Waypoint Journeys Presents
Ten Countries, One Line
22 Days
Cotonou to Banjul, the Whole Western Shoulder of Africa
We reply within 24 hours
Look at the western shoulder of Africa and you are looking at ten countries stacked along about 3,000 kilometres of coast. Almost nobody travels them in sequence. People fly into one, fly out of it, and fly into the next, and the thing that connects them, the reason the Mandinka in Banjul and the Fon in Cotonou share vocabulary and drum patterns and a coastline of European forts, never becomes visible. This expedition exists to make that line visible by driving it.
We built it by joining the two West African routes we already run and cutting out the seam. Our Ghana, Benin and Togo expedition ends in Accra; our Atlantic Frontier expedition begins in Abidjan. Run back to back they cost you a departure day, an arrival day and a second flight. Joined properly, one short evening flight from Accra to Abidjan is the only break in the line, we drive the inland road from Côte d'Ivoire into Liberia, and the same expedition leader takes you from the stilt houses of Ganvié to the mouth of the Gambia River, and the days we save go into Ouidah, Abomey and the Fouta Djalon.
The trip has two halves and they do not feel alike. The first nine days run along the Gulf of Guinea and up into Côte d'Ivoire on good tar: the days are shorter, the hotels comfortable, and the history of the old Slave Coast arrives stage by stage from Ouidah westward. Over the Liberian border it changes. Improvised borders, red laterite, hotels that are simply somewhere to sleep, and the long grind from Monrovia to Freetown. Twenty-two days is a long time. This is the itinerary that needs them.
"Ten flags, eight border posts, four colonial languages and one coast. Only one of those was here first."
Benin, Togo, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal and The Gambia, in that order, overland. Eight land borders and a single short flight, from Accra to Abidjan. Nobody else runs this as a continuous route.
Guinea's green interior, the plateau where the Gambia, Senegal and Niger rivers all begin. Waterfalls drop off the escarpment edges, the air cools by ten degrees as you climb, and the Fula herding country up there has an identity that owes nothing to the coast behind you.
Two capitals founded as answers to slavery, one by freed people under Britain, one by freed people from America, their origins still legible in the street names. Few travellers reach either. The overland day between them is the hinge of the whole expedition.
One of the largest churches on Earth stands in the Ivorian bush, its dome answering St Peter's and its colonnades facing the forest. Whatever you conclude about why it is there, the scale of it in that setting is one of the strangest sights in Africa.
The Slave Coast reads differently when you arrive along it rather than flying in. At Ouidah the road to the water is still marked, gate by gate, all the way to the beach, and inland at Abomey the palaces of the Dahomey kings show where the wealth of that trade went.
Some thirty thousand Tofinu people live on stilts in Lake Nokoué, in a settlement founded because the Dahomey raiders were forbidden by their own beliefs to follow anyone onto water. We reach it by pirogue on the afternoon the expedition begins.
Twenty-two days from the lagoon at Cotonou to the mouth of the Gambia River: ten countries, eight land borders and one short flight, Accra to Abidjan.
Cotonou to Banjul
Twenty-two days along the West African coast: Cotonou through Benin, Togo and Ghana, a flight to Abidjan, overland into Liberia, then Freetown, the Fouta Djalon and Bissau to Banjul.
Land in Cotonou, where your driver meets you at the airport and takes you straight to the hotel. Nothing else is planned: the day is yours to recover from the flight, so book whatever arrival time suits you.
Out in the morning to Calavi and across Lake Nokoué by pirogue to Ganvié, thirty thousand people living on stilts in the lagoon, in a place founded because the Dahomey raiders would not follow anyone onto water. Then about an hour west to Ouidah for lunch. In the afternoon we walk the Route des Esclaves past the slave posts out to the Gate of No Return on the beach, marked at every stage of what was done along it, then the Sacred Forest, the Ouidah monument and the salt village.
About two and a half hours inland to the old heart of Dahomey. The Chameleon Temple first, then the underground village at Bohicon, dug as a refuge in the wars of the kingdom, and finally the Royal Palace Museum in Abomey, a UNESCO site and the seat of the Dahomey kings, whose wealth came largely from the trade you walked yesterday. Back to Ouidah for the night.
The morning in Ouidah, at the Cathedral and the Temple of the Sacred Pythons, which face each other across the square. Then the first border, at Hillacondji, and into Togo. We take a pirogue across Lake Togo to Togoville, where the 1884 German protectorate treaty was signed and where the vodun shrines are still in daily use, and stop at the preserved slave house in Agbodrafo before the last stretch into Lomé.
A morning in Lomé: the fishing harbour, the fetish market, where healers and vodun practitioners buy their herbs and carved figures, Independence Square and the Grand Marché. After lunch, the Aflao crossing, minutes from the centre in the only capital in Africa that sits directly on its own border, and about three and a half hours along the coast road to Accra.
A full day in Ghana's capital. Osu Castle, the old Danish fort that became the seat of government, then Makola Market, the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, and Jamestown, the oldest neighbourhood in the city, where we climb the lighthouse above the fishing beach. We finish at Black Star Square, where the nation holds its parades.
A slow last morning in Accra, then the short flight west to Abidjan, a little over an hour, where the Ivorian convoy is waiting. The language changes to French. Abidjan in the afternoon is towers, lagoon ferries, the Plateau skyline and traffic, and the evening is in Treichville.
North out of Abidjan on good tar to the political capital that Félix Houphouët-Boigny built out of his home village, and to the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace standing in the bush at the end of it. We spend the afternoon there, under a dome that answers St Peter's, with room inside for eighteen thousand people and rarely more than a handful.
West into Guro country in the morning for the Zaouli, a masked dance performed at a speed the eye cannot resolve, the dancer's feet blurring under a carved face that never moves. We watch it in a village that keeps it rather than on a stage. Then on west through Daloa to Man, a town ringed by forested hills close to the Liberian border, for the night.
The day the flight used to take, now driven. Out of Man early, over the hills to Danané and the border into Liberia, then from Ganta south on the paved road through Gbarnga to Monrovia, arriving as the light goes. With the border it is ten to twelve hours, and we say so plainly. Monrovia is where the hard half of the expedition begins.
Liberia's capital rewards a slow day. Providence Island, where the first settlers from America landed in 1822; the Waterside market; the burnt-out Ducor Hotel on its hill above the city; and street names that read like a road map of the American east coast. We also re-provision here, because the hardest week of the route starts tomorrow.
The defining overland day of the expedition. North-west from Monrovia to the Mano River, across into Sierra Leone, and on through the rice country to Freetown in the dark if the border is slow. It is a long, hot, uncertain day and we do not pretend otherwise. It is also the reason the line on the map holds together.
A day in one place. Morning in the city: the Cotton Tree, the Krio board houses on the hillsides, the market streets that run straight downhill to the water. Afternoon on the peninsula beaches south of town, at Tokeh or River Number Two, which is where Freetown goes on a Sunday and where the convoy crews catch up on sleep.
Out along the peninsula road, with the city on its steep green hills above one of the largest natural harbours in the world behind us, then north into Guinea. Past the border the road runs inland to Kindia, at the foot of the highlands, where we leave the coast for the next four nights.
North onto the plateau on the long climb to Labé, through the mining towns and the mango belt, with the temperature dropping as the altitude rises. By the afternoon you are in the Fouta Djalon: plateau grassland, waterfalls off the escarpment edges, and air ten degrees cooler than the coast. Labé, the capital of the highlands, is where we sleep for two nights.
A day out of the vehicles. We walk a section of the escarpment with a local guide, down through terraced Fula smallholdings to one of the falls, and back up in the afternoon. The highlands are the reason to come to Guinea and the reason we do not simply drive through them, which is what almost every crossing of this region does.
The hardest border on the route, so we leave Labé early and give it the middle of the day. The road comes down off the plateau toward Guinea-Bissau, and on the far side Gabú, a Fula trading town at the edge of the plateau country, hot and busy and entirely unvisited, is where we sleep. We get the paperwork in order here for the rest of the run to the coast.
West toward the Atlantic again, stopping en route at Bafatá, the colonial river town where Amílcar Cabral was born. Bissau at the end of it is a city of collapsing Portuguese facades, bougainvillea growing out of the plasterwork and a waterfront that has stopped pretending to be a port. It is one of the strangest capitals in Africa.
North through cashew country on a road that alternates without warning between tar and red earth, to the crossing at São Domingos. Senegal changes character below the Gambia River: the Casamance is green, slow and threaded with mangrove creeks, and it has spent decades feeling separate from Dakar. We finish on the Atlantic at Cap Skirring, in time for the sunset, which is the best on this stretch of the ocean.
A light day on purpose, after the borders behind us. The morning is for the coast: the fishing beach, the palm line and whatever the tide has left. Then a short run east on back roads through Diola villages and stands of sacred forest to Ziguinchor, the old river port, on the waterfront at dusk.
North out of the Casamance on the last crossing of the trip, a gentle one by the standards of what is behind you, and into The Gambia. Banjul, the smallest capital on the Atlantic coast of Africa, is where the convoy stops after three weeks and ten countries, and we spend the last evening together on the riverfront.
A last morning to walk Albert Market and the riverfront before transfers to the airport. The expedition ends here, at the mouth of the Gambia River. Book departures from early afternoon onward.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Expedition Investment
per person, twin share
Fully inclusive of the supported 4WD convoy and a single expedition leader for all twenty-two days, local fixer teams in ten countries, eight land borders handled end to end, the Accra to Abidjan flight, twenty-one nights' accommodation, daily breakfast and all listed experiences
Excludes international flights, all visas, travel insurance, lunches and dinners. Single supplement $850 USD. Runs in the November–February dry window; routing may adjust in real time with road and border conditions. Half-route options from Cotonou to Accra or Abidjan to Banjul are priced on request
Reserve Your SpotTen countries means ten separate assessments, not one headline about West Africa. Every region on this route is reviewed on its own terms and reviewed again as the departure approaches, and the expedition leader has the authority to reroute at any point without asking anyone's permission. The convoy runs under a fixed protocol: daylight driving only, vehicles in constant radio contact, and a local fixer team ahead of us at every stage and every border post. We cross from Côte d'Ivoire into Liberia inland, by Man and Ganta, rather than through the south-east, which we do not drive. Across this whole region the dominant risk is the road rather than crime, and the pace, the convoy and the daylight rule are all built around that. Every confirmed traveller gets a detailed country-by-country briefing before departure.
