2025 AIS-5 Quintuple Quest, Fri January 24, 2025

Escaping Guinea / Entering Côte d'Ivoire

There is some weirdness in the GPX track log. The border crossing consisted of 3 security checkpoints getting out of Guinea and then a border station at the entry of Côte d'Ivoire. We hit the first checkpoint at 1:27pm (4.5 hours after leaving Yaraouléna!) and were released into Côte d'Ivoire at 7:14pm for a total of almost six hours.

While waiting for one of the Guinea exit checks, we bought 20 400ml bags of drinking water and a baguette. That would be all the food and water the five of us would have for the next 8 hours.

Then we rode on a road under construction, graded dirt but with machines parked on it in such a way as to make passage for even a motorcycle impossible. We detoured around three such blockades. The dirt section was 25 km. Then another 25 minute security / customs checkpoint inside of Côte d'Ivoire at Maninian. We finally arrived at a hotel in Odienné at 9:25pm. We travelled only 162km today in 12 hours.

The saga of the border into Côte d'Ivoire

Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire borders are run by criminal gangs wearing military uniforms. They exist to inconvenience and extort money from travellers. I hope to never again cross one of these borders. It's a shame that tourism is so suppressed in these interesting and beautiful areas. I would like to visit and spend money there, but not give it to these crooks!

So here is the issue they choose to torture us with. My visa for Côte d'Ivoire is a 1 year, multiple entry visa, applied for on Oct 21, 2024, issued Oct 24, 2024, and valid from 06/01/2024 to 05/01/2025. Do you see the problem? Let's write the validity dates more conventionally as Jan 6, 2024 to Jan 5, 2025. There was a typo. Instead of starting when my trip began Jan 6, 2025, they started in 8 months before my application date in 2024. And the visa expired before I even got to Africa because they got the years wrong. The border guard said, "go back to the Embassy in Conakry about 24 hrs drive from here and get it fixed". Instead, I called the Ivorian Embassy in Washington DC. They issued me a correction within about 30 minutes along with a letter. But the border guard refused to accept it. I told the embassy in DC that if this isn't fixed before it starts getting dark, I'm going to just ride my motorcycle through the border gate and they can try to catch me. Crashing the border gate and just riding into Côte d'Ivoire might create an international incident, but we're in a life-threatening situation here. We had been there for over 4 hours with little water and no food in 39°C heat and were getting cranky. This perceived threat paniced the embassy and the ambassador himself got on the phone with the border guard's boss to request that they let us through. OK, that kind of worked. We were "free to go". But the guard said he was keeping my passport. Umm, no. Then the border guard played a game of super slow writing all the passport numbers, bike registration numbers, our phone numbers, our addresses, etc. He kept us for another hour until it got good and dark before releasing us onto the dirt road filled with parked construction equipment for our 25 km ride in dangerous, dark conditions until pavement began in Côte d'Ivoire.

As an American, I kind of expect people in uniform to be enforcing the law rather than getting on some sort of power trip and stealing money from the tourists. I find it sad that West Africa is so far from actually implmenting their ECOWAS free movement agreements. Borderless Africa seems so very far in the future. The entire industry of border extortion needs to be dismantled before Borderless Africa can happen.

The curse

While riding on the dirt road in Côte d'Ivoire, I saw two large owls. Owls in West Africa are symbols of witchcraft and greatly feared. Well, I called out to those owls and asked them to curse the border guards of Côte d'Ivoire. I specifically asked the first one of them to sicken the guard with leptospirosis. I asked the second owl to peck his eyes out. I sincerely hope he dies a painful death. The sooner the better.

While this curse might not work, it make me feel better to think that I might have somehow helped karma catch up with that bastard.

Day 15, Yaraouléna → Odienné

Ride Log