We had a decent night in Man although around 04:00 in the morning all the power went off in our room block and didn’t come back until after breakfast. We had a nice breakfast with a number of school children in the restaurant of the hotel before we paid and headed to the cascades, the waterfalls of Man.

As Christoph had never been to Man before, it was like an obligation to at least show him one of the sights of Man. The clouds were hanging low and it was drizzling. The road to the cascades was a bit challenging due to the rain and the clay forming mud and deep ruts, especially for a normal sedan like the taxis we saw driving up and down the mountain. Being a 4×4 Eeyore made it up there without a problem, of course. Quickly shaken off the self-pronounced guides and bought an entry ticket. The stairs down the hill to the bottom of the gorge were steep and today extra slippery. A quick number of photos and selfies were made and we headed back up as we had a mission today, get to Guinea.

We set off and drove down a rather empty national road towards Danané. We had time to enjoy the landscape. After Danané we spotted Mount Nimba which I hiked up last year May. We continued to the border to be only questioned once by a gendarm who took pictures of our passports, vehicle and us to pass on to his boss, he said. We were delighted that he did not say anything out us storing our vehicule.

Arrived at the border, the Ivorian side was super easy and very friendly. First a quick health check and then our passports were processed by the captain of the post. He wrote everything down on to a piece of paper and afterwards asked one of his lower rankd officials to stamp and return them to us. He did not mention that my visa had expired though. We were officially out of Côte d’Ivoire.

The contrast was not more striking. On the Ivorian side lay a nicely tarred road with good upkeep and beyond the bridge over the small stream forming the border, it was an ordinary earth track running through a traditional village with lots of potholes and bumps. 21st century meeting early 20th century.

Right after the bridge, we encountered a very grumpy Guinean gendarm. I almost asked whether he has had an argument with his wife in the morning 😉 While asking various question he duly noted everything into a big book.

We were sent on to a place beyond the first village to process our formal entry into Guinea at immigration. So we did and encountered two large coaches, unloading masses of people. They all headed for emigration as they were mainly on their (way back)way back to Coïte d’Ivoire, and all needed to present their laissez-passers and Yellow Fever vaccination booklets.

Well, all the officials there were very friendly and courteous. Within about 10 minutes we got all our papers stamped back and wished us a nice stay in Guinea.

Again a couple of kilometres later we enountered the next stop: customs! Again the only travellers there. They asked as to be patient because were were in the bush and in order to process our immigration the generator needed to be started up first and then boot up the systems quickly.

We sat in the custom’s office and feeling rather superfluous. He tipped lots of information into the computer with our various details. At the end of the process, it produced an almost identical document to the one I already had. Nobody asked for any bribes or money for anything. Very straight forward.

This border crossing today went smoother than we thought. We continued driving into Guinea and encountered several villages where the main street had not yet been tarred and therefore you have to drive slowly to see all the potholes early. At other places they had placed speed bumps that are vicious. Made from concrete and as high as the clearance of a sedan. But you basically have to carry your vehicle over them to not having all your bones shaken.

After a while through the bush we came to N’Zerekore where managed to get two local sim cards for our telephones. The lady from Orange who sold and installed the sim cards to me, called a little later to confirm that everything was in order.

On our way towards Seredou the sky darkened and we drove through lush vegetation. Rain forest on both sides of the road. The landscape is still very similar to that of Côte d’Ivoire. Then heaven’s gates opened and it rained. We could literally see the thermometer of the car dropping a degree Celsius every kilometre to a refreshing 24°C.

Our search for hotel was a bit chaotic. The first camp was only reachable when driving through the compound of an old sawing mill. The path to this camp was horrendous and slippery. When we saw the depilated group of buildings, it was clear to us to continue our search for accommodation. In this village there was nothing else. As it had already gotten late, we continued driving to Macenta. Here we tried to find one of the few hotels in town. We could not find it. No signs, no nothing. We drove around in the city centre for a few minutes trying to explore the possibilities. In the end we found it. The entrance was hidden between market stalls.

The rooms are clean, sparsely furnished and no electricity. The owner told us the power would come back (at nightfall for a fee hours). We took the two rooms and quickly moved our stuff in as we were hungry. We asked the guys from the petrol station across the hotel entrance, for advice where to eat something. They were friendly and tried to help. But unfortunately the closesed maquis was more than 2.5km away. That was too far to walk and we had no intention of grabbing the car. I looked at Christoph and we knew that it meant that we had to make some dinner from our emergency rations, such as these. However, the stove would not fire up. Ro be looked into at a later point. So dinner was cold from the tins and some baguette we had scored at the entrance. We washed all the food down with some semi-cold beers.

This place is in the middle of the market of Macenta and therefore the traffic noise is unavoidable although it quickly died down during the night and only the mosques could be heard calling for prayers.

Tomorrow we will head further east and hope for a decent road. Today’s wasn’t to bad but had big patches of potholes and bare earth.