11/12/15 we travel to our canopy walkway at National Park, a cool structure & fairly easy place to get cool photos, my foh meant I wimped out of going no hands for very long. no animals sighted, nor birds, only Danish women. Drive onto our camp in the grounds of a prespetarion church in Koumassi. 12/12/15 Next morning head out to the cultural centre, despite a cool little museum of the Ashanti people's most other workshops were closed on a Saturday hah. I spend the remainder of the daytime in Koumassi's huge market (largest in WA), most of which is rooted on the old train station its tracks. Anything from truck springs, bananas & panties to leopard skins & monkey skulls. Go out that evening with Adam & Mike to Vienna City, chain of bar/club. Next ... read more

02/12/15 we cover 400K and camp close to the Côte d'Ivoire Border north of Nielle, 03/12/15 some slow processing from the Ivorians after forgetting to stamp a third of the passports at immigration. Within 20 mins of clearing the border we are escorted to the local guandarmary (likely a border tip off) to check through the passenger docs, a slow 1.5 hour wait before we proceed on route via Ferkessedougou to Kohogo. 04/12/15 After staying the night at The Mount Korhogo Hotel 8 of us head out in a couple of taxis for a tour of several artisan villages in the district, including a sacrificial site which is regularly used by the local (animalistic) religious people; seemed mostly feathers but some skulls etc. After a short walk around town and its large mosque we enjoy a ... read more

28/11/15 Some confusion between the directors of the chimp research centres after they appear to forget to find the chimps before we are due to set off, in due Africa time we set off an hour later to find the chimps on the move during a family dispute less than a mile from camp. Not many photo opportunities due to the thick jungle and silky chimpy gym skills but see them I did. We leave the chimps at 11 and drive for an afternoon trek to a Guinea Vine Bridge, led from a village we are guided by local Michelle, 40 mins across the customary beautiful countryside to what used to be a common sight yet due to wide spread deforestation very few bridges survive. After we head back to N'Zerekore for our nights stay in ... read more

Sadly we had not yet received our permit to cross the intended Guninea/ivory coast border cross and our applications were refused by the ambassador. This permit is only required as the border has been closed for no apparent reason, suspected political/election build up. Plan now is to use our Mali visa to go try the Ivorian embassy in Bamako and enter the Ivory Coast from Mali later in the trip. This news split opinion in the group, some certain to leave the trip as many see cote d'voire as the highlight and the most important destination. If we are refused entry to Ivory Coast full stop we shall divert around Bakina Faso instead, a potential outcome, a small but not critical disappointment for me personally it is the case. From Monrovia we spent some time to ... read more

The next morning we head to kenema, stock up on food, fuel and water and head on route to the Liberian border. After making decent time we get stuck shortly after Zimmi ( a large village), we make food and after late evening attempts we sleep and negotiate a price with the owner of a crane truck in Zimmi ( fairly obvious he has is hands in illegal mining, quite a sketchy crew) after being towed out we continue toward the border on poor roads until reaching the last main obstpacle on the route; a steep soaking wet mud hill with no chance of us getting up. A local lad had build a bypass, and took payment for trucks to use, a great guy, his bypass was a lot better but still proved too steep and ... read more