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This is just some of what we learned. When it comes to long-term traveling through West and Central Africa, there are a few things that will almost certainly happen to you. You will get used to waiting for things, you will see big red sunsets, you will come to view Laughing Cow Cheese as an exquisite delicacy rather than the assault on cheese that it really is, and you will never, ever, be bored. The journey my partner and I recently finished from Ireland to South Africa took us through many little-explored countries like Mauritania, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Before we left we were informed, often and passionately of the unspeakable dangers that awaited us upon our arrival. Here are just a few commonly perceived myths about traveling in Africa which deserve to be challenged:. Your travel doctor will probably want to immunize you against every single one of these alarming ailments. Neither my partner or I took malaria pills for the length of our journey, and despite being bitten literally thousands of times, we were totally fine. My legs are permanently scarred from mosquito bites, at one point my feet were so swollen with bites they looked like infected Christmas hams with toenails, and still, no malaria. Your travel doctor may advise you not to eat street food in Africa to avoid diarrhea and hepatitis. This is ridiculous. We ate street food almost everyday for most of our trip and got moderately sick once each in ten months. In comparison, we were sick much more often and more violently during a not particularly intrepid five week trip in Thailand and Vietnam. An emergency dose is four pills a day for three days. For many foreigners, Africa represents an amorphous blob of violence and poverty rather than 54 unique countries with distinctly different cultures and ways of life. Think abut the amount of danger you might face walking around Paris, London, or Berlin. Just days after deadly terror attacks in major European cities, things are generally back to normal — tourists wander the streets, workers dodge cordons to get back into the office. Compare that to the deaths of four French tourists in Mauritania in , which led to Air France cancelling its flights from Paris to Atar, crippling tourism in the Adrar region for no less than seven years. The Mauritanian desert, a tourist-free zone for ages. What I can tell you is that the only time we felt genuinely unsafe was in our dealings with law and order officials. The everyday people we met were — like people at home — far too busy living their lives to bother with hassling us. On the contrary, in places like Guinea and Nigeria, people are so pleased to see foreign visitors, they go out of their way to make you feel welcome. We were helped out of ditches and welcomed into homes all the way down the continent. Many people are also hyper-aware of the consequences of messing with tourists in countries which are trying desperately to attract tourists. Not always. Desperate to get online? Internet prices will also hit you a lot harder than you might expect. While street market shopping is wonderfully cheap, practically everything in African supermarkets is imported, and a big shop of packaged goods and Western treats will likely cost an absolute bomb. The key, always, is to buy local. Buy local food, stay at African-owned establishments, use local services. Win bloody win. Good looking people in good looking clothes, Benin. While there are plenty of people in Africa who live on next to nothing, extreme poverty of nineties NGO commercial proportions is now largely limited to inland, drought-stricken countries like Niger and the Central African Republic. How do they keep them so clean? Ferrari, Lamborghini and Sunday brunch at the yacht club wealth. The shiny new road linking Nouadhibou and Atar, Mauritania. Think of an African road and what comes to mind, a rutted dirt track with potholes bigger than dump trucks, or a shiny and unblemished highway? The reality on main trunklines at least is increasingly, the latter. A staggering amount of Chinese investment in West Africa means brand new highways, bridges and other infrastructure are popping up at an astonishing rate. Tackling the wet season on four wheels, even on the dirt roads, is also totally manageable. Akodessewa Fetish Market: where to find wildlife in West Africa. While Southern and Eastern Africa are the home of many a beautiful and potentially deadly creature, the sad reality is there are so few lions, gorillas and elephants living wild in West and Central, it would practically be a miracle if you were killed by one. Deforestation and illegal hunting have decimated wildlife populations in West Africa, and even snakes are hard to spot outside of sanctuaries. After ten months of barefoot and be-jandled trudging through desert and jungle, neither of us were nibbled, stung or otherwise molested by a scorpion, spider, snake, or anything else. We camped metres away from hippos, lions and elephants in Namibia, but generally wild animals are too scared of humans to venture too close. To conclude, the main point here is that travel in general is dangerous. Almost nowhere else in the world offers the opportunity for adventure like West Africa, widely considered one of the last frontiers of travel. If you want to see what West Africa is like with your very own eyeballs, check out our adventure on Youtube here. Want more tips on visa costs, borders and all that niggly stuff? Check out our guide to West Africa here. The source of all my spam emails asking for my bank details in exchange for seven million dollars? Home of systemic government corruption and also Boko Haram? That Nigeria? Nigeria is widely and unfairly vilified by other African nations, and many Togolese, Ghanaians and Cameroonians will advise you simply not to go there. But is Nigeria really that bad? Are there places there that are worth seeing? The answers are: 1 no and 2 absolutely. The most populous country in the continent, Nigeria dwarfs neighbouring Benin, and shares its northern borders with equally massive Niger and Chad, with Cameroon to the east. Lagos highlights include but are not limited to:. Lekki Conservation Centre. Cheeky guenons swing from the vines overhead, while snakes slither across the wooden platforms and into the marshes below. There also a big old tortoise which ambles around the place at will. Nike Art Gallery. This four-storey building is so chock full of vibrant works its hard to know where to look first, and you may find yourself still climbing up and down the staircases after a couple of hours. If the pieces in the Nike gallery are a little out of your price range and the price tags are high take a wander through the art section of Lekki Market and support some young Nigerian artists. The trick is to visit a few shops, try not to be too suckered in by the hard sell and pick out the unique works from the cookie-cutter prints. For taking it easy: Calabar. Calabar is the antithesis to Lagos. This quiet, riverside city is the capital of Cross River State, and is clean, green and gorgeous. A perfect night in Calabar would be grabbing some suya fresh off the barbecue at one of the myriad street food stalls, before heading to the Marina Resort, a collection of quiet bars along the riverside. For nature and wildlife encounters: Afi Mountain Drill Ranch. Arguably the best eco-initiative in Nigeria, Afi Mountain Drill Ranch is a monkey sanctuary and one of the most breathtakingly beautiful places you could hope to stay in the country. Located deep in the jungle of eastern Nigeria, Drill Ranch is home to hundreds of drill monkeys and nearly thirty orphaned or rescued chimps. You can take a tour around the massive jungle enclosures before embarking on a sweaty, expertly-guided hike up the mountain, through caves once lived in by jungle tribes, past gorilla nests and sparkling waterfalls. Volunteer Chris feeding ransom the monkey, Drill Ranch Calabar. With soft, rolling hills, red rutted roads and picturesque villages aplenty, Taraba State feels like a completely different Nigeria. In stark contrast to the evangelical Christian south, where the churches are as big as stadiums and the faces of celebrity pastors beam down from billboards, Taraba is a majority Muslim area. Women and girls in floor-length, day-glo hijabs and equally bright make-up swish down the streets, and local lads in kufi hats are keen to help if you get stuck in the churned up roads during the wet season. In the highlands the expanses of farmland look much more like New Zealand or Ireland than Africa, but the putt-putting of motorbikes up and down the isolated roads and the smoke of the street barbeque reminds you where you are. If you like it HOT. Nigerians are not afraid of spice, and everything from jollof rice to suya comes with an eye-wateringly generous helping of it. Pepper soup is a classic Nigerian dish, though Nigerians are often afraid to serve a full-force pepper soup to foreigners, so try to sample a legit one and an oyibo white person special if you can. Fufu starchy dough-like paste eaten as a side with your fingers is ubiquitous and you can find it being served along with tasty soups and sauces in even the teeniest of villages. Although there are plenty of ex-pat oil and gas workers in Lagos, tourists are easily distinguishable and very welcome in Nigeria. Nigerians tend to overestimate the amount of danger in the country, so they are a very shocked to see you, and b very pleased. Nigerians are loud, proud, and fascinating to talk to. If you stick to the right places. There can also be problems with bandits, but a bit of deft driving around the DIY road blocks will get you out of trouble. This is by no means a complete guide see below , but includes all of the things we wished we had known before embarking on an epic ten month journey from Morocco to South Africa. This Is Africa. Trust us, just get one. We arrived from the ferry at Tangier Med which we were told by many people is the most straightforward port to enter. Staff speak French, English, Spanish and Arabic, and the office always seems to be packed. Orange works well in cities but is useless in the country. Maroc Telecom is much more reliable in small towns and villages. Carrefour has a huge range of products and impressive deli sections, and you can find them in most reasonably sized cities in Morocco. You can find Acima supermarkets in smaller towns and these are also pretty good. Bribe-seeking in Morocco in our experience is very rare. As of Feb the Western Sahara was absolutely no problem to cross into and drive through, we also camped there for a few days. When we visited, Morocco was still on edge after the murder of two Scandinavian tourists in the Atlas Mountains. Police are on patrol in areas frequented by campers and even in quite remote coastal spots they managed to find us. Camp visitor Ali and some octopi in Mirleft. In remote areas you might be disturbed by a curious local but they will likely just want to chat or wish you well. If you want to read more about where to go in Morocco, you can read about our tourist trail highlights from here , and how to avoid getting scammed here. Our more intrepid Moroccan adventures in video form are here , here, and here. We arrived bang on 9am in the hopes of getting through quickly but found ourselves waiting until 1pm for the visa-issuing officers to actually show up. We told them we had no money left and spent about an hour and a half waiting for them to get bored of our company. Mauritel is the best network but works only barely even in Nouadhibou and Nouakchott. The only real supermarket in the country with a wide selection is Atac El Khair in Nouakchott. Imported snacks are very expensive, but fruit and veggies are easy to find at city markets. Knock a zero off and it might be more accurate. There are a gazillion checkpoints in Mauritania, particularly in the Adrar region, but if you have plenty of passport photocopies or fiches you will breeze through. Write down the rego, make of your car and your occupation on the photocopies to make the process easier. We gave away about fifty photocopies over three weeks. There might not be many attractions in Mauritania, but desert camping as the sun sets along a perfectly flat horizon is pretty spectacular. We went to the Diama border as Rosso is reported to be horrific. To add insult to injury, the passavant from Zargane is only valid for seven days, mercifully you can go to the passavant extension office in Dakar and get it extended for free. This was a breeze and with very friendly officials, thank god!! Orange works pretty well in most places, even off-road. While getting into Senegal from Mauritania without a carnet is an unmitigated nightmare, generally the police and military in Senegal are friendly. Other than that, we found Senegal to be generally corruption-free and police asking for bribes was uncommon. Most other campsites in Senegal are hotels with a few spots for camping, but these tend to be cheaper and more likely to have good WiFi. To read more about stunning Senegal, click here. For a visual diary of our Senegal adventures, click here. We crossed the border on the edge of the Niokolo National Park, and the border and control posts were corruption-free on both the Senegalese and Guinean side. Orange is the best network to go with. We found we got very cheap, honest prices at markets in Guinea. Depending on the season, fruits like mango and pineapple are abundant, absolutely massive and very cheap so stock up on those babies. Almost all of the street food you could hope to buy in Guinea is deep fried, usually just basic fried dough with no sugar or seasoning. The traffic in Conakry is diabolical and in big jams it can get easy to get into a prang, so be wary of that. Regional police and military will mostly just want to say hello and ask where you are going. Guinea is still discovering its potential as a tourist magnet, and there are very few official campsites, giving you more of a reason to get off the beaten track and camp in the gorgeous forest of the highlands. In Conakry, Les Palmiers offers camping spaces in the small parking lot for a negotiable fee. Keen to get well off the beaten trail in Guinea? Check out our video here. We got the passavant from separate office in the embassy after we got the visa. We waited two days for our visas but same day visas can be arranged at a presumably extortionate price. It was easy to leave Guinea at the border between Nzo and Gbapleu — friendly, quick and no corruption. After you get your passports stamped you have to go to separate office in same building so a doctor can check your yellow fever certificates and temperature. The passavant check is a few kilometres down the road, and they just wave you through if you already have a passavant. The border control office is in the middle of the jungle so there are no ATMs to get cash out, but there are a few money changers hanging around. Local maquis informal open air restaurants do delicious eat-in poisson or poulet braise with attieke or aloco for about cfa 1. Barbecue meat, corn and fried fish stands are also everywhere and generally delicious. Deforestation and the copious amount of palm plantations along the roadside means, unfortunately, there are plenty of recently cleared lots just off the main road where you can park up. There are also a lot of beautiful beaches along the coast where you can park up for the night without hassle. The young guy at the front desk was clearly enjoying toying with us and told us that if we could get a letter of invitation and the scanned passport of the person inviting us by the next day, he would issue us a visa in four business days. He was a little gobsmacked when we showed up with the required documents the next day provided by the manager of a hostel in Ghana and we got our visas. The Elubo border where we crossed was an eight hour ordeal, mostly because there had been a law change that came into force that very day which meant all drivers of foreign cars needed a carnet du passage. They also said we needed an international drivers license to enter Ghana and that it had always been that way. We had neither the carnet nor the license which meant a lot of waiting, begging and being told off by various authorities. We were told it all would have been a five minute process if we had had a carnet and international license. Takeaway point: g et a carnet. MTN seems to be the most reliable network and it works in most areas. Supermarkets are easy to come by in big towns and there are a tonne of chains like Game and Shoprite in Accra, although these tend to be expensive. Try to pay at markets in exact change or small notes, or you might find that people suddenly have no change, or they want you to buy a chicken kebab for them and their whole extended family. Street food from stalls and small chop houses is incredibly cheap and delicious. Women stallholders are likely to give you a bang-on price and a massive portion to boot. More basic street meals like red red or kenkey with fried fish will only set you back about 1. Drivers must wear covered shoes or face a fine. Ghana, unlike most West African countries, also has speed cameras. Fortunately there are plenty of incredibly good value campsites which can accommodate you. For more about Ghana, click here. We just filled out one simple form and picked the visa up a few hours later. We crossed the border from Wli in Ghana and the process on both sides was super fast and easy. The customs post is about 14kms from the border post through winding and beautiful mountain roads. The only supermarket chain appears to be Le Champion which is for high rollers only, think cigars in glass cases and five litre bottles of Belvedere vodka. As usual, street markets are ubiquitous, friendly and cheap. What a relief! For more on cute wee Togo, read our article here. Street food is everywhere in Benin, from barbecue to spaghetti and slightly more exotic local dishes of mystery meat and a slimy green sauce the official name is gombo. Checkpoints are few and far between, and you can look forward to a friendly welcome and zero demands for cash. Like Togo, coastal Benin is fairly densely populated, but you can easily camp on the beach at Grand Popo or along the stunning Route des Peches between Ouidah and Cotonou without any hassle. For more about the best of Benin, read the article here , or watch our video from Togo and Benin here. This is the visa that makes most people turn around and flee back north, and for good reason. You can read about the nightmarish Nigerian visa ordeal on more detail here , but essentially you can no longer easily get a tourist visa for Nigeria outside of your home country. We had to invent a business, and apply for a business visa on arrival. They will generally only do this if you agree to pay a bribe. Victor — our friendly government issued chaperone. An immigration official will need to ride in the car with you about a hour drive from the border depending on traffic and escort you to where to go in the airport. Once in the airport, you may need to wait an hour or so in a small, glass-walled waiting area while airport immigration stamps your passport the bonus is good free wifi. Then, finally, you are free to go. You have to arrange return transport to the border for your escorting immigration official. You can either find a taxi and make a deal, or give your official a pre-arranged amount of cash. If all of this is sounding too much like hard work, just remember there are plenty of things worth seeing in Nigeria , and shipping around is hella expensive. That way at least you have the option to head back to Porto-Novo, instead of waiting for countless days at the border. There are plenty of supermarkets in Lagos — chains like Shoprite and Game have a larger selection but local ones like Prince Ebeano are cheaper. In total we were stopped at checkpoints during our three weeks in Nigeria, and we were asked for money or goods at almost every single one. Unfortunately, most of our attempts at wild camping in Nigeria ended with angry locals threatening us, or heavily armed police moving us on for our own safety. Many Nigerians are completely bewildered by tourists in their country, as they see it as very unsafe. Fortunately Drill Ranch in the Afi Mountains provides absolutely gorgeous camping opportunities for a good price. Check out the video here. They are a high-end Range Rover dealership but they are super awesome and generous guys who offered us free parts and service when we had brake problems in Nigeria. They are apparently now offering this service for all international overlanders driving Land Rovers and Range Rovers through Nigeria, amazing! The process was friendly and took just a few hours although we did have to stay at the office for those few hours. We had to have a short interview with the consular-general about our itinerary, as foreigners are currently banned from the Ekok border due to instability. According to the Cameroon officials, previous overlanders have lied about their route, told the visa-issuing officers they were going to Banyo, and then tried Ekok, only to be denied and have their Cameroon visas revoked completely. Border posts on the Nigerian and Cameroon side are friendly, informal, and most importantly, corruption-free. There are also a couple of well-stocked Mahima supermarkets. We wild camped a couple of times but were often moved on by villagers in the early morning, meaning cheap hotels were our go-to for our short time there. We had to fill out a basic form, provide proof of accommodation in Congo and a scan of our yellow fever certificates, but no letter of invitation was needed. The visa took three days to be issued. Stamping out of Cameroon and into Ntam, Congo was easy, but the officer at the Congo Gendarmarie post wanted 20, fcfa for a passavant. You get your Cameroon passavant stamped at the border and then drive kms east to Ouesso to get a new one, which is free. As usual, street food is your best bet to keep the budget down, and vendors will usually give you an honest price. The grilled street chicken in Congo was the best we had in Africa! Officials in the Congo LOVE having a thorough look through your passport and may often insist on handwriting all your details down even if you give them a photocopy. We found they even wanted to look at all our expired visas from previous countries, but that may have been more out of boredom than anything. Wild camping in Northern Congo is easy with beautiful scenery and low population density. It gets a bit trickier as you head south. In Boma, there was confusion about where exactly we had crossed the officer who stamped us in had barely had any ink left and further confusion when they saw that we had no passavant. They let us off the hook because we had crossed at such a small border, but told us we should have a carnet to avoid these sorts of issues. We saw people getting Authorization de Traverser forms stamped but we were never asked to produce one. The checkpoints we did pass through generally waved us right through, often without even asking to see our paperwork. All the corruption we experienced in DRC happened at the entry borders. For our Central African highlights, check out our video here. We got our Angola visas at the Angola embassy in Brazzaville, Congo. The guards at the entrance are very friendly but we were turned away when we arrived at 2pm as we were told the staff inside had finished for the day, make sure you get there early! The next day we arrived just after 9am but still had to wait for 2 hours to be seen. They asked for a printed bank statement to prove we had the funds to support ourselves, which we could print off at the office. Does this all seem unnecessarily complicated? Crossing into Angola was easy, but be aware that they want an awful lot of colour photocopies on both the Congo and Angola side at the Boma border. There is a small outdoor photocopying office on the DRC side. To avoid multiple trips get 3 colour copies per person of your passport details, DRC visa, Angola visa and drivers license they can squeeze all into one double-sided page. Unfortunately, the network also seems to be incredibly patchy and prone to outages even in the cities. Angola has a reputation for being incredibly pricey, but we found it to be totally reasonable if you go to the right places. A big shop at Intermarket or Shoprite might cost you a lot, but Nosso supermarkets sell everything from produce to chocolate for a much lower price. The absolute best way to get bang for your buck in Angola is to bring in USD and exchange it on the street. Our third lot we changed in Lobito with some guys hanging around near the market. Everywhere else we were often waved through without any document checks at all. With its 1. We wild camped all through the country, from mountains to desert to beaches and were barely ever disturbed by anyone. When you do come across locals, they generally just want to introduce themselves, then go on their way, you can even camp for free right in the centre of Luanda at Club Naval. Luanda has a large and very friendly ex-pat population, and we made some awesome friends there who invited us into their homes and on heaps of awesome outings. MTC is the main network, but if you want to mostly use mobile data, you have to make sure you get the Super Aweh bundle. The downside of this is that streetfood is basically non-existent, but you can still eat out on the cheap at small local places. Dishes like beef stew or chicken and pap with cabbage are dirt cheap and super tasty. Meat is said to be cheaper inland and in the north than on the coast, but is generally pretty cheap everywhere! Police and military in Namibia are wildly different from their northern counterparts. While broken down in Oshakati we had two lots of police officers coming to check we were safe, even though the area seemed like a perfectly normal inner-city street. In the same town, hotel staff went out looking for us when we went out to get dinner on our own. Without wanting to jinx anything, people seem to be a lot more worried about crime and safety than is completely necessary. Lots of people bemoan the lack of free wild camping spots in Namibia, but we found that between the lots of fenced off farmland, there are plenty of perfectly fine places to camp if you drive around for long enough and just need somewhere to rest for the night. On the plus side, this is first world camping, flushing toilets, showers with hot water, electricity, your own personal braai and even Wifi that usually works…. Oppi Koppi in Kamanjab is one of the very few campsites in Namibia that offers free camping for international overlanders. On top of that, we had a rusty, falling apart truck and not all of our correct paperwork. We crossed at Woolsdrift and had our passports stamped within five minutes. Much like Namibia, street food is not all that common, but what South Africa lacks in street snacks, it makes up for with braa-ing, a national obsession. Chin chin. We were only stopped at one very friendly checkpoint while in South Africa, where they mentioned our faded rear license plate but let us go. Although there are quite a few gorgeous spots along the Garden Route in the Western Cape, it can be pretty tricky to find a decent freedom camping spot in South Africa. Because so many South Africans have camping vehicles, campsites can fill up and prices can skyrocket over the school holidays, so be aware of that. If you want to see the Grand Finale of our 10 month Connemara to Cape Town overland adventure, check it out here. West Africans are obsessed with plastic bags and bottles, and the environment has suffered a great deal for it. Many beaches, roadsides and rivers are literally ankle-deep in plastic waste, and from Mauritania down anything you might hope to consume is generally served in plastic, from street food to the fresh water sachets that seem to blanket every available surface. Try to take your own reusable bags with you to the market, supermarket and street food stalls. You might be met with bewilderment or even mild aggression as the local baker passionately insists that you absolutely need a plastic bag inside your reusable bag to carry your baguette 10 meters from the shop door to the car, but try to resist whenever possible. When it comes to water, there are plenty of public wells in Morocco and Mauritania. We bottled river or sea water for washing our dishes and ourselves to cut down on our fresh water consumption. Use your smarts. If seems fine, it probably is. Many market vendors sell diesel, nuts or locally made drinks out of old plastic bottles, so consider keeping your old Coke and juice bottles separate from the rest of your rubbish and passing them on. Otherwise, you may come across roadworkers, people fixing a broken down vehicle, or people walking between villages far from a water source who would really appreciate some fresh water. So fill up a few small bottles and keep them handy. Further south, things are much more relaxed. These interactions are generally very harmless and carried out in a charming rather than leery way. Shake hands, pose for a selfie or two and feel free to mention your husband, real our imaginary, if things get out of hand. In Morocco and Mauritania their aversion to photos is part of their religion. The further south you get, people generally love having their pictures taken, especially kids and young men, but you should still ask as a courtesy. Our mate Koffi in Togo who spoke English, and his pet monkey Angel, who did not. The number one thing you need before tackling West Africa is time. Everything will take longer than you expect, from crossing borders, to getting visas issued, to exchanging money, to getting a SIM card for your phone and then getting it topped up. Even a little thing like getting a police report for stolen belongings could be a full one or two day process. Any African doctor will rightly tell you that all you need is enough for an emergency dose or two 12 pills — 4 a day for 3 days if you start getting symptoms. In saying that you should still take precautions so stock up on plenty of deet-heavy bug spray before you go. Any questions? In between equally charming Togo and the behemoth of Nigeria, with Burkina Faso and Niger to the north. Unfortunately extremists from Burkina have recently snuck across the northern border through Pendjari National Park to carry out kidnappings, so you may want to stay south for peace of mind. A really good range of stuff. Start in the beachy voodoo hub of Grand Popo, where you might get lucky and see a voodoo procession chanting their way down the street in the evening, before sending one of their gods out on the lake in a pirogue. Cotonou is a large but relaxed city with plenty of high-end shops, restaurants and bakeries. Take a hair-raising zem motorbike taxi ride to the vast Dankopta Market to shop for gorgeous West African fabrics, food and jewelry, and checkout excellent beaches not far from the city centre, which double as wild party locations on the weekend. Ouidah is the voodoo capital of Benin, the home of the yearly voodoo festival as well as being a former slave trading hub with poignant reminders of the past scattered around the town. The beautiful but heartbreaking Gate of No Return is a must-see, a monument built on the beachfront as a memorial for the hundreds of slaves who boarded ships there. A walk along the 4km long Slave Road, lined with statues depicting local kings, traces the route slaves walked from the centre of Ouidah to the Gate, and makes for a sobering afternoon. Ahhh, bliss. You can check out our video here. Fat ground snails are a delicacy, as is gombo, a sauce made from okra with a decidedly slimy texture. Not convinced? It can be sweet or savoury but either way it packs a serious punch sodabi with garlic is particularly memorable. If you stay in the south, absolutely. The Benin government is investing hugely in the tourism sector and corruption has decreased dramatically in recent years. If you happen to be overlanding, the new e-visa process is one of the most straightforward on the continent. Guesthouse Haie Vive is a rare find, an actual hostel complete with dorms, private rooms, a clean kitchen and a good book selection. Centre Songhai in Porto Novo is also excellent. There are two restaurants, an Internet cafe and a great little supermarket stocked with locally made jams and spices. You can check out our visual diary from Togo and Benin here. Want to ease yourself into the African way of life? Ghana is the perfect place to start. Unlike many West African countries, where tourism is a bit of a D. Y experience, there are excellent visitors centres at popular spots, and there are often guides available. Want to head off the tourist trail? Ghana is overwhelmingly Christian, with churches representing every possible denomination scattered across the country. Ghanaians love to celebrate life, and even death — funerals are often vibrant, raucous affairs, with mini street parades, deafeningly loud music and dancing. The police and military are generally professional, and serious crimes like kidnapping are practically unheard of. Unlike other parts of West Africa, where budget options are few and far between, there are plenty of places to stay in Ghana that are both comfortable and easy on the wallet. There are also plenty of gorgeous campsites in Wli where you can pitch your tent or park your car for a pretty reasonable price. Senegal is a coastal West African country which shares its borders with Mauritania and Mali to the north and east, and Guinea and Guinea-Bissau to the south. That means it enjoys a bit of the dry heat from the desert in the north, and starts getting greener and steamier the further south you head. So much stuff! In the former colonial capital of Saint Louis, the pastel paint of the old French-style buildings is peeling, and Saint Louis is ushering in a new era of vibrant African art and music. All things considered, Saint Louis has got to be one of the most atmospheric cities in West Africa. Look for hippos on the edge of The Gambia river, or spend an afternoon watching a strong gang of baboons play in the afternoon sun. Gaps in the pines provide perfect spaces for wild camping, so you can nod off with the sound of the waves just metres away. Aesthetics is everything in Senegal, they are sport obsessed, with football, basketball and traditional Senegalese wrestling being the most popular, and you can spot Adonis-like figures pounding the pavement or doing endless amounts of crunches on the beach at all hours of the day. Women and girls are a bit more shy and might hang around curiously until you ask them yourself. Senegalese food is straight up delicious. Other than the local beers, the best way to beat the heat is with a frozen bissap juice, small plastic sachets of icy purple liquid, made from hibiscus leaves, sugar and water. They taste better than just about any ice block on the market, and you can pick them up for next to nothing. Some governments still warn against travel to the Cassamance region, and while the gun mounts and soldiers are still there, the separatist conflict of the 80s seems very much in the past. Your biggest risk is petty crime in Dakar. Full disclosure, our car was broken into while we spent the night in an auberge in Yoff, but judging by the loot that was stolen and the way they cleaned up after themselves, my guess was that it was carried out by a group of nervous and somewhat remorseful teenagers. A half hour drive from the centre of Saint Louis, Zebrabar is on the edge of the Parc de la Langue de Barbarie, so you can emerge from your bungalow or tent and head straight to a hammock overlooking the water, or climb to the top of the viewing tower for a degree sunset. You can check out our visual diary from Senegal here. What are you doing? Within seconds of our arrival, four men, not in any kind of uniform, descended upon us like a heavy rain. The emphatic assurance from border officials or their associates that any West African country is free should send shivers down ones spine, because it usually means the exact opposite. A Trojan horse of a phrase used to disguise systemic corruption and layers upon layers of bureaucratic bullshit. The Nigerian immigration system is a 17 tier gateau of red tape, complications, bribes and general inefficiency. When the British disappeared in they left behind a steadfast commitment to doing things the most difficult way possible, and the idea that you can demand whatever you want as long as you genuinely believe you have the right to do so. We arrived shortly after nine, fully prepared for difficulties. We had been in contact with Jacob for no less than three weeks, but Jacob had wisely chosen our day of arrival to begin working on our application. People came and went, fat wads of cash changed hands between fixers independent operators who take cash payments to help foreigners with the visa process and immigration officials. Jacob had several loud and overly performative phone conversations where he stressed to someone who may or may not have been on the other end that he was working hard on our application. This is now an emergency application, I am working very hard to get these people a visa! At around 1pm an official in the office we were in started playing an easy-listening country compilation from his computer. In an attempt to sweet talk Jacob into productivity, we asked him what his favourite thing about Nigeria was. A few minutes would pass, and the atmosphere dissolved back into one not dissimilar to a classroom of naughty school kids. Later, a local man of unknown employment came in and tried to convince Oscar to take a second wife. It was starting to seem as if no one was going to leave the building until a member of our party got married at least once. I told them they had belonged to my dead mother, a convenient truth which I had hoped would guilt her into submission. It was delicious, things were looking up. Mercifully, the playlist changed from Don Williams to Craig David. There would be no making love on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday nor chilling on Sunday, but there would be mild sexual harassment and the loss of feeling in our arse cheeks, which is nearly the same thing. We had already paid the application fee when we applied for our tourist visas three weeks prior. We argued the second fee. It did not work. At pm Jacob fell asleep, his energy had dissipated as quickly as our collective will to live, and he was snoring gently while I lay on the tiled floor, waiting for a cartoon anvil to fall from the sky and end my misery. Given our newfound understanding of the concept of freedom, a word which was beginning to lose all meaning, we opted to stay at the border. The hours melted into one another. I paced the empty halls mindlessly. Geraldine valiantly fended off the advances of Jacob. Are you writing about the Nigerian border? Is it the best? In fairness to Jacob, he had been there all day with us, watching dog videos on his phone while he waited for something to happen. He assured us he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart, and that he never asked unfortunate travelers like us for a penny. The hum of the air con provided the backing track to our existential contemplations. Oscar opted to sleep outside on the concrete, where he was routinely poked by guards checking he was still alive. I folded back the car seat and waited for whatever punishment the morning had in store for us. Day 2. In Benin, at the very least, we could go for a wee without stragglers enquiring about our intentions in the toilet. I was starting to feel quite deeply for Andrew, who had left a Caribbean island paradise to spend 12 hours at a time in the company of Don Williams. Days passed. In hindsight they kind of melt into each other but I can tell you two things that definitely happened. We definitely went back to Porto-Novo, Benin. We definitely spent an estimated 27 collective hours on the phone to Connecticut-based customer service representatives called Garry and Harry who took turns blocking and unblocking our card so we could attempt to pay for our illegitimate business visa. Our payment eventually succeeded 6 days after our initial debacle at the border. At the very least, we were deeply familiar with each others napping schedules. Sweet, sweet movement. We were informed our elusive approval letter had been sent and our government-issued chaperone Victor was ready to go to the airport, the only place where we could actually get our visas stamped. This meant we would metaphorically still be at the Nigerian border until the airport immigration officials decided our fate. By Victor was guiding us out of the border gates. Geraldine and I took turns sitting on each others laps in the back, which proved a pleasantly squishy alternative to the metal bench seats to which we had become so accustomed. There were 24 police, military and federal road safety checkpoints on the 87km drive. It took 4 hours. There were the all too familiar requests for food, money and gifts but the highlight was a 15 minute standoff between an impassioned Victor and a pair of federal road safety officers who claimed right hand drive vehicles had been banned in Nigeria since , and that one of our tyres was expired. As we argued our case, an overloaded taxi van with no license plate, a missing headlight, and a gaping hole where the sliding door used to be chugged past, a cloud of black smoke spewing from the exhaust. Vignettes from our month-long Nigerian immigration experience swirled in my mind like a kaleidoscope of horror. We had made it. Outside, it promptly started to pour. My jandal broke and so I hobbled, barefoot, through the mud as waiting taxi drivers pointed and laughed. It was the perfect end to the perfect nightmare. Is it the colonizers of old? The wealthy tourists who prop up corruption by paying hundreds of dollars under the table to ensure an easy crossing? Mauritania is one of those kinds of places. Mauritania is a vast, mostly sand covered country sandwiched between Morocco and Senegal. If Mauritanian cities in general are supposed to be an assault on the senses, then Nouadhibou is a full-on tsunami. In the centre of it all, a lone cow eats from a trough, immune to the chaos swirling millimetres from its big dopey face. Smiling school children rush to shake your hand and welcome you in French, Arabic, English and Spanish. Rubbish spills onto the sand road where barefoot children chase old bike tyres, and gangs of goats patrol the alleys, picking through the debris. Above it all, a luxury Chinese helicopter hovers, on one of its regular trips between the Hongdong International Fishery Development Company, and home base. Nouadhibou is far from a tourist hotspot. We were woken at midnight by two men yelling into the tent. It was shaping up to be a bit of a B-grade horror movie. A bleary-eyed peek out the window revealed two military policemen. We are police, are you ok here? Here is my phone number if you have any problems, goodnight! Parts of the Nouadhibou coast are nothing short of idyllic. While we spotted none of the endangered monk seals said to reside on Cap Blanc, the waves lapping gently at the base of the chalky cliffs once you framed out the plastic bottles and fishing nets made a picture perfect scene. Overfishing and an almost complete lack of waste infrastructure has left many beaches awash with detritus. While parked up for a few hours to enjoy the view, we met Mamoudou, a local mechanic pleased to be able to practice his English. We had not one but three meetings over the course of the day, after our first interaction, he came back with his nephews to introduce us, later in the evening he returned again, this time proudly weilding his mechanic certifications. We pulled out our world map to show him where we were from, but the conversation quickly turned to fishing. Nouadhibou and Nouakchott, the only two places that could really be considered cities in Mauritania, rely heavily on fish. Mamoudou pointed to all the countries that had fishing interests in Mauritania — Russia, Ukraine, China, Japan, Turkey and Spain to name a few. Most Mauritanians speak French and Arabic, but along with those, Mamoudou also speaks Pulaar — the language of his people — Wolof and Hassaniyya. And all of a sudden I felt a bit guilty about buying a huge bag of imported treats from the Chinese supermarket in town, by far the flashiest joint in the whole city. He took a deep swig, crumpled his can, and tossed it into the turquoise water of the sea behind him. I may have winced. Mamoudou had told us earlier his dream was to live in the UK. We left Nouadhibou, and headed inland to the vast and sandy Adrar region, a place still blacklisted from many guidebooks and most certainly the New Zealand Safe Travel website. Terror attacks and kidnappings in the country between and meant flights into Atar were cancelled, and generally, tourism in the area dried up completely. Locals told us the area has been safe for some time, but the convoy of American paratroopers we bumped into seemed to think differently. Driving in the Adrar, especially off-road, is surreal. We spent five days driving through the desert which was mostly flat and completely bare as far as the eye could see. In great contrast to Morocco, none rushed to the car to ask for money or gifts, but stayed put, eyeing us warily. One constant companion on the way from Nouadhibou to the Adrar is the two and a half kilometre long iron-ore train. The vast majority of the guards at checkpoints dotted throughout Mauritania, are without being facetious, an absolute delight. As a backpacker or overlander in Nouakchott, you may find yourself in the unique position of being rich enough for the beggars and street hustlers, but far too poor, badly-dressed or at the very least, far too un-French, to expect any kind of decent service. In a city where the cars, and many of the homes are in such appalling condition they appear to be held together with dental floss and optimism, it is beyond strange to find yourself on the receiving end of such blatant snobbery, but then again, the sheer mystery of what might happen next is all part of the Mauritanian experience. The highlight of any visit to Nouakchott is the daily fish market, an orgy of colour and stifling smells. Dozens of men and boys work together to bring wooden pirogues to shore amid the crashing waves. Fish heads are lopped off at an alarming speed. Women with babies strapped across their hips sit ashore and fry up the catch of the hour. As night fell in the Adrar one evening, we clambered up the side of a tower of sand and shale to perch underneath a layer of white-gold stars. The entry-level art project of God or Allah or whomever had the creative foresight to will such an impressive landscape into being. Far beyond the rocky hills was a town, lights from fires winked in the distance, but the biggest light of all came from the iron-ore train, which started its slow chug towards us just as we nestled into our hole in the rock. The night was so still that the distant roar pushed out any other noise that might have filled the atmosphere, and even though we were hundreds of meters away, that train could have been making its way through one ear and out the other. Lights teased us, blue sparks from the wheels glinting for a millisecond, the brief silhouette of a passenger as they tried in vain to light a cigarette. We watched as the train grew smaller and smaller, until a seam opened up in the universe and it disappeared. That was the exact sensation I felt as Ibrahim the Moroccan mechanic leaned in and briefly sucked on my neck. You could not have described it as a kiss, there was too much…ingestion. Kiss verses suck. Even if it only lasts a second, you can tell the difference. Things are often like this in Morocco, you can go for a long time believing things are one way, in this instance, avoiding physical contact with men, smiling, touching your hand to your heart and feeling incredibly smug and culturally aware, only to have someone greet you not with a polite but distant gesture but by performing an alarmingly accurate garra rufa fish impression right under your left ear. Maybe Ibrahim was going for a fashionable French cheek kiss and missed the mark? Maybe the neck-suck is an ancient Berber greeting which I should have returned? Probably, it will remain a mystery. One thing to know about Morocco is that it is almost impossible to be truly alone there. You can drive for miles away from the nearest village, over dunes soft as flour and through near-impassable river beds, to a place where the only sound is that of a fat black beetle dutifully shuffling a ball of camel shit towards its hole. Wait five minutes in that serene and silent spot and a chair salesman with 7 wicker stools strapped to his scooter will appear like a mirage. You want chair? English car yes? Lovely jubbly! Thousands of French tourists visit Morocco every year. Indeed, in a lot of places, opportunistic scamming is basically a national sport. Hamid is a desert guide who lives in Merzouga, on the edge of the vast and glorious dunes of Erg Chebbi. I pull out my hashish and I smoke. I say nothing. So I say yea I can get it, but it is difficult. Same with beer. They say they want beer and hashish. So I go over one dune, just one big dune, I sit and smoke for 2 hours, maybe 3 hours. So, keeping in mind those above three points, we headed into the High Atlas Mountains with excitement and a twinge of trepidation gnawing away somewhere deep in our skulls. About three hours in, we found ourselves on a winding dirt track overlooking a green valley. Around the bend, a house appeared, and two figures running like hell towards us. We lowered the window and a pair of wrinkled hands clamped onto our door frame with the strength of of a pair of hands that had clamped onto many hundreds of door frames in the past. Oscar pumped the brakes, and chased a skinny-jeaned teenager, sans clothes rack, up the road. On we trundled, down deep into the guts of the mountains, along the valley floor with the light falling and nowhere to camp in the howling wind. We were greeted by a large family who must have heard us coming for miles. They seemed excited, the road had washed out some time ago with no obvious efforts made to replace it. They spoke over each other in French and Arabic, inviting us in for tea or a meal, we said we had to keep going, but to avoid another attempted clothes rack heist, plonked a perfect round orange into the hands of each family member. Their reactions were not ones of satisfaction, in fact they looked truly confused. They spoke to each other with unfamiliar words but an entirely recognisable tone. We left feeling abashed. The next morning, we came across Omar and his brother, two charismatic young Berber men trying to hillstart their dusty car. We gave them a jumpstart and were invited in to meet the family and have breakfast. The house was toasty warm, with the morning light streaming through the window and a medical reality show playing on the small TV in the living room. After a sleepless night in our tent cowering from the wind, the steaming mint tea and bread with jam was a godsend. As we left, we asked Omar if he wanted anything in return for the hospitality. Call it southern hospitality, or luck, but from that point on every single local we met wanted nothing but to talk, and be friends. In Mirleft, Bokhtar and Ali shared fishing tips and some of their catch. In Dakhla, we spent two days camping next door to Jelili, who kept us topped up to the eyeballs with tea and insisted we join him for a feast of fish tagine, lemony and delicious. At the border of the Western Sahara, a disputed territory and former conflict zone, Abdes, a military police officer, kept us lingering under the blazing afternoon sun as he showed us what seemed to be every picture ever taken of his new wife, a wide eyed beauty with an impressive cake repertoire. Morocco is an enigma. The constant clamour of touts and opportunists can make you feel miles from home, desperate for the cool indifference of a Glassons sales assistant. People sometimes ask me what to expect from the country, and frankly, I wish I knew. You can prepare to be swindled, but you should also prepare to be as surprised by the kindness and humility of the Moroccan people as you would be by a cheeky neck-slurp. Email Twitter. Widgets Connect Search. Keita Fodeba Acrobatic Centre, Guinea. Fetching facial mozzie nets, Northern Congo. Infected Christmas Hams. Not very dangerous dudes, Ghana. Luanda, Angola. Nigeria: Land of the Bribe. Cuties, Benin. Where is it? What can I do there? Canopy walk, Lekki Conservation Centre. Lekki Market. Hiking the mighty jungle, Afi Mountain. Somewhere in Taraba. Sunset, Taraba State. Jungle bananas and African sweets. John and Victoria, Olum village. Chillin, Afi Mountain Drill Ranch. Happy planning! Morocco Erg Chebbi Desert, Morocco. Following the Iron Ore train, Adrar. Waiting for a visa, Mauritanian border. Happy camper, Adrar Desert. Saint Louis. Wild camping at Wassadougou. Mechanicing at Zebrabar. Local cuties, Beyla. Fouta Djalon region. En route to Abidjan. Beach camping in paradise, San Pedro. New co-driver, Wli. Beachfront camping at the Stumble Inn. Coco Beach. Dankopta Market, Cotonou. Wild camping on the Route des Peches. Taraba State, Nigeria. The Range Rover Doctor team, Lagos. The aftermath of the Banyo border. Somewhere near the Equator. Magical jungle camping in Northern Congo. Lost, Calulo. Cuca Time, Namib Desert. Big Lad, Etosha National Park. Camping at Kunene. Knysna, Western Cape. Wild camping near George. Me, Dorothy and Prisca, Wli, Ghana. Schoolkids in Porto-Novo, Benin. The slow lane, Cap Skirring, Senegal. What can I see there? Colour everywhere at Dankopta Market. Gate of No Return, Ouidah. Schoolkids in Porto-Novo. Mystery meat stew feat. Chief-sized bottle of Sodabi, Porto-Novo. Ouidah beachfront. Elmina Beach. Ghanaian fabrics from Makola market. Jamestown Lighthouse. Fish coffin, Kane Kwei Carpentry Workshop. Mount Gemi, Amedzofe. Ote Falls, Amedzofe. Wli town. Lower Wil falls. Dora and Prisca, Wli. Campsite at the Stumble Inn, Elmina. Kids at Wli falls campsite. The Gambia River, Wassadou. Cap Skirring. Schoolgirls in Saint Louis. Thieboudienne in Ziguinchor, cfa. Moody evening, Cassamance. River beach at Zebrabar. Beach en route from Saint Louis to Dakar. You have carnet? We go here! In short, the border process was not super awesome. Day 1 We arrived shortly after nine, fully prepared for difficulties. Don Williams crooned in the background. Given our newfound understanding of the concept of freedom, a word which was beginning to lose all meaning, we opted to stay at the border The hours melted into one another. Nouadhibou Main drag, Nouadhibou. Cap Blanc, Nouadhibou. Mamoudou and his nephews, Nouadhibou. Somewhere in the Adrar. Sheep on a train, Adrar. Tarseal, glorious tarseal. Parking, Mauritania. Fish Market, Nouakchott. As we drove off, I looked back at the workshop. The mechanic?? Erg Chebbi post-neck slurp. Stool salesman territory, Moroccan Sahara. Hamid the entrepreneur. High Atlas Mountains. Breakfast at Chez Omar. Agadir sunset. Tata gorge. Subscribe Subscribed. Sign me up. Already have a WordPress. Log in now. Loading Comments Email Required Name Required Website. Design a site like this with WordPress.

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