Maybe you had to leave in order to miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was. - Jodi Picoult

15 December 2019, Gbah, LIBERIA to Jendema, SIERRA LEONE, 68.5km
Planet (Bobby’s) Guest House 80,000LLE (R117)

Exchange rate: Rand 1 (R): Sierra Leone Leone 680 (SLL)

The ride to the border was a pleasant one on good tar, which ended abruptly as we crossed the river into Sierra Leone. Nine kms before the border, we had a last, rather mediocre, Liberian lunch of rice and pepper soup with chunks of tasteless meat.
Getting stamped out of Liberia was quick and easy; getting stamped into Sierra Leone on the other side of the bridge, a little slower, but also no problem. The man who stamped our passports, asked about the xenophobia in South Africa; the man who checked our medical documents, asked about the crime in South Africa; the man who did a final log book entry and allowed us into Sierra Leone, praised Julius Malema for wanting to take the wealth away from whites in South Africa.
Stupidly, I did not realise that Sierra Leone was English-speaking; for some reason I thought we would be back in a French-speaking world. Interestingly, the English accent here is considerably easier to understand than that in Liberia.
We checked into a basic guest house where Bobby, the owner, changed US dollars into Sierra Leone Leones for us. Not far from the guest house, we bought new SIMs from Orange; opposite we had a good meal at a small outdoor operation - rice and pepper soup again, with tastier meat.
Quite often, on the road, we are asked if we are Peace Corps or missionaries. And at Bobby’s, we met an official who had seen us applying for our visas at the Sierra Leone embassy in Monrovia.

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