Dawn was just breaking as we rolled out of Kenema this morning in anticipation of 130km of dirt roads before reaching the Liberian border. A short hour on tarmac thereafter should have had us in Monrovia for lunch.
After a discrepancy between GPS device directions, we ended up taking a series of wrong turns and becoming hopelessly lost amidst the jungle trails. Great riding though, with deep jungle on either side and narrow fast trails, log crossings, and all sorts of other fun stuff.
The national highway between these two countries is an absolute disgrace. Deeply rutted in places, it has eroded into an endless series of muddy undulations that send the bike swooping off the lip with a gut wrenching rush and then powering up the far side until the front wheel dances and skips for traction on the opposite side. This process is repeated thousands of times along the length of this highway. It is impossible to build and sort of rhythm to the riding as some of the dips contain dust, some contain water, some deep mud, and some a thin veneer of mud over visciously sharp rocks. Each dip is deep enough to conceal a small car.
After a minor sequence of issues (Ty hitting a rock and ripping off his footprint and centre stand, Gaz getting a flat tyre and taking a mud bath) we ended up arriving at the border around 5pm.
After ten hours continuous riding, we arrived filthy and exhausted at the border post - only to be denied entry into Liberia. It seems our data about visas on arrival for Liberia was flawed, and we may have needed to return all the way to Freetown along the same road in order to secure Liberian visas.
The Sierra Leone exit official took pity on us and sought to intervene with the Liberian official, and they argued until 6pm when the Liberian official declared the border closed and went home.
We have since been informed that there is an option to pay for an immigration escort from the border to the city for a visa, so we will go back again first thing tomorrow to try our luck again. Any other option involves hundreds of kilometres in detours.
The options in the border town are simple. The guest house or our tents. We have booked into the guest house, but I'm not sure it was the best deal. It does make you appreciate western infrastructure though, when you are taking a ladel shower from a bucket as a kid pumps water furiously from the well outside the window to fill the next bucket.
