It’s an irritating reality that many places and events defy description. Angkor Wat and Machu Picchu, for instance, seem to demand silence, like a love affair you can never talk about. For a while after,you fumble for words, trying vainly to assemble a private narrative, an explanation, a comfortable way to frame where you’ve been and whats happened. In the end, you’re just happy you were there- with your eyes open- and lived to see it. - Anthony Bourdain

27 November 2019, Man to Danane, 71.4km
Hotel L’Excellence 10,000XOF (R250)

Tomorrow, Liberia…
Our last full day in Ivory Coast began cool and cloudy. We breakfasted just before the “carrefour” (intersection); once there, we turned west toward Danane.
It was a pretty ride, taking us past a large university with an endless boundary wall. And past white water lilies in a lake. And past hills decked in green. And past a hairdresser called Snob Coiffure. The road was largely OK, but in the last 25km or so the tar was often interspersed with sections of dirt and gravel.
We saw mini-bus taxis piled high with goods: bags and bananas and bicycles and wheelbarrows. Airbrushed on their back doors, a variety of personalities. Most are probably local, many in military gear, and were unknown to us, but we recognised (largely because their images were labelled) Lionel Messi and Che Guevara. Quite often, we were overtaken by mini-buses so full, that one or two or three young men were being transported outside the back door, feet precarious on the step there, hands clinging to the ladder or roof ridge.
In the small town of Mahapleu, we were held hostage by their very popular market. It spilled out of the roadside stalls and into the narrow road itself. Here pedestrians and shoppers and mobile hawkers and people delivering goods in wheelbarrows trod the tar. But here too, vehicles struggled to find a path in both directions, struggled to find a path where there was none to be found. And we got off the bikes and pushed them up a mild incline through the polite throng.
We had a delicious meal at our hotel tonight, our last dinner in Ivory Coast. Chicken again (I think our fifth or so chicken meal in a row), but freshly-plucked and beautifully prepared with fresh tomatoes and onions. French fries too.

For today's route see below photos
For overview route, click on ROUTE tab above…