16th -18th September – Yamoussoukro, Côte D'Ivoire
Yamoussoukro, at first glance, appears to be your run of the mill small African town. A main road runs through town, low-rise buildings stand by the side of it and, 5km later, you have left town and are back in the forest. But a closer look reveals that Yamoussoukro is slightly less typical and, all things put together, it stands very near the top in the weird-places-I-have-been league.
Beware of crocodiles
For a start, the road from Bouaké goes over the “lac aux caïmans”. This is where the sacred crocodiles live, crocodiles which are rumoured to have eaten former president Houphouët-Boigny's political opponents and very much confirmed to have eaten their previous feeder in front of crowds of onlookers. The majority of the lake is unfenced, and I suppose that the list of people to have been eaten by the sacred crocs probably involves several innocent passers-by. The road from Abidjan enters town by the Hôtel Président, a tall, mushroom shaped construction where the head was originally designed to be a revolving restaurant, and I believe that it has never moved. The enormous presidential palace, which overlooks the sacred crocodiles, stands empty and has done for many years, recent presidents having preferred to live in Abidjan, where all of the ministries and embassies are located. This despite the fact that Yamoussoukro has been the capital city of Côte D'Ivoire for the best part of 30 years. But the crowning glory of this odd town is the Basilique de Notre Dame de la Paix, inspired by St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican but, of course, slightly taller. The place has only been filled to capacity twice – firstly for its consecration by Pope John Paul II, and secondly for the funeral of the man who dreamed it into existance, Houphouët-Boigny. No one knows how much the basilica cost to build, as the old man declared that he had made a deal with God and that it would not be prudent to discuss God's business in public. The presidential palace is off limits to visitors but, naturally, the other three sites made up our to-do list for Yamoussoukro.
It looks big at first glance. Then, you notice that I'm in the picture and it looks even bigger
...As does everything here...
Even the clouds are superhuman
Notre Dame de la Paix was first up. The scale of the place is impossible to convey – I got dizzy looking up at the ceiling of the entrance. The entire building was preposterous but undeniably impressive. Its presence just outside Yamoussoukro, which is hardly an enormous place, lended it an even more surreal feeling. This was completed by the sight of herdsmen guiding their cattle past the entrance to new pastures, a sight which looks entirely natural out in the bush but just seems incongruous in front of the world's largest basilica.
Secondly, the hôtel Président. We'd heard that the top floor of this building, the hotel equivalent of the Notre Dame basilica – totally out of place and completely over the top – had a bar/restaurant in it. We went up there, had a drink in extremely comfortable surroundings and eyed the building's balcony, which was apparently forbidden go onto. The views of the surrounding area were still impressive from up here, even if the windows could have done with a bit of a scrub.
The hotel from the bottom
The bottom, from the top
Refreshed, we went up to the sacred crocodile lake where 5 of the 200 or so crocs were sunbathing for the assembled watchers – there seemed to be a crowd of people here at any time of day or night – although their schedule 5pm feeding had been indefinitely postponed after these crocs ate their last feeder a few weeks before. Biting the hand that feeds you is not a good idea, as we all know – eating the man that feeds you is even worse.
Spot the feeder...?
The last night was upon us and we headed up to a maquis that we'd spotted earlier where we ordered our meat and I ordered a Drogba, a one litre bottle of beer (“because it's big and strong, just like him !”). Maquis food is generally grilled from scratch and so takes quite a long time to arrive and on this particular day I was starved. I ripped the meat off my skewers and onto my plate and started eating with enthusiasm. It was great. Towards the end my tongue started to tingle slightly and it wasn't until I'd finished eating that I realised that I'd scraped my meat off the skewers and onto a huge pile of pili-pili sauce. By this point my mouth was on fire and all the Drogbas in the world weren't going to save me. We slinked back to the hotel under cover of darkness, ready to head south the next day.
Pre-pili-pili delight with Drogba
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