Day 146: Cotonou

It's pouring! Advantage: The streets seem to have been swept empty.

First we need to get CFA. Nothing works at the first machine, despite the visa sticker. At the second machine, the limit on Brigitte's card has been exhausted. Something like that is always a shock, but maybe there's no money left in the machine because we've already withdrawn something with Wolle's card. 

Then an attempt to exchange dollars at a bank for CFA or Nigerian Nira. Our dollar bills from Liberia are too old. But actually we've never caught a bank exchanging anything. We finally get rid of $300 on the black market, but at a very poor exchange rate and only in CFA and not in Nira. We then have to exchange Nira directly at the border. Once again it's all a lot of effort...

Next: The Consulate of Cameroon. It is unclear whether you need a sticker in your passport or not despite having an e-Visa. So we ask for help. No chance of getting a sticker from the start – a tiny room, a completely empty desk and a listless matron. Her answer: The printout of the e-Visa is sufficient, it is scanned at the border and then you get the sticker. Yes, also at the land border at Banyo/Gembu. As far as we've heard, there is no scanner there and not even an entry stamp. So, like others, we will try to get through without. We missed getting the sticker beforehand because we weren't in Abidjan because of our malaria disease. To be on the safe side, we get another set of printouts of all the documents we submitted for the online visa.

Then we have a bulk purchase in a really great supermarket, which, however, sells so much of European products that we end up putting one or two back on the shelf (Martini Zero for 28 euros a bottle :-), the “good” dental floss for 7, 50). But basic groceries, cookies, espresso – the cart gets full. It seems that the hinterland of Nigeria is rather poor and we don't want to spend too much time looking for food. Brigitte’s credit card works – phew. It was more due to the ATMs.

We get drinking water for filling up the watertank of the car and find two more bottles of repellent in a pharmacy. Another myth: When preparing for our trip, we read everywhere that it's better to buy insect repellent locally – but the locals don't use it! It's like with malaria drugs: you can get them better and cheaper for treatment here. But if you want to start with a Profilaxe, you can't get large enough quantities anywhere.

Today we drive twice to the electrician who repaired our power station and yes, maybe we'll be lucky and it will work again. That will become apparent in the next few days. The plug seems to have gotten too hot and since he couldn't find a new plug, he has now repaired the old one. Hopefully this will last for a while.

This is how a day goes by.

In the evening we have an appointment with Carl, a German motorcyclist who we know since Robertsport. Meetings like this are always nice!