I love crossing borders. It always feels international and sometimes even exotic. When given the choice I’ll go out of my way to find a small, little-used border to make my crossing, and the one I headed for between Ghana and Ivory Coast fit the bill perfectly. The Ghanaian town of Sampa is nothing more than a dot on the map, and as far as I could figure its sole purpose was to offer a way into neighboring Ivory Coast. It wasn’t straightforward though. There’s a no-man’s land of around 10 kilometers or so between the two border posts, and no public transport (that I could find), so I hired a young guy and his motorbike to ferry me across the dusty dirt path. For whatever reason he decided to take a shortcut into the bush, bypassing the actual immigration office. I was putting together the French words necessary to ask him whether he was intending to stop at the checkpoint when a soldier appeared blocking the track in front of us.

It might be due to watching too many cliche movies about African mercenaries and bad-guys, but the soldier looked like something from central casting: tall, very dark wearing an olive green beret and aviator sunglasses. He had a Kalashnikov (or some such bad-guy rifle) and looked, well, bad. He was also very upset with my driver, telling him (as best I could figure out – my French proved not up to the job I was to later realize) that he was stupid; he could see I was not an African and therefore was required to make sure I went through the proper entrance. He made us turn around and go back the way we came and enter the country “properly”. Properly turned out to mean they wanted me to pay a bribe to enter. I politely declined, so they looked through my entire backpack and made me wait. Eventually I was released (my driver did pay a bribe – a fine, I guess) and was dropped at the Marhaba Hotel just on the outskirts of Bondouko. I was in Ivory Coast!

I could notice the difference immediately. The scenery was more or less the same as in Ghana, and the people looked the same, but the streets were a bit different, and the buildings looked different. There were rustic cafes with street seating and coffee (courtesy of the French colonizers); my hotel was different somehow, more European (old, rough European mind you). There was a different vibe. I struggled to put my finger on it during my time in the country, but it was palpable.

Bondouko is an interesting town, known for a large collection of crumbling mosques in the center. For dinner I went to a marque, the ubiquitous outdoor bar found all over Ivory Coast. They range from huge places with dozens of tables under shady trees to tiny little patches of dirt with a table or two. Locals drink beer and a very drinkable, cheap local red wine. I drank Flag lager and had the next door food stall send over a delicious goat stew with beans and fragrant rice. Wow! The food was much, much better already…

I spent the next day wandering around town, hiking up a series of small hills to the south, trying to make myself understood in French and soaking in the small but remarkably clean swimming pool back at my hotel.

Next, off to the nation’s capital of Yamoussoukro, one of the most bizarre capital cities I’ve ever visited with its wide, empty streets and fantastical buildings.

Stay tuned!