We stack and strap all our things to the bicycle and the carriage and we take the road on foot. From the bushes of the village we applied for e-visas to cross over Guinea and into Ivory Coast, and we are waiting for them to be approved. We decide to walk for as long as we feel like, take a car when we are tired, either pack the bike or let me work my restless legs while my friend gets to arrive in advance and find a place for us to sleep. Whatever we feel like.

The border is not far. The road is wonderfully paved, flat and wide. We have six days. We stop by big trees and take photos, stop by markets and take meals and snacks and bags of water, pass pretty British bridges.

People stop to look at us, to call us white and sometimes to talk to us. They are soft and friendly.

My friend likes to listen to podcasts and I like to listen to the birds and the cars passing and my own footsteps and the clicking of the bike.

We pass small towns that have diamonds painted on the walls. Huge mats of cocoa laid out in the sun and the smell of their fermentation lies thick in the hot air.

We sleep in a room that is offered to us and wake in terror in the middle of the night as we hear a huge creature rattle-pattle over the floor. From the village, we know that the spiders here can be the size of our hands, fingers spread. We shine our flashlights into all the corners and finally I jam my knife between two planks in the ceiling and we hang the mosquito net from it. In the morning we see her by the door, legs spread and still; the guardian.

We sleep in the tent by a field and we sleep in small inns and once we split up and I sleep by a beautiful river, alone, because she called me. We eat fresh sweet papayas for 3 leones and rice and sauce and small cookies. The dust rises and the sunsets are fuzzy-golden. Hills roll far and smooth beyond the road, smoke rising from the fields that are burned in preparation for the next round of sowing. Sweat pours down my face and it is all so incredibly beautiful.

The days pass.

We arrive at the last town before the border, our visas for Sierra Leone about to expire.

Our visas for Guinea still haven’t arrived.

…

(This story told in pictures.)