Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Friday, November 24, 2006
New Petit Fute Guide to Guinea & Guinea Bissau
The information is very basic, maps are appalling and there is NO mention of connections between the two countries they may as well be at opposite sides of Africa ... Guinea Bissau gets 22 pages of which 2+ are maps with very little on the interior of the country (2 pages) and about 8 pages relating to the islands.
As far as I can see the author has been there on an organised trip and visited a couple of towns, written up hotel descriptions and left again ... but made sure that every bar & nightclub in each town had a visit too ... not really what I want to know.
Very pleased to say that the information gathered from knowledgeable Thorn Tree posters that is posted below on this blog is far more interesting to my mind that the book!!!
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Headspin Hospital Visit
I've not heard of it in W.Africa before, it was prevalent earlier this year in La Renunion ... it seemed to me in Toulouse that this was quite a new thing that they'd heard about. I've subsequently heard that 5 French tourists from Bordeaux arrived home from Senegal with it earlier this month!
Been given another Lariam prescription - it's never done anything to me but give me longer sleeping hours, so I'll be safe there; catch up on a few I've missed this year! However I was really sad to learn that the doctor I met had lost a member of her family (in Guinea) almost a year today to malaria, that's the second person I know (of) who's died this year from malaria without taking any type of precautions. An amazing Polish woman Kinga sadly also died on 9th June this year www. kingafreespirit.pl she has an amazing website of her trips.
Personally I feel that when you're off on trips like this you should be asked for a passport, ticket & malarial medication - we have to produce our Yellow Fever certificates crossing borders so why not malaria??
Learnt another 'old wives tale' today about keeping mosquitoes away - my neighbour was waiting for me and overheard two people talking about 'savon d'alep' which I found in a nearby pharmacy it also apparently acts as a shampoo; an ideal travelling soap bar!
Saturday, November 18, 2006
First departure
This poses a big question: will he be willing to get the fishing/ferry boat from Cacine (G.Bissau) to Kamsar (Guinea) with me? Or will we cross the border by road??? I'm still unclear as to whether there is a boat that still runs!
Meanwhile I've finally ordered the new Petit Fute guide to Guinea & Guinea Bissau having read my Routard guide on Senegal/Gambia cover to cover. Petit Fute finally published their guide on November 10th, so it's the most up to date guide around. In French - at least we'll both be able to read it.
Wednesday next week I'll get my fourth yellow fever vaccination will be done - unbelievable that I've already had 30 years cover ....!
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Guinea notes - Notes gathered from the Thorn Tree, other travellers ideas & experiences
Here's a variety of excerpts from posters on Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree that are going to be useful for my trip & hopefully other travellers. Another poster, Kanding has forwarded more info to me including a lot in German, which I can't translate but maybe some German travellers will find it interesting! Click here http://deeper-into-west-africa.blogspot.com/2006/10/detailed-trip-in-german.html
Starter points: A variety of websites for the region:
A great site for cheap flights from uk to Gambia : Nga Def got €190 return once |
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AllAfrica: I don't think anybody has mentioned this link for up to date African news |
http://africana.ru/lands/Guinea_Biss/travel.htm - A random Russian site, but also in English, some excellent G.Bissau details of towns & villages |
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TACV (Cape Verde airlines) numbers: |
http://www.tracks4africa.com/ : For the most up to date and accurate digital maps of |
Good to hear that you've finally decided! 23.5 Eu
Fantastic sites by some cyclists on same route
http://www.worldriders2.com/Journal_15_1.asp
Monday, October 30, 2006
Senegal (ex Casamance)
HOTELS IN
A good hotel is Oceanic, they have a website also. It has a very nice bar/restaurant with lot's of interesting people sitting around all day and night.
Hotel Nina - a good, comfortable, clean hotel in the centre of town, just off the main square and a 10 minute walk to the ferry for Isle de Goree. 25000 CFA per night inc breakfast, approx. 30 minute taxi ride from the airport, no problems arriving in the small hours, great if you've just come in from the bush and you're looking for comfort, hot water and no bugs ! Contact details 43, Rue St. Michel, Tel: 8890120, email hotelnina@sentoo.sn.
Went to "Just 4 you" or something like that. There's a few tourists there, but good live music |
Also remember
Best place for breakfast: French cultural center, Rue Gomis, with their nice garden courtyard. Best place for lunch: at the swimming pool of Hotel Teranga. Tasty pizzas for around 5000 CFA. non-guests can use the pool for 4000 CFA.
If you are craving some reading, check out Librairie Clairafrique just off Place Independance . They have French and African literature, and a small selection of English books.
Ile de Goree: I dont remember what time the ferry starts, but I got the second one of the day at about 10:30. The ferries dont run around lunchtime (to make sure you spend some money for food on the island I guess), but as long as you know what time you need to be back at the airport, you should be fine. I spent 4 hours on the island, saw everything I wanted to, and think it was well worth the effort. The taxi ride back to the airport during daylight hours will take twice as long, so plan for that.
There's also a new ferry runs between Dakar & Ziguinchor twice a week, the Willis.
Dakar - Bamako Express Train: I heard in
There isn't much transport from Tamba to Kedougou, I strongly recommend you to go in a "7-places", buses and vans are much slower. All of them leave when they're full, but in Kedougou for instance, we saw an almost full van, they told us "only four more", so we bought two tickets... and had to wait two hours until it left. 7 places are a bit more expensive but much faster. To go to the Casamance you have to go back to Tamba, and if you do the same day that you arrive from the Bassari-Land, you won't get to Ziguinchor, just stay overnight in Kolda and go on next day. There isn't much transport West of Kedougou, on Mondays there is a market, I think, but you don't have so much time. The best thing is to find someone locally who will arrange everything to bring you to Bassari-Land, and try to be five or six, so that it is cheaper. Ask in your hotel or campement how to find more people for the excursion, we were only two and ended travelling with four more.
One thing you might want to consider when you make your decision is that if you choose to go to Dakar, you'll have a lot more uncomfortable bus/car trips to do, as you have to make your way from there to Guinea and back (instead of arriving straight to where you want to go). Then again, cars are not as uncomfortable in
Foundjoune : There's a wonderful little village called Foundjoune in
Kolda about 3 weeks ago. The c
Kedougou: From Tamba, a few of the 7-places leave each morning between 6:30 and 8:30 am to Kedougou. It is a smooth fast drive on an excellent road, with unspoiled landscape and villages along the way. You will arrive at noon.
I'm staying at Relais de Kedougou; the best hotel in town (with swimming pool). Their low season prices until Dec 1st are between 11-13000 CFA per room. You can walk there from the gare. Continue on the main road into town, for some 200m. At the main intersection next to Black n White Disco, turn right, then you will see large signs pointing you to the relais, in total it is maybe a 600m walk. There are other cheaper options, I checked Campement Diao and Campement Moise (turn left at the main intersection) and they both seemed nice.
Bandafassi: Half way to Djindjifelo; Bandafassi is another nice town worth spending time. There is a good campement with food and accomodation. It is possible to get there by bicycle; it is less than 15km from Kedougou on a reasonable dirt road.
Djindifelo: At 6am each Sunday, there is a public bus to Djindjifelo, a nice village to the south, near the guinea border. The bus returns at 3pm the same day. It is an exhausting 3 hour drive on a shockingly bad road :-) You will be rewarded by a friendly village, colorful market and you can walk 20min to an impressive waterfall with a refreshingly cool natural pool. From the bus stop, walk onward on the road for some 300m to the village Campement, they will find you a young boy who can guide you. They also have food, drinks and accommodation. If you have the time, it is well worth staying here for several days. You can hike up to the Fouta-Diallon plateau, which starts 1km south of the village, and the border police seems to allow foreigners to c
Bassari country: Now is a good time to visit. The rains have ended 4 weeks ago. The landscape is very green. It is harvest season for peanuts and watermelon. You will also see lots of well-feed livestock. All roads are dry now, none of the dreaded mud holes anymore. Temperatures are cooling down, it is very agreeable in the morning and evening, it can get as low as 25 C at night :-)
MONEY
Also depends on where you are, e.g.
Gambia
Gambia and Senegal are about the only two countries in the region where you need no visa whatsoever and can cross the border as many times as you please... if you're German that is (but not French!)... don't know about other nationalities but it can't be that bad.
Loads of women changing money on the border and they are very temperamental, it's easy to get them slinging abuse at each other and competing to offer you better rates.... The women moneychangers at the border looked really hot (they missed their profession?), but they were obviously ripping me off. Sometimes I can't be bothered to listen to the hard sell. I decided to just keep walking and see what is on the other side. Voila, a branch of some bona fide Gambian bank, where a shy friendly clerk did a smooth and honest money exchange.
I remember paying about 50-60 eu
In The Gambia, it is very easy to travel around by yourself. There is numerous public (and cheap) transport in the whole coastal area (southbank) up to Brikama.
I have made a trip upcountry towards
I think its a good idea to get out and do your own thing eve if you are on one of these packages. upcountry accomodation is pretty cheap, though also not of very high quality as the Butchers shops which seem to double as the local hostels dont lok at all appealing.You can make sort trips by minibus but for longer trips it will generally be better to go by "bush taxi" (a larger car which collects 3-4 people together to do a longer trip. We went to southern Sensgal via this route without any problems. We enjoyed the atmosphere there beter than on the coast in
The northern road is in much better condition than southern route and the bushtaxis leave more often. You have to go by ferry from
From
I dont know the way up to Basse, but it took several people I met some hours with a chartered minibus
Be aware that public transport to more remote areas can be few. This can even be the case east of Brikama (mainly because of the terrible condition of the road). So just must be prepared to wait quite a long time before you have transport, must be aware of fluctuating prizes e.g. Now and then I hear from people who waited >1 day for transport to the east (=upcountry).
When I travelled to the east, I did Kotu (coast) - Soma in one day and Soma -
I do recommend unreservedly is the Safari Garden Hotel in
Senegal - Casamance
I’m staying at the Auberge Casafrique, we negotiated a triple room for 7.000CFA but its low season and that's usually the price for a double room. Nice place though...
Guinea Bissau
What LP are you referring to (from what year) and what do they exactly say? I have been there last December (2004) and it was safe, although there has been political unrest as late as October.You can read the news on allafrica.com. Access is easy from Ziguinchor/Senegal by bush taxi. I did not ask about flights as the bush taxi was only 4 hours (120 km) and cost 5 Euros. I was there in June and had no problems (although I was quite pleased I didn't caught out in a thunder storm one evening, the Taxi's in
FLIGHTS: I spent an afternoon looking at the carcasses of blown-up soviet tanks in the surroundings of
The road between Sao Domingos (at the border near Ziguinchor in
The share taxis from Ziguinchor go all the way to
At the gare routiere in Ziguinchor there is one row of cars that go to
About Guinea & GB: to avoid backtracking, you probably want to go through GB only once. This 'loop' works out so that you enter GB from
It's only sleeping that will cost you very much, otherwise comparable with
This message is getting a bit long but a quick word about
When I was there in April, there was fairly frequent traffic between Gabu (in
If I'm not mistaken, I believe that the only road (in good enough condition) c
As far as c
As for the boat, I’m sure you could ask the Guinean consul in
The hotel in Varela was really great...it is run by Fatima and Franco and is called Chez
On the Bijagos we stayed at Chez Titi, which is really quaint, maybe not as nice looking as some of the other places, but really Titi made our stay there. I highly recommend it if you can get one of his two rooms. (4000 cfa/ night includes breakfast). If you can't stay there, go and chat with him at least because he has great info and can arrange any kind of trip you might want.
Bissau if you're looking to stay on the cheap - not sure if it would still be ok but worth a try cos hotels in bissau are pretty expensive generally I met a Norwegian guy at a bar (the night we squashed the Portuguese, hurrah !!!) who put me in touch with some guys who were looking after the house of a Swedish diplomat who'd gone back home because of bad health. So if he's still away these guys put people up apparently to make a bit of extra cash, very nice guys. The main guy is called Luizinho, another one is called Samory - the house has some antelopes in the garden. Can’t give you any more details than that but may be worth asking around. Another possibility is finding a guy called "kiss" who hangs around in the casafrique in Ziguinchor, he has contact details for a reporter for RFI in
Bissau was expensive...I recommend Casa Creola (I may have the name a little off, but you can see it from the Che Guavara Circle and is next to the fancy white espresso place and the cafe by the same name.) The cheaper room was 15000 cfa a night, she only has three rooms, (one is 20000 and the other has a long term German renter who is working on his PhD). If it is available though it is probably the nicest place for the money, and it doesn't really get cheaper than that except way out in the suburbs. The Lonely Planet was wrong about the prices of all the supposedly cheap places in Bissau, 15000 was as cheap as we saw in the center. I don't really have any recommendations for hotels in guinea...there wasn't anything special that I can remember. A lot of the places in the guidebook have moved location or shut down...but we did find the book useful in a few situations. Personally, I found
INFO FROM LATE OCT 2006: In Bissau I stayed at the Hotel Galeon which is being renovated but negotiated with the man in charge (builder, manager??) named Francis (Corsican I believe but a nice guy) for 5000 cfa a night on a mattress on the floor in one of the rooms and used an ensuite that was intact to shower and toilet (bucket only but they have a well downstairs). There was even a mosquito net set up but didn't see many about. There was a key in the door to lock it and I had no troubles with security at all. It is on the placa Che Guevera roundabout. Meals and cold beer across the road.
Guinea
I assume you'll get your visas before you go - but I had no problem getting my
I was in GB and
INFO POSTED 28th Nov 2006: I just came through to Guinea from Guinea Bissau 5 weeks ago and took the 'standard' Gabu to Koundara but this involved 3 cars, plenty of waiting to fill up, some crappy almost 4wd roads and took all day. I believe it is possible to go direst to Koundara but there wasn' enough people to do this and i don't know the cost of taking a whole car yourself. It wasn't too bad a trip and the border was straight forward. It is only a small outpost with a few houses and stores.
If you want to go out walking in the forests and hills then Dalaba (between Labé and Mamou) is a nice place, there's a luxury (relative) hotel there we stayed in, 10€ for 3 people so we stopped for a couple of days! It’s on the edge of a cliff with a couple of paths going down into the valley.. you could spend a few worse days than that I’m sure ! I can also recommend the Hotel Tangama in Dalaba, should you choose to stop there. That's the place I mentioned before. I also heard good things about the trip to Mali-ville but at that point I wasn't into horrendously long bus rides unless they were in the direction I was heading!
The route through the
Just to be clear,
The road wasn't that bad, I would say normal by Guinean standards. The road from Koundara towards G-B is worse; the one going south to
Koundara to
The route may be newer or just better but I managed from Gabu to Labe in a single sitting, 16 hours in the wet season but we didn't go via Koundara, went via Gaoual instead, a road which isn't marked on any maps i can find.... so i'm not sure if it would be better or worse than the others.
I don't know if you'll have time... but the best scenery in Guinee is in Mali-ville, a town several hours north of
Also, don't know exactly what the road from
Given that you will have traveled from Koundara to
I heard the road from
TRANSPORT - If it helps, I saw one bus in over a week in guinea, at
Be prepared for crowded public transport. The same cars that fit seven in
In guinea always get a seat on the back row; they only put 3 people there!!
Of course, once you're in
TOURISM - In general, the thing about
The countryside is breathtakingly beautiful. Dalaba is a gorgeous town with beautiful hikes. Fouta Djalon has some tourism, but is by no means overrun, and with literally hundreds of trails. Very friendly people, amazing scenery, and lots of opportunities to meet people, stay at villager's homes etc.
Mali-ville is a beautiful place, especially if you like hiking, and the people of
The waterfalls around Kinda and
I think adding Nzerekore would take too much time and you're right to focus on the Fouta and the coast.
If you're feeling like you need a treat, there is a French cafe, Le Damier, ac
The good news is that
If I remember well only thing about guinea is you need big pockets to stuff all the notes in 1€ = 6500FG in july, biggest note = 5000FG.
Some prices - all in local currency. Speaking only of the Fouta Djalon region I didn't pay more than 30,000 GF for accommodation. I got an excellent room for this in Dalaba. The same hotel had cheaper options that looked fine too if you're really trying to save. By comparison the place I stayed in Koundara was half that price but extremely basic by comparison - there's just not a lot of choice in Koundara (though of the two places i'm sure I picked the worst!). Rice & sauce was 1500 GF, Water 2000 GF, Soft drinks 1000 - 1500 GF (small) & 2000-3000 GF (large). Beer 2500-3000 GF. More expensive meals 10-12000 GF.
Gabu = reasonably cheap but quite expensive for what you get usually... Overall I’d say not much difference between the two. guinea is dirt cheap added to this the fact that you are not usually given the tourist price for things.... we got a triple in a 3 star hotel in Dalaba (the kind where you walk in and wonder what planet you've landed on) for 10€..... 6 metres of fabric for 3€ etc, actually I hardly haggled for anything in guinea unlike long processes in
Gabu (in
Mamou to Kissidougou at 50.000FG for instance,
Visa in |
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Just in case you try to get more visas on your way, having two passports I got four visas (4 that is!) in 1,5 days in Conakry: Ivory Coast (126.000 GF, Liberia (200.000 GF), Mali (16.200 GF!) and Ghana (US $20), all being 30 day single entry visas. Both Ivory Coast and Liberia take two days, but if you have one passport as I assume you can go to the Ivory Coast embassy first at 09:00 am, then announce your application at the Liberian embassy directly after (since that's what they want). On the second day pick up your passport at 14:00 pm and head to the Liberian embassy where the visa will be issued on the spot. If you're heading for
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I'm not sure if internet will be my first priority, but this is what my friend Janusz wrote me two days ago: |