Grand Africa Cruise - Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire

Cruise Day 57

Monday, December 5, 2022

"Do not follow where the path may lead.  Go instead where there is no path.”            -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

As we make our way up the west coast of Africa, our port today is Abidjan in Cote D’Ivoire (the Ivory Coast).  Abidjan is less than 200 miles from Takoradi, where we were yesterday, so the weather will once again be hot and humid.

Cote d'Ivoire is on the southern facing coast of West Africa.  It was once a colony of France until it gained its independence in 1960, but French remains the official language.  It is the largest exporter of coca beans in the world and has a robust economy that gives its citizens one of the highest incomes in the region.  Located in central Cote d'Ivoire, Yamoussoukro is the administrative capital, but the largest city and economic center is Abidjan, where we are today.  Abidjan has a population of over six-million that makes it the sixth largest city in Africa.

It was a short sail of less than 200 miles from Takoradi, Ghana (blue marker on the right) to Abidjan (red marker near the left).

The flag of Cote d'Ivoire.

Abidjan

On the map above you can see there is a large lagoon (The Ebrie Lagoon) and until 1951, it was cutoff from the Atlantic Ocean.  In 1951 the Vridi Canal was completed that allowed ships to enter from the Atlantic and turned Abidjan into a large and very busy deep-water port.  It took almost an hour to sail in through the canal and get docked and as we sailed in we could see it was a very busy harbor.

As we sailed in, our balcony was looking at the long stretch of land that separates the lagoon from the Atlantic Ocean.  The busy harbor is on the other side of the ship and there is a world of difference.

Since there is no bridge over the canal, it is a very long drive to get from here to the main part of the city, so there are many ferries and water taxis that run back and forth.

The skyline of Abidjan.

We have a cruise critic tour today that will take us to visit five indigenous villages, but, as has happened often on the trip, things didn’t go quite as planned.  Our tour was scheduled to leave at 8:00 and we were to meet with our group in the 3^rd deck Atrium at 7:30 so we got up at 6:30.  We had originally been told to meet at 8:00, but we met a lady at the sail away last night who said she was on the same tour and we were supposed to meet at 7:30.  We decided not to take any chances and were in the Atrium at 7:30, but our group wasn’t there yet.

There were three groups doing the same tour, but organized by three different people, so the lady telling us to be there by 7:30 was in another group.  We waited around and at 8:00, the organizer of our tour showed up as well as the rest of our group.

It didn’t really matter when we showed up as the ship had not been cleared by immigration for us to get off.  There was a long delay until finally, just before 9:00, the announcement was made, and we were cleared to get off.  There was a huge line waiting to get off the ship, but it moved pretty quickly and we regrouped down by the gangway.

The Cote d’Voire port looked very much like a third world port as it was somewhat run down and smelled like garbage.  Now is when things really started to go downhill with our tour; it is a really long walk to get to the port gate and you are not allowed to walk so a shuttle had been set up.  There were quite a few independent tour groups waiting so the ship’s officer who was coordinating the shuttle reserved one for those groups and we were on our way.

Looking down from the deck of the ship, this is the area we are docked at, not very inviting looking.

The small group in the foreground is most of our tour group waiting to see where we should go.

These are the shuttle buses lined up to take anyone not on a tour to a spot in the city or in our case, to just outside the main gate.

As is often the case, independent tour operators are not allowed in the port so we were supposed to meet our tour just outside the port gate.  They had made arrangements (we thought) for the shuttle to stop just outside the gate and drop the tour groups off, but as we left the port gate the driver just kept going.  Finally, after a mile or so someone caught his attention, but the driver, speaking only French, didn’t understand English and didn’t know what we were talking about and wouldn’t go back.  Finally, the tour organizers asked if anyone spoke French on the bus and one person did and after much arguing and persuasion, the driver turned around.  This was no easy task as the traffic was heavy with vehicles and pedestrians, but we finally made it to near the port gate and the driver told us it was as far as he could go.  Luckily when we got off there was our minibus waiting across the street.

This is where we were dropped off.  This was taken from the minibus while we waited for our guide.

We had to wait quite a while, but the street was pretty busy so we could people watch to keep us occupied.

Unfortunately, there was a driver, but no guide, so the driver went off looking for the guide.  After about a half hour wait, a guide showed up and said he had been waiting for us at the ship.  Our tour organizers said they had been told to meet outside the gate so who knows who got things mixed up.

The ship was originally supposed to arrive at eight and leave at five, but the day before we had been in Ghana, they had changed the arrival time to seven and the departure to four.  The tour organizer contacted the tour company and asked for an earlier departure time, but they said they couldn’t accommodate that so the tour had already been cut short and now with this long delay getting out and going, the tour would have to be cut even shorter.

The good thing was, instead of a van we were on a minibus with much more room and an air conditioner that worked, the best news of all.  There were supposed to be three buses (one for each tour group), but when we finally got underway, there were only two.  We never did find out what happened to the other group, but we heard a rumor that they had given up and returned to the ship.

Unfortunately, these kinds of things have been all too common on this cruise, but considering we are traveling mainly to countries with very little tourism infrastructure and docking in industrial ports not very friendly to cruise ships, this could be expected.  When you travel you just adjust, that’s part of the adventure.

We drove through Abidjan and after about an hour of driving we arrived at our first village.

Views from the bus.

 

This is not a village like yesterday as it is part of an urban area, but I believe it is part of what they call the indigenous district.  Our first stop was at the community center for the village where we met the chief who welcomed us.  Unlike yesterday, the chief was dressed not in traditional robes, but in casual business attire.  There were restrooms there to use, but for some reason, the men’s was not available so the chief invited the men up to his office and let us use his private bathroom.  We were very honored and grateful to the chief.

As we got off the bus there was a soccer team from a nearby school training and they all waved and shouted to us.

 

This is the Chief who was there to greet us when we arrived.

We would see this lady several more times today.

From there we drove into the village that was a bit more substantial than the village we visited yesterday and the homes, while not what we would be used to were much more substantial.  We drove to an area that looked like a meeting place where chairs were set up and were entertained for an hour by dancers and drummers.

As we drove to the meeting place, there she was again walking with her little boy.

There were chairs set up for us to watch the entertainment.

The Chief and his entourage were seated on one side.

On the other side, this is where the women dancers sat.

There first group of very young boys were called the little warriors and they enthusiastically performed traditional dances.  Next the women took over doing traditional dances followed by the men who were joined by the boys to finish the entertainment.  It was really very good, and everyone enjoyed it.  There were also a lot of villagers watching from the sides.

 

During the entertainment there were a lot of people from the village watching.  I don't know whether they were there for the dancing or to have a look at the strange visitors.

And look who's here; the lady with the little boy has walked all the way down from the community center.

After that there was an official welcoming ceremony from the chief that was similar to what we had yesterday.  He was given gifts (two bottles of Schnapps again) and then he made a speech that we couldn’t understand but were told that we were welcomed here as guests and would be welcomed back at any time.  This was a big event for them as there is very little tourism in Cote d’Ivoire and they hoped this would lead to more visits in the future.

The Chief doing the welcome ceremony.  Not as elaborate as yesterday.

Val got her picture taken with the chief and one of his staff.

The young dancers wanted their picture taken so Val obliged.

As we headed back to our bus, these people asked me to take their picture.

After the entertainment we were back on the buses and off for a lunch stop.  This wasn’t on the original itinerary, but everything had changed so who knows what it was supposed to be.  As we left the village, everyone was waving and smiling and seemed very friendly.

Lunch was served at a restaurant that was an open-air pavilion and we were served a chicken dish (very good), a fish dish (also good, but difficult to eat because it was so bony), french fries, couscous and a tomato soup that was meant to be put over the couscous.  It wasn’t our best meal of the trip, but it was adequate, and we enjoyed it.

Coca beans is a major export here, so some people asked if there was a place where we could buy chocolate made locally.  We stopped at a “supermarket” that was one of the better places to buy groceries we have seen on this trip, but far different from what we call a supermarket at home.  We must have been a strange sight as one after another of us walked up to pay for handfuls of chocolate bars.

It turns out that was the last thing we did as the late arrival and then the delays getting off the ship and getting the tour started cut everything short and it was time to head back to the port.  We still had over an hour to get back, but the tour company had said that for security reasons we had to get back an hour earlier, and it was never explained why.  We were ready anyway and the visit to the one village and the entertainment was well worth the trip and ended up being one of our favorite tours.

The drive to and from the ship had been very interesting, but it was another harrowing drive as once again we were led by two motorcycle police leading the way weaving in and out of traffic clearing a path for us.  We asked our guide if they were contracted by the tour company and he said no, the government provided them.  It might have been for security purposes, but I think it was just to get us through the horrendous traffic we saw so we would get to where we were going and back in a timely fashion.  From what we observed today, Cote d’Ivoire is desperate for tourists and the income they provide and it wants to make a good impression for more potential cruise stops.

Our drives were quite interesting, but it looked like Cote d’Ivoire is one of the poorest nations we visited despite the healthy economy.  We did drive through some nicer areas, but the majority of what we saw from the bus were barely livable shacks and shanties.  There were stalls all along the roads selling everything imaginable and the area was teeming with people walking or just hanging out.  In the nicer areas there were very few people on the streets as they probably had cars to drive where they wanted, but in the much larger poor areas we saw, there were probably few cars, which means most people walked.  I will say that everyone seemed to be happy and enjoying themselves and I guess whatever your lot is in life you accept it for what it is and make the best of it.  That’s not to say that we should ignore the poverty and say they are just used to it, but it shows our human capacity to enjoy our life no matter how bad it may seem.

We were back at the ship by 2:30, but instead of vendors selling their crafts there were trucks unloading bags of rice into a warehouse and the same foul odor we had smelled in the morning.  It had been a hot and humid day, so we immediately took showers when we got back to the room and then relaxed for a while.

At four I decided to go out to the rear Lido deck to watch the sail away, but Val had enough sun for the day and stayed in the shade of our balcony.  The port of Abidjan is at the end of a large lagoon and sailing out of it takes almost an hour, so it was interesting to watch.  It is a very large ports with a lot of ships loading and unloading cargo.

Looking down you can see the tour buses and shuttle buses intermixed with activity at the warehouses.

It was time for our sail away from Cote d'Ivoire, but I decided to join Val on our balcony and watch from there.

 

After a while, I came back to our room and joined Val to watch the rest of our sail away from our balcony.  Once we were out of the lagoon, we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening relaxing before dinner.

Tonight’s dinner was called an Orange Night in honor of the Holland America Line’s Dutch background, so everyone was supposed to wear orange.  We hadn’t planned on it, but Val and I both found something orange in our wardrobe, but some people planned ahead and were wearing elaborate orange outfits and even orange wigs.  There was an Orange Ball in the Crow’s Nest later, but Val and I weren’t interested in attending that.

We did hit the casino again after dinner and Val continued her amazing winning streak.  I finally had a little luck and didn’t lose all my nightly allotment so hopefully things will begin looking up in the casino.  Tomorrow is the first of two sea days, but we were tired from getting up early and the heat and humidity, so we went to bed early.  Despite all the disruptions and confusion, it had been a very enjoyable and interesting day.