Abenguru - Yamoussoukro

Breakfast

Breakfast is self-service this morning, with French bread and butter – no conserves. The butter is rock hard, so I order tea to help soften it (by placing the butter on the saucer). The bread, as is the norm in French affiliated countries, is fresh and fluffy. By the time we’ve eaten half a loaf, an omelette arrives. When the waitress asked us last night what time we wanted breakfast this morning, she didn’t understand when I tried to say 07:30, so she wrote down 07:00. At 07:30, as we leave the table, a whole lot more food arrives.

Today we are heading west to the capital of Ivory Coast: Yamoussoukro.

There is not a great deal to see along the road, so I manage to catch up on some sleep, after spending last night tossing and turning with some very unpleasant dreams.

Petrol station, Ivorian style

Roadside scenes

La Brise Restaurant, Yamoussoukro

With a cool setting on the side of a lagoon, the restaurant offers seating outside, inside, and an air-conditioned room. We choose the latter. It is quite busy, with what looks like a mixed nationality western tour group, and a few other couples.

It seems Christmas is still happening here

Lots of interesting artwork in the restaurant, including this large wooden elephant

David making the most of the AC

Not being used to big hearty meals at lunchtime, we both order a sandwich. They both come wrapped in foil, and while David’s beef sandwich is served hot, I am surprised to find my ham and pickle baguette is cold. Unusually for a French-associated country, the bread is not that fresh.

While the restaurant may look upmarket, catering to foreign tourists, there is no toilet paper in the loos, no water to flush the loos and also no water in the basin to wash your hands. Thank goodness for antiseptic hand wash.

The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace

Some 34% of the population in Ivory Coast adhere to the Christian faith, with the majority being Roman Catholic, including the previous president Félix Houphouët-Boigny, who commissioned the church in the 1980s. He had grandiose ideas, and wanted the church, whose design is based on St Pater’s in Rome, to be the biggest in the world.

Solo (our driver) is given permission to drive into the palace grounds to park in the VIP car park, rather than dropping us off at the end of the long path leading to the main entrance of the Basilica.

The lower circle is where Solo manages to park. Good man.

We are allocated a specialist guide, Ful, who is a good friend of Mathias. He speaks decent English, and is quite the joker.

It’s only as we get nearer that we appreciate the sheer size of the Basilica, as it looms on the horizon, situated on a platform made from Italian marble.

The platform is accessed via a series of steps.

The church boasts seven hectares of marble, and 60 enormous pillars, 48 of which are Doric in style, the remaining 12 are Ionic.

It’s not until you notice the people sitting by one of the entrances that you realise just how huge those pillars are!

The pillars are so massive that six of the internal columns have stairs inside, and four of them even have elevators!

The Basilica took three years to complete, cost some US$300 million, and was consecrated by Pope John Paul II in 1990.

There are eight doors to enter the church, which can be folded back to allow those worshippers who are unable to fit inside to still be able to hear the sermon. Apparently, some 18,000 people can fit inside the Basilica, with a further 150,000 in the outside courtyard and on the esplanade. Only during pilgrimages do they get numbers anywhere near that; most Sunday services draw somewhere in the region of 2-3,000 faithfuls.

No photos are allowed inside, apart from just inside the doorway.

The incredible stained glass windows have been imported from France, and boasts of being the largest surface of stained glass in the world, at 7,763 square metres!

As we walk around the interior of the Basilica, Ful explains the design of the various windows, shows us sculptures of the twelve apostles on the balconies, explains that inside the 120-metre high cupola is a dove hanging, and shows us how the acoustic clouds in the back of the seats work to distribute the sound during sermons. Meanwhile I am invited to sit in what would normally be the President’s seat in the pews.

As we exit the church onto the stunning marble platform and into the brilliant sunshine, we notice a car on the platform. Our car. Somehow, Solo has managed to find a slope that leads up to this level, and has brought the car to the entrance of the Basilica so that I don’t have to walk back down again. I am dumbfounded by this incredible act of not just kindness, but also the elevation of us to extreme VIP status. Wow!

Our carriage awaits

The slope Solo drove up, next to the stairs

The slope is right by the Pope's residence

The Presidential Palace

Yamoussoukro has been the formal capital of Ivory Coast since 1983, while Abidjan retains the president, ministries, government and administration. The palace of Ivory Coast’s first president, Fèlix Houphouët-Boigny, is still here in Yamoussoukro, although since his death in 1993, it is no longer occupied.

The palace is surrounded by a dirty green moat, in which a few dozen ‘sacred’ crocodiles live. Crocodiles are considered sacred to the Baoulé people, many of whom will come here to make sacrifices to them (usually a chicken), and ask for advice about any problems they may have.

For a number of years during Fèlix’ time, the crocodiles were fed every afternoon by Diko, a man from Mali selected especially by Fèlix, who used to know each one by name and get into the enclosure to feed them. Tragically, one day in 2012, he fell, and was instantly grabbed by the largest of all the beasts. His body has never been found.

There is also a rumour that some of the opposition politicians disappeared in the same manner.

The Boigny Fèlix Houphouët Foundation for Peace

Dedicated to promoting peace and fostering research in the realm of social sciences, the building also hosts artifacts and information on the founding president and his family. Walking, stopping, walking slowly around museums, is one of the things that I am rather reluctant to do, as it very quickly makes my back hurt, so Mathias suggests we just take a loot at it from the outside. It appears to be closed anyway, with temporary fencing erected around the grounds.

Not being one to let a few fence panels get in the way, Solo drives around them and into the courtyard for me to get better photos.

On the way to our hotel for the night, we stop at a grocery story to buy some Coca Cola. “No Coke, only Fanta” (this is a saying from one of my all-time favourite books, called ‘On Foot through Africa’ by Ffyona Campbell, in which she uses it to describe anything that delivers less than her expectations.) The second store we stop at is also not selling Coke, but our final stop, an Auchan supermarket, saves the day! That’s the pre-dinner drink in the room sorted!

Royal Suites Hotel

The first thing I notice about this hotel, is the fancy floor tiles in the courtyard.

Reception is bright and airy, with Christmas decorations still up here too.

Our room is the one nearest the reception, as per Mathias’ request. To get there, however, we have to walk along a corridor, up a couple of little steps, past another courtyard, and down two more steps in tour own private courtyard.

The 'public' courtyard

Our own private courtyard

We are, much to our amusement, in Room 101.

For those of you who are not aware of the significance of this room number; it comes from a British comedy TV series, in which celebrities were invited to talk about the things they hated the most, and would then try and convince the host to banish those hates to Room 101. The specific room number of taken from George Orwell’s 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four which reputedly contained "the worst thing in the world".

The hotel does, as suggested by its name, offer rooms with a sitting area.

The bathroom is also bright and modern, with stylish contemporary furnishing. The shower, however, may look good, but the water pressure is woefully underpowered.

Dinner

I notice that hedgehog features on the menu here too, and try to order it. They are sadly fresh out of hedgehogs, so I ask for spaghetti bolognaise instead.

My spag bol

David orders chicken supreme. They are both good.

One of the criteria I tend to judge a restaurant by, is whether they have paper or cloth napkins. This one wins brownie points by having not only nice starched cloth napkins, but also salt and pepper on the table (a first on this trip), and even toothpicks. For a long time, we are the only diners, but just as we are finishing our meal, a lone gentleman appears.

David in the dining room (with a Beaufort beer)

Goodnight from Yamoussoukro, and thank you to Undiscovered Destinations for arranging this incredible adventure to Ivory Coast.