Day 105: Monrovia – Kpatawee-Falls

We leave Monrovia. Good. The city is annoying, the noise is annoying, the place here is just kind of disgusting, the air is bad. The destination is the Kpatawee Falls to the northeast.

First we go to the supermarket again and we are surprised to be given a bottle of red wine, probably because we are there for the second time, leave a lot of money and are “interesting fellows”. Then some fruit and vegetables, some bread and eggs along the route and we should be fine for the next few days, no matter what happens.

Today we are seeing rubber plantations for the first time – a small cup per day can be collected per tree when the trees are between 7 and a maximum of 30 years old. A lot of manual work. And we read that rubber was once Liberia's main export and that natural rubber is still used in car tires today due to its durability and elasticity.

The trip reconciles us a little bit with Liberia: the landscape is beautiful, the communities seem somehow more intact, the place by the waterfall is simple but magical. There is even something like a service idea here – whether we need this, are looking for that, dinner today or lunch tomorrow, a hike perhaps...

We bathe in the pool of the waterfall. To the amusement of one of the guides, we get really scared when a few fish nibble on us. Picks a little, but is harmless. The water is amazing, so refreshing!

Ian and Catherine take a short walk up the waterfall because they want to continue tomorrow, so we'll postpone that and cook instead.

In the evening, small fireflies and large bats circle above us or around the huge cotton tree (kapok tree).

Didn't Ebola start with bat shit? Today we saw a large stall selling grilled bushmeat (monkeys) on the street for the first time. In Sierra Leone there were poster advertisements against the consumption of bushmeat and also against the washing of the dead – both from the Ebola era.