MonRover

As soon as I arrived at St Teresa’s Convent, which would be my home in downtown Monrovia, I bumped into Irene. Irene is a Spanish girl, and together with her American boyfriend David, they are pretty much the only other long term travelers I have encountered on my whole trip, having met them once before in the Guinean highlands. David had had to attend to some business back home in Cairo, but the following day he returned to sub Saharan Africa and for the next few days the three of us explored Monrovia and its surroundings. The first thing we all needed to attend to was applying for Ivorian visas and once that was processing we were free to see what else was on offer. Monrovia is probably the most developed city I've seen since leaving Morocco, clearly influenced by its liberated American slaves with large fancy car dealers, furniture shops and supermarkets lining the broad avenues whilst huge gated compounds protect the wealthier population from the not so fortunate. We visited the abandoned Hotel Ducor, which was one of Africa’s finest hotels a few decades ago, but now a nine story skeleton stands in its place with all the rooms plundered, the rooftop still offers some great views of the city though.

Another day we travelled to the nearby town of Harbel, to visit the Firestone Rubber Plantation, which at an alleged 1 million acres is the world’s largest and in its heyday provided 80% of the planet’s rubber. It was interesting to see how such a massive company still seems to be working on small scale, collecting the white latex sap by hand and carrying it in plastic buckets to wherever it gets processed. Monrovia was a nice enough city, with quite a vibrant nightlife, but also a much divided city between rich and poor, giving some areas a very sketchy feeling. Also I don’t feel as bad about my linguistic skills in the French and Portuguese speaking countries before this, as here I can really struggle with the Liberian English and at times it can be near unintelligible to my ears.

Once our visas were processed, we decided to leave the big smoke and head east along the coast. We made it to the port town of Buchanan and searched for a cheap place to stay, what we didn’t know was that former football star and current Liberian president, George Weah, had also decided to visit town. After finding no room at most Inns we finally managed to find a reasonable place, watched the presidential motorcade, had a nice fish dinner and beers in the sunset and then called it a night as we would be getting up early the next day. Our goal was to eventually reach The Ivory Coast, but we opted to take the less travelled route along the coast, hoping to stop off and visit some small beach towns on the way. Being a less travelled route though, meant that the transportation prices were higher, so we decided to try to hitchhike. In my experience there really isn’t such a thing as hitchhiking in Africa, as no matter what transport you get, you will usually have to pay, but we were hoping it would be considerably less than what we were quoted by share taxis. It turned out to be a very long day, not helped by the fact that the rain had really decided to make its presence known. Since starting this trip, rainy season has been a concern as it can make travel very difficult in these parts, many of the dirt roads I’ve taken so far would have been impassible once the wet season arrives.

In the end, the three of us had to split to increase our chances, I managed to get a seat first with some road constructors, then a group of illegal gold miners followed by some local workers for a German NGO, and finally I reached the goal of Greenville late at night. It had taken me nearly 15 hours to cover the 208 kilometres, but to my pleasant surprise only one out of the three transports had asked me for money. Irene and David weren’t quite as lucky, but they arrived the following evening after having camped at the junction where we separated. The next morning we were lucky to find a driver who was willing to take us all the way to Harper at a fair price, and after almost 8 hours on the dirt roads we arrived there safely.