Hey everyone!
I am looking for some feedbacks on some different african countries, regarding cycling.
Based on your experience, friends experience, or things you have heard, according to these criterias:
- Road quality 🛣️
- People's attitude 😊
- Weather / climate 🌤️
- Bicycle service 🔧
- Traffic 🚗
- Accomodation 🏠
I want to know what are the best countries in Africa for cycling.
The reason why I ask this is because I am in the middle of a trip around Africa, from Morocco until South Africa, currently at the border between Ivory Coast and Ghana (here if you wanna follow the adventures, subtitles in english —–> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbnerrr3B_0 ) 📺 And, even if no country ever had a "terrible" or "wonderful" experience, every country was really mixed, I still have strong opinions of the following countries that I crossed. I rated them for you, if you are interested in starting a journey like this one day! ✨
Best countries: 🏆
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Morocco —–> Wonderful people, almost never had to sleep outside (people always made me feel home). Good road quality almost everywhere, the climate is very diversed but never unbearable. Police was also friendly, bicycle shops plenty. Traffic was okay. 👍
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Senegal/The Gambia —–> Everyone was nice and welcoming too, although its where I started to feel like I was expected to be "rich" and giving away to beggers because of the color of my skin (white). I was also not a fan of the climate: not really desert and not really jungle. Traffic in Dakar was terrible. Other than that, the roads were in good condition, very good bicycle mechanics and no problem to find places to sleep, I have been welcomed so many times.
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Ivory Coast —–>The best road of the whole trip. People's attitude were a mix, I met really welcoming and friendly people but some people also made me know that they were dangerous. Because the roads were so good, people were driving really fast. Bicycle mechanics were few outside of Abidjan, but of good quality. The weather is equatorial type, very hot or very rainy. I didn't slept outside because of the many opportunities of finding accomodation in every town (paid). 🏨
Worst countries 😰
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Mauritania —–>The desert was so beautiful, but that one single road from Nouadhibou to Senegal was awful, truck drivers were crazy and people were not that welcoming, even though I was there during ramadan (of course, I did met a lot of nice people still). Oftentimes when I said that I was french, I had to listen to a history lesson telling me how bad my ancestors was and as a 25 year old cyclist that is just doing tourism it wasnt very pleasant. It was hard to find good/cheap accomodation and I didnt always felt good wild camping in certain places. Bicycle services I cannot say, I didn't needed any. 🏜️
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Guinea Bissau —–>Country was too small to get full immersion, and I didn't speak portuguese so I couldn't communicate much with people. The climate was so hot (45C some days, in April), but people seemed nice. I slept in "hotels" quite often but there was a lot of electricity shutdown, even in the capital Bissau, that lasted for days. But the worst part were really the roads: destroyed concrete. I saw people fixing it themselves, that's how careless there goverments are. So it was hard to cycle there. 🔥
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Guinea —–>I loved my experience in Guinea's countryside. People were so nice and the culture was sooo different that what I was used too. But my problems were: ABSOLUTELY NO BICYCLE SERVICE AND TERRIBLE ROADS. My bike got f****d there and no one available to repair it. I got scammed quite often by "fake mechanics". The roads were awful, but the chinese are currently fixing that. I got food poisoning a few times, and the capital, Conakry, is the worst nightmare traffic anyone could imagine. 😵
I cannot wait to go to Ghana now, and see in wich category it fits in 😉
And I hope someone here can give feedbacks about the countries I am the most curious about, South Sudan, Chad, Central African Republic, Mozambique 🙂
by MrGTA68