and Gabon

First, a food picture we missed uploading from Nigeria. Who wouldn't like a little goat-head flavor in their soup?
OK, on to central Africa--Cameroon and Gabon! Andy and I ate in a restaurant on our first night in Cameroon, but then never again, and we were there for two weeks. There was just all this tasty street food to be had, and for so darn cheap, too!

All over Cameroon, you see these little purple fruits for sale (and when you're in rainforesty areas, you see them growing on the trees). Depending on who you talk to, they may be called African pears or plums. However, they have the consistency of an avocado and the taste of an olive, and have to be grilled before eating. (I liked them, Andy did not.) Thanks to Melissa and Jessica, the PCVs we met in Mamfe, for clueing us in about them.

OK, this is the magical trifecta of Cameroonian street food that was our dinner almost every night. Clockwise from the top, you have beignets (sweetish fried dough, 5 cents US per ball); sweet porridge (not sure what it's made of, probably a grain, definitely sugar, and maybe there's some juice or milk in it?) for 10 cents a bowl; and nicely spiced beans for 20 cents a bowl. So you see in front of you a delicious three-course, vegetarian meal for 50 cents. Order, eat, repeat.

This meal was often supplemented with Cameroonian suya, which is a bit different from the Nigerian version. In Cameroon, big hunks of fatty, pastrami-like beef are slow-cooked, then the guy slices it up for you. You always get a free sample before you decide to buy. (The best suya vendor in the country is in Bamenda, opposite Dreamland Restaurant, in case you are heading that way.) The amount you see here costs about $1.

Continuing our Ph.D. studies in fried-ball identification, Andy and I identify these balls as a cornmeal and banana mixture. Yum.
We also found real live French fries on the street in Bamenda. You don't often see fried potatoes, more often plantains, yucca, or beignets, so these were a treat.
Rats, I don't remember the name of this Cameroonian dish, but it's made of a spinach-like green leaf, some smoked fish, and a lot of palm oil. Served with a big long piece of fufu (grab piece with hand, roll into ball, dip in veggie goop, eat). I think that 14-year-old Tara, who hated spinach, fish, and getting her hands greasy, would be really proud of 30-year-old Tara, who not only ate this whole thing, but enjoyed it! Another reason to like Cameroon--they make yogurt. My favorite of the industrial variety was this little cup, though I liked the apricot better than the fruit cocktail flavor.
A popular side dish in Cameroon is the baton, or stick, of steamed manioc in a banana leaf. Not much taste, but it sure is long. 10 cents.
We discovered these yummy cardamom sandwich cookies from India in a shop in Limbe. We look forward to eating more of them in India.

Ahhh, the Limbe fish grills. They've got the catch of the day all out on tables, you go point to what you want,and they bring it to you. Thanks to Andrea, another PCV in Cameroon, I knew to look out for the calamari on a stick (right), and it was out-of-this-world amazing. I had to come back the next night for three more. The grilled plantain was also incredible, and the giant prawn that I mistook for a lobster because I am dumb about fish was not bad, either.

Beers in Africa only seem to come in giant size, which is about three times the ideal Tara-size, but somehow I manage.
Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, is filled with great patisseries. Our favorites were Patisserie Selecte and Calafata's, and we visited both daily. Here is Andy enjoying a "beignet Americain" (what exactly makes it American we're not sure, but it was filled with jam and tasty) at Selecte.
A popular bus snack--raw coconut. A little monotonous after a few bites, but filling.

Beans and beignets from my favorite street vendor in Yaounde. She made mini-beignets that cost 2 cents apiece, and you had your choice of wheat-flour or corn-flour/banana. Andy and I usually got a combo of five of each type to supplement our beans.
Backstory: Almost a year ago, in French Guyana, we stayed with some terrific Italians, Manuela and Max. When they brought out glasses of water, they also brought a bottle of Italian mint syrup. This was a revelation to Andy, who immediately fell in love with the minty water. Since then, we have seen this mint syrup for sale in so many countries, and it is usually not even expensive, but it comes in a giant glass bottle, so we've never bought any while traveling.

Suddenly, in a supermarket in Yaounde of all places, Andy comes across a small, plastic bottle of mint syrup for $1.50. He was so excited to finally possess the syrup of his dreams!

We barely made it out to the parking lot before he had to mint up one of his Nalgenes.
My prefered beverage in Yaounde was yogurt on the street. Guys with pushcarts that store large bottles of fresh vanilla yogurt pour you a little cup for 2o cents.

Here's one such cart. I call it the MYU (mobile yogurt unit).
Snack time: A sachet of drinkable yogurt for me and a cheap knockoff Bounty bar for Andy from a gas station in Yaounde.

At another gas station, this time in the beach town of Kribi, we tried a Cameroon-made fruity soy drink (it was OK) and were really excited to find strawberry tortinha cookies all the way from Brazil! No idea how they ended up there, but we loved them in Brazil and they were cheap, so we loaded up.

The other cookies we bought in Kribi were chocolate sandwich cookies from Tunisia that had these happy faces on them. How could eating one not make you happy?

On to Gabon! Gabon has an expensive reputation, so we didn't know if we'd be able to find cheap street food there, but we didn't have all that much trouble. For our first dinner in the country, in Oyem not far from the border, we got suya and delicious fried plantains for about $1.50. We also learned that in Gabon, people like to slather mayonnaise on everything.

In Lope, the small Gabonese village near a national park where we stayed for a few days, we had to break our no-restaurant streak because there just wasn't street food (maybe since there are no real streets?). Here's the chicken in "local chocolate sauce" that didn't really taste like chocolate and steamed plantains we found at a little restaurant.
I had a beer in Lope and learned that Gabonese Regab comes in bottles just as giant as Cameroonian Castel! I swear these are the only two beers I had in three weeks...

These little wild guavas grow in Lope National Park. Elephants like to eat them, but they taste good to people, too! Andy and I decided that since we didn't see as many elephants as we'd hoped that we would steal all their food.
D'jino is a popular brand of soda in Cameroon and Gabon. Their most common flavor seems to be pamplemousse (grapefruit), but we found a bottle of pineapple and it was very refreshing after a long day in the park.
At the Casino supermarket in Gabon's capital, Libreville, Andy and I each got a treat. For Andy, white chocolate with coconut pieces; for me, a mini yogurt with cous cous in it called Doudou. Both were very nice.
Favorite Gabonese breakfast: baguette with tasty beans and, of course, mayonnaise. Costs around 50 cents.
I can't tell you how long I have been craving a hamburger. I finally got one in Libreville, at a little fast-food joint called Kass'Kroute in a mini-mall, and it was amazing! Note that fries are served with ketchup and, of course, mayo as well.
Yoplait has a factory in Gabon and produces some cheap yogurts here. My favorite is the "fruits exotiques" flavor.
For our one-year anniversary (happy anniversary!), Andy and I went to an Italian restaurant on the docks in Libreville and both had gnocchi. His had a nice meat sauce and mine had a rather salty pesto, so he was a gentleman and swapped me half and half. Good times.

We had some free time in Libreville, so we went to a cafe where I could do a little work on my novel over an overpriced hot chocolate ($3). Better deal than the cafe in Yaounde, though, where I paid $4! The price of creativity...

Our lunch on the street yesterday in Libreville. Chicken grilled on a stick, loads of fried plantains, and of course, mayo!
We had dinner last night with a lovely new friend named Sarah who works at the American School. She took us to a great place with tasty brochettes (meat on a stick) and sides, and that is also where I had my first ever Orangina--a drink that seems to be popular, or at least heavily advertised, in this country. I loved it! Up there with lemon Fanta, and much more natural-tasting than nasty orange Fanta...

Here's Andy's dinner--chicken and beef brochettes, rice, and a side of aloko (fried plantains). Yum yum yum.
All right, that should wrap up foods of central Africa. Good stuff. I could eat Cameroonian beans and beignets every day (and did!), and Gabon also came through with some very tasty meals and snacks. We are supposed to cook an American-style meal tonight for our couchsurfing host (we're going to attempt chili), so maybe we'll post a snap of that in our next food entry...which should be foods of Madagascar! Yup, we fly out tonight at midnight to the land of the lemur. Can't wait.

Our camera goes to Cameroon

Our entrance to Cameroon (Cameroun if you are French speaking) was relatively straight-forward: take a shared taxi down a bad road to the border town, walk across the border, take a taxi down an even worse road to our destination for the day. The woman at the Cameroon crossing made the saddest attempt ever to collect a bribe when she said to Tara: "Looks like those mosquitoes have bitten you a lot. For a small bribe, I could make that stop." In the meantime, she was processing our papers with efficiency, so maybe she was just joking. Then again, this was Cameroon, where nearly all the local police are corrupt...

Now, to the pictures. In the North of Cameroon, we went to the area called Ring Road, which is a bit of misnomer since it has probably been at least 10 years since the road actually went in a complete ring. We got a driver for the day, which wasn't much more than unreliable public transport, and were off to see the famed waterfalls near Wa. The area is all very green grasslands. Here is a picture from the road.

Our driver had driven between cities many times, but had never actually stopped at any tourist spots, so he got to see some new places. It meant that when we got close, he would have to start asking locals where to go. In this case, he paid some woman with three small kids to get in the car with us and show us the way. Funny since you walk 10 feet off the road and then see the huge overlook and falls.

Much of the area is used for farming, with the lowest, wettest parts of the valley used for growing rice during wet season. Some of the valleys are just overrun with beautiful grass, though. This valley had a mix of both.

After the Falls, our next stop was palace of the Fon of Bali. A Fon is basically a king with additional magical powers. Namely, he can become any animal he wants, can send magical forces to fight or kill others, and is nearly omnipotent (though not omniscient). He has dozens of wives, and inherits the wives of his father, though his mother becomes essentially the queen if alive rather than a wife of her son... They wouldn't let us take pictures in the palace, but it was really more like 100 huts for all the wives surrounded by a wall. Outside was this "talking drum", which is used even today to send messages over long distances to neighboring villages, which can then retransmit them as needed. Much like telegraph operators.

Our taxi driver liked us so much (or was fishing for a tip) that he took us to a lovely lookout over Bamenda, the city where we were staying. Here we are with the city in the background. The sun is bright--thus my squintiness. After this, he also took us to meet his sons and see his house. Like so many places in the world, he lived in a tiny, two-room, cinder block house, but somehow can afford satellite television.

As it turned out, the taxi driver told us that it was Independence Day. The 50th, in fact. We missed some of the pageantry while at the Falls, but did catch the fireworks that night.

Next, we made our way to Limbe, a beach city on the coast. We had thought about hiking Mt. Cameroon, but it was rainy and we weren't really up to a multi-day hike. In a moment of sunshine, we visited the local zoo, which is run by the Pandrillus organization that we visited in Nigeria. They do a good job. Here is a mandrill, which is doesn't look like we will see in nature. Looks like a drill with more color.

The tourism office in Limbe is called the Fako Tourism Office. Would you use the Fako office to book your travels? We might have had they actually been open.

While visiting the botanical gardens, where we refused to pay extra to take pictures, I managed to discreetly take a picture of this lovely bird. Can't tell you what it might be, so we'll call it a robin redbreast. Hey, it definitely has a red breast.

The coast of Limbe looks out towards Equatorial Guinea. I had dreams of visiting, but these dreams were quashed when we discovered that the National Park has been closed and that having a map in the country can land you in jail.

In Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, and a nice city other than that it was without running water for the entire time that we were there, the Social Security building seems to have cancer. I take it to be a political statement about the cancer that Social Security is on the system.

Across from that building is the bank building with African themed murals covering it. Very interesting to look at, but we would have never trusted them enough to use the ATM there.

From Yaounde, we continued to Kribi, another beach town. They have a waterfall that they claim is the only waterfall to empty directly into the ocean. Unfortunately, it actually empties into a river several hundred feet from the ocean and we have been to other falls that do empty into the ocean, but a nice thought.

Cameroon is a bilingual country with part of the country speaking English, but most speaking French. This often leads to funny translations like this sign. We couldn't agree more, though we aren't really sure what a canker worm looks like.

From the Kribi Falls (called Lobe Falls), we took a boat ride to go to the local Pygmy village. I had been getting excited about seeing Pygmies for at least a month. Unfortunately, when we showed up, rather than being greeted by Munchkins with spears, we were greeted by some people about Tara's height who were really angry that our guide didn't bring them any cigarettes and wouldn't give them money because the chief was away. At one point, a guy did hold a spear threateningly at the throat of the guide. At this point, we had to run away, jumping in our boat as the guide pushed it offshore and started paddling quickly while looking back to see if they were following. Sadly, that meant no pictures, but it would not have been a good picture in any case.

We walked the 5 miles back from the waterfalls to our hotel along the beach. Most of it had nothing around and made for a pleasant swim.

From Kribi, we decided to go south to Campo-Ma'an National Park, where we would pay motorcycle drivers to drive us many hours across the park, from where we could get transport to Gabon. This was based on my conversations in Yaounde with the Communications Director for the park. Only later did we learn that Communications Director is really just a propaganda minister. We did convince two of the official park guide/motorcycle drivers that this was a good idea,though. The first day, we drove about 90 minutes to a eco-lodge, where they told us they had people all the time, only to confide that this meant at least once a month. On my night walk around the lodge, I found this praying mantis.

And this cicada.

And this gecko.

This is what the path looked like in good condition. Unfortunately, the torrential downfall that began shortly after this prevents me from showing you what the "trail" looked like when it consisted entirely of 8 foot tall weeds and no visible path. What to do but drive the motorcycles right at them? Tara and I cowered behind the drivers to avoid being hit in the face, but nothing could prevent the deluge from soaking us (and most of our stuff). After about 7 hours, we made it, having heard many animals, but seen only animal poop. Because of this, Tara now supports the burning of the rainforest.

In southern Cameroon, the police are very corrupt, with all the local police examining the smallest details of our documents looking for things that could create "fines". We never paid any, but it was a real pain. The national police at the border were very friendly, though, and spoke good English.

Cameroon was a very green country, and we generally enjoyed it. The people aren't quite as friendly as Nigeria, but were mostly nice. Kribi had nice beaches, and Yaounde was a lovely city. Worth the visit, and some people even speak English!