This is an authorized translation in English of a post in French by @terresco: D'Abidjan à Carcassonne, la première traversée

^{As my primary language is not English, there are probably some mistakes in my translation.}

Remember that the person who speaks here is NOT me, Vincent Celier (@vcelier), but @terresco, a French guy.

---

Departure

The first thing that comes to mind when you find yourself living in Ivory Coast is to go to France by road. A beautiful trip, a little adventure, an opportunity for meetings and discoveries. A good way too to feel a distance that the planes made us forget. I think I thought about it before I even landed in Ivory Coast.

Two years had passed and at the beginning of July 1995 we were ready to go. We had already acquired a certain ease in the travels in West Africa that we were going to put at the service and to the test for this trip.

* * * * *

Choosing the route

After removing the time we had to reserve for family and friends once in France (We saw them once a year, their requirements remained very acceptable) we had a good month and a half for the trip. Fifty days it may seem long, but for more than 10,000 km to go and 5 or 6 countries to cross, we needed to make choices.

Several factors contributed to the choice of the route. We had to join friends who were leaving Dakar. So we would have 3 or 4 days break in this city that we loved. The rainy season complicated the journey and forced to make certain choices, impassable lakes are created in certain areas during this period.

The path thus appeared logically. From Abidjan we would go north to reach Guinea, an easy road that we knew well. We would cross the beautiful region of northern Guinea to return to Senegal by the southeast. Reaching Dakar would be easy, leaving it to Mauritania would be harder because we were comfortable in Dakar. We were expecting some difficulties and a lot of fun from crossing Mauritania. Finally we would find Morocco with joy for an easy trip to Europe.

The two countries that could "cost" to us the most, and that we least knew, were Guinea and Mauritania. Guinea, which we were going to cross during the rainy season, would oppose its mud fields, its flooded slopes and its difficult administration at the time, with or without rain. Mauritania, which sees the sands of the Sahara spilling into the Atlantic Ocean, would force us to confront the driving in the sand.

I had to resign myself to making infidelities to my super Renault 4 with which I was proud to go everywhere. Mud and sand was too much for her. She was never cross with me and continued to take me for the next few years throughout West Africa.

Careful preparation

The acquisition of a 4x4 vehicle was the beginning of the preparations for the trip. Once in France it would be deposited at the port of Bordeaux to return to Abidjan in a container. Acquiring a used 4x4 in Ivory Coast was not risk free, the second hand market was random. It required a period of testing and repairs. We also needed to look for some equipment like sand plates and learn the minimum about driving and running a 4x4.

Everything was done during the school year, certainly with some problems, is it not why we love Africa? My crazy idea to test the car on the beach, the only place where you could find sand, almost ended the project before it started. Without any knowledge of the matter, I only came out miraculously from the edge of the water that held me prisoner. The rising tide promised to drown my dream without hesitation.

Visas and other formalities are part of travel-related annoyances. But we survive with a little patience and a lot of faith in humanity. At the administrative level it is the Mauritania-Morocco (Western Sahara) border which posed a problem. By an oddity that only a few bureaucrats are able to imagine, we had the right to go from Morocco to Mauritania but it was forbidden in the other direction, ours. This kind of complication, we cannot really anticipate; it will be necessary to see once we are there.

Departure

The problem is always the time to get out of your comfort zone. There is always a good excuse to postpone this moment. We were at home in the Ivory Coast; in Guinea the rules were going to change.

We spent three days dragging ourselves before coming to the border. It is true that the west is a beautiful part of Ivory Coast. The mountainous region: mountains, not very high but with particular profiles. It is the region of Man, that of the Yacouba with a sulfurous reputation.

Friends had told us that a traditional celebration was going to take place. The Yacouba ethnic group has its long mask dance on long stilts at the top of which it performs incredible acrobatic figures. The sacred mask, in addition to its spiritual power, benefits from it a temporal power that gives it this agility. Nobody knows who is behind the sacred mask, he has received extensive initiation and is essential to the organization of this traditional society.

Not easy to enter Guinea. The custom post was closed. When the customs officers finally arrived they asked us to deposit a sum equivalent to the value of the car that we would recover on leaving the country. Needless to say, even if we had planned to go out through the same road we would not have deposited the money that would have evaporated like a dream on waking.

* * * * *

It took us three days to camp in the car in front of the border post to get to the point. As is often the case all of a sudden in a few minutes everything changed and the doors opened. Africa sometimes puts patience to the test.

A few hours later, the night had fallen when we arrived at N'Zérékoré. The road had been impressive, in the bush we did not drive at night at that time. We were very close to the Liberian border where there was a ferocious civil war that caused waves of refugees that we were trying not to injure; but that's the next episode.

-- @terresco

---

Encounters with Africa series:

01: Encounters with Africa: Ivory Coast, by @terresco
02: Encounters with Africa: Abidjan, a daily pleasure, by @terresco
03: Encounters with Africa: The Tuaregs of Agadez, by @terresco
04: Encounters with Africa: The Tuaregs of Agadez, part 2, by @terresco
05: Encounters with Africa: On the way to the Dogon country, by @terresco
06: Encounters with Africa: Among the Dogon of Bandiagara, by @terresco
07: Encounters with Africa: The Gold Coast, by @terresco
08: Encounters with Africa: Where was born a desire to go elsewhere, by @terresco
09: Encounters with Africa: The time of failures, by @terresco
10: Encounters with Africa: The Promised Land, by @terresco
11: Encounters with Africa: The Land of the Upright Man, by @terresco
12: Encounters with Africa: From Bobo to Ouagadougou, by @terresco
13: Encounters with Africa: In the Voodoo country,

From Cape Town to Mombasa series:

01: Africa, the long crossing
02: From Cape Town to Mombasa: South Africa
03: From Cape Town to Mombasa: Namibia
04: From Cape Town to Mombasa: Botswana
05: From Cape Town to Mombasa: Zimbabwe
06: From Cape Town to Mombasa: Zimbabwe, part 2, by @terresco
07: From Cape Town to Mombasa: Zimbabwe, part 3, by @terresco
08: From Cape Town to Mombasa: Zambia, by @terresco
09: From Cape Town to Mombasa: Malawi, by @terresco
10: From Cape Town to Mombasa: Tanzania #1, by @terresco
11: From Cape Town to Mombasa: Tanzania #2, by @terresco
12: From Cape Town to Mombasa: Tanzania #3, by @terresco
13: From Cape Town to Mombasa: Tanzania #4, by @terresco
14: From Cape Town to Mombasa: Kenya, by @terresco

---

All pictures are property of @terresco