For some time I was thinking those West African countries that allow visas on the border or online are the best. Benin, Gambia, Togo and Ivory Coast are the ones I know about.
Special kudos to Senegal and now Sierra Leone, as they abolished visas altogether.
So the thought of going to either Togo or maybe Benin or Ivory Coast and to cross from there to Ghana, maybe somewhere in the North, was in my mind. Make a tour again.
Couple of weeks ago I was in Hannover on a Saturday and there was a Flohmarkt. And on that Flohmarkt there was a man from Senegal selling “African” trinkets. Among them wood carvings and Benin bronze replicas. I liked one mask especially and the man said that it’s a Yoruba mask. Granted, I should maybe be now able to tell where a mask comes from but I fell for it. I don’t think it was some sort of deliberate scam, I just think the man didn’t know himself where the mask comes from and he was just saying what he thought might be true.
Anyway, I thought the price of 230EUR for a mask is way too much but, in the end, I could not resist. That afternoon I came back, the man was already packing, managed to bargain down the price by over 30%, took a walk with his son, Hussein, to an ATM to get the cash and now I have a new mask!
The mask turned out to be a Dan mask. But call it intentional or not, I took it as a sign, I must finally go. And since Ivory Coast makes such pretty masks, then why not go there and check the wood carvings out myself?
I don’t think I ever bought a wood carving in IC, I think I was mainly buying them in Douala, Kinshasa, Brazzaville and Accra and even Johannesburg. However Accra only has masks from somewhere else, so yeah, now that I will be there for a short time only, I will be able to carry the masks with me or maybe get them shipped (still skeptical about shipping but who knows).
My first thought was to fly to Accra, get the Ivorian visa in the embassy there and proceed overland. But after checking out schedules (and prices, exorbitant, some 50% higher than what I’d expect to pay before covid) I decided to do it the opposite way: fly to Abidjan then take the bus to the border, cross over and on to Accra, hoping the whole time that the people on the Ghanaian side will not mess with my multiple-not-multiple visa.
Flying to Abidjan, one can pay €73 for a visa on arrival. It’s more of authorisation to get it on arrival but still – good option. Obviously, there is no Ivorian embassy in Poland.
The visa application is fairly standard, I had to make a hotel booking and attach a ticket. Yeah, I bought the ticket without getting the visa authorised before but it was already 6 days before the departure so it’s all really spontaneous decisions abound. I’d worry about everything else later.
2 days later the authorisation arrived by email. I started checking out the travel literature and turns out Bradt has a new edition of the IC guidebook, fresh from June 2022. Just when was the data for the book gathered, I don’t know. I also bought Petit Fute on IC for 2021/2022, because you know, the French may know better.
Then 2 days before I was supposed to leave, I was chatting with a friend from Burkina Faso, Benoît, a policeman, and he casually mentioned that of all the countries bordering Burkina Faso, only Ivory Coast keeps the borders closed and it does so with all its land borders.
Bomb dropped. I started searching internet. Where obviously no news about it is to be found. I searched in English, I searched in French and all I could find was that Ghana reopened its land borders in March 2022 and that Ivory Coast closed its borders in… 2012, for a few weeks. So I started asking friends from Ghana, who work with the trade and both told me the border is operational. But Jacques, an Ivorian, said that yeah the border remains closed so either flight or a pirogue. C’est pas facile.
So I went to the iOverlander, but there you can feel the African routes have been empty, but there was a report from just 2 weeks ago that someone has crossed the border by car.
I started clicking around Abidjan sites on the iOverlander and at Ghana Embassy I found a mention of a “permit to leave Ivory Coast” without which I won’t be allowed out. Apparently Ministry of Internal Affairs issues such, hopefully to the tourists like me, too. The same person has also mentioned that a transport might be needed across the border – they had problems getting into Ivory Coast on foot, again, with a permission to enter.
All the foreign office advises that I have seen are quiet about the closure of land borders in Ivory Coast, including the diploumatie.gouv.fr, shame. But then I found a mention of a form that I have to fill out before, the DDVA, I come to IC and it looks covid related. Travel details and not much else, it’s paid, 2000XOF, but it does mention test dates. And the gouv.ci website on which you fill out the form actually says PCR test is needed to enter Ivory Coast. !!!!!!
I started combing through internet again, including the Timaweb, the system airlines are using to decide if a person can board to a certain country. Embassies are quiet and I did find info that being vaccinated is enough. However, the gouv.ci website only speaks about PCR test…
Armed with papers I checked in. However in Frankfurt I was called out to have the papers inspected again and the woman at the gate did not like my EU COVID certificate, saying it’s for EU not Ivory Coast . I showed her the form that I filled, the DDVA, and she seemed to be satisfied although does she really know?
With so much hassle I seem to have two options: fly to Accra ($200 on Emirates (!) or $400 on Air Côté d’Ivoire) or get the authorisation de sortie and try to hitch a ride across the border (how? Since it’s officially closed). Looks like I won’t be going North this time around. Since it’s adventure ahoy, I will try with the authorisation first.
0
Coming back to Maman 