Lonely Planet lists 5 “highlights” of Liberia:
1. Robertsport – surfing
2. Monrovia – capital
3. Buchanan – camping on the beach and relaxing at the port
4. Sapo National Park – pygmy hippos
5. Harper – nice town to be in.
Of all those places, I’ve been to Monrovia already, Robertsport charges crazy money for accommodation (though now I think there might be something cheaper there), Sapo is a big unknown – Lonely Planet has two sentences on the park, principally saying that it exists. Harper sounds nice (Southern architecture) but it’s remote, by the border with Ivory Coast. I planned to enter Ivory Coast via Harper (it’s on he coast in South-Eastern corner of Liberia) but I did change plans.
So Buchanan it is. It’s not far from Monrovia and somehow on my way to the North town of Ganta, close to border with Guinea (Nzérékoré!) and Ivory Coast, which Bradt Guide says it could just be the the prettiest town in Ivory Coast. I won Bradt Guide to Ivory Coast by guessing a country based on a picture posted, it was Zimbabwe.
It’s 2 hours to Buchanan, 120kms, the road is good. But to get there I have to first reach the car park. Which is on Elwa Junction in Paynesville, 13kms away from where I stay in St Theresa.
The tuktuk I catch in the morning tells me they don’t go as far as Paynesville and advises me to take a moto.
The moto says $10 but when I say it’s too much the driver says he will take me to Sinkor, almost half way, for 150L$ and from there I can catch another moto to Elwa Junction. So we go, me with my heavy rucksack on my shoulder, when the moto accelerates I feel like I’m going to fall down.
In Sinkor I take another moto, 300L$ this time. We go along a street then turn around before the junction because there is police. We continue driving until we stop at a petrol station, and it doesn’t look like a junction. The driver says this is it, I say it isn’t but then he says he needs 100L$ more to continue. I look at the map and it looks like I’m 200m from the junction. I walk.
50m away someone asks me where I’m going. Buchanan. Oh it’s here. A car parked on a roadside, next to it a woman cooking food. I eat tasty rice with beans for breakfast, 125L$, we are waiting for passengers. The food turns my stomach a bit, I need a toilet. Normally, on every bus park I ever needed a loo, there was one. Here the men got confused but the woman tells me to go to a… bank that is just next door. She tells me to ask security. And I go, feeling weird but the security takes me in and leads me through a Western Union hall full of people – AC what a bliss – and there it is, bathroom for customers. Wonders of the world.
The fare to Buchanan is 550L$, no baggage fee. We go. Halfway we pass the main airport and a sign saying “European Union and United Kingdom (!) pay for maintenance not this road until 2021.” But the road is good all the way.
We stop at a checkpoint, a metal gate across the road. The signs say it’s a security checkpoint and when a woman in a uniform – Liberian coat of arms on her sleeve – comes and asks me for passport I ask her “Are you police?” She says she’s immigration and I ask for her ID, she shows it to me and asks me out. I follow her to an elderly man sitting in a polo t-shirt who takes my passport and starts telling me off for questioning the woman! Haven’t I seen her immigration badge on the sleeve? Turns out her other sleeve does say immigration. I think for a moment about asking the elderly man if he’s police and about his ID but I just say I didn’t mean any offence.
We continue and soon we are in town. From car park I ask how to get to Ganta, someone says I may have to do it step by step but all shall be OK tomorrow.
I take a moto to Teepro Lodge – mentioned in Lonely Planet – but on our way we pass another guesthouse – Philipmena’s – and I ask the driver to let me off there.
The guesthouse looks nice from the outside. A man tells me he has rooms for $50, $40, $30, $27, $28. I want to see them and I ask for the cheapest. It’s $23, non-negotiable. I pay in Liberian dollars at 164 to American dollar and I get 20L$ discount.
The room has shared bathroom and there are only bucket showers. I have condoms on the night table but in the hallroom there is a weird sign: “sex of same kind is not allow in the room”. First I understand it as homosexual sex but then I think it means that two people of the same sex aren’t allowed in the same room. The sign repulses me and possibly if I hadn’t already paid I’d have left. I even think of taking it down but it’s well nailed to the wall.
I go to the beach. It’s about noon. Apart from main road Buchanan has a few paved streets and even pavements, apparently before Ebola struck there was some holiday development going on. Just before the beach stands quite a nice modern hotel (LP says it’s $115 for a room).
On my way I see a woman selling palm wine, I buy half litre and sip it onsite. 60L$.
And the beach? In town there is no beach. Water almost hots the shore directly, there is a few meters of sand and it’s all used by the fishermen. Yes it’s a feast of colours and very picturesque to see men dragging nets, sitting on quite big boats, women doing the fish on shore. It’s also very poor, there are houses made completely of corrugated iron. But people don’t mind me, even when I take out my phone camera. It’s all very interesting and worth coming for. But camping? Beautiful beach? I see a sandy stripe a distance to the West.
I take a walk there but first I take a club beer, 200l$, in a Black & White Club on a street just outside the beach. I’m alone there, a woman sleeps on a floor and after the drink I also feel sleepy. It’s very hot and sweaty.
After a while I walk out, now two women sleeping, I walk to the West.
The asphalt soon ends, there is a gate made of string held by a man. He asks me for water, I don’t have any, I already gave it to someone at the fisherman beach. I walk to what someone called Fanti Town. It’s a fisherman village. I buy two hard-boiled eggs from a woman. Some children surround me and they also ask for eggs.
The beach in Fanti Town is taken over by fishermen boats. It’s again a riot of colours but everyone of course looks at me so I only take far photos and try some of the secret ones. It’s a beautiful sight but it’s again a very poor place. Some rocls stick out of the sand into the waters so I walk on them to get a better view for the pics. It’s a human toilet.
I continue walking towards what I thought would be the wild beach for camping, I pass yet more boats among endless greetings and handshakes and when the boats end and the beach begins and it does look nice and wide, I see a man crouching on the sand. And I even pass him but then I see another man a distance away. And another man behind a stone. This ain’t to camping beach. I turn around.
I walk back to the guesthouse buying some water in plastic bag to drink. It’s only 5L$ while the bottled water here is 130L$. I sit at the guesthouse to chill, then walk out to buy some internet and I see heavy clouds around.
For maybe an hour a rain was very heavy. We were sitting inside the guesthouse drinking beers and waiting it over. And then it went away a little but it rained really till the morning.
In this rain I went out to search for food. The bar/restaurant next door didn’t have food. I asked moto to take me somewhere. And we went, the town with barely any lights, in rain, only the remote lightnings lighting up the sky every few seconds.
Next place has no food. Another place we stopped at, was pitch dark and I sat at the table and I asked what’s available. And then I asked again. And I asked again. Noone answers.
In Liberia I often don’t understand what people say to me but often people don’t understand what I say to them. It may have been the case here.
But I grow tired of this and ask the moto to take me somewhere else. And just around the corner there is a restaurant, they have food. And I eat rice and soup with a lot of fish pieces. The soup is so-so but the fish is tasty. However I get overcharged, the woman asks for 600L$, I pay but then see it’s 500L$ on the menu hanging on the wall. The woman shrugs me off: “the price has changed.”
I get back in a tuktuk to the guesthouse. We have electricity (here called “current”) till morning.
Coming back to Maman 