A bit of a sleepless night last night - thousands of teeny tiny baby cockroaches in my room which needless to say I thought were rather cute. Until I woke up in a cold sweat realising that if there are babies, there must be monster ones somewhere which aren't so cute and have long feelery things waving about. So on about 3.5 hours sleep I went to visit the king - who was on holiday.

Our car brakes have broken today so we waited for them to be fixed before moving on up through more jungle. It is getting more jungly and wild with lots of bees nests dangling from the trees, and we are passing police controls at the villages. This was the centre of the civil war with Liberian rebels coming in to fight. We stopped en route to watch ladies cutting cassava and boiling it ready for market. Little girls of 5 are also working with big knives/ machetes and a pile of fingers are in the corner.

Lunch involved a picnic ( milk flavoured wotsits and coke ) in a cashew tree wood near some catfish in a river - we had been invited to eat by a local village; chicken, foutou and hot chilli sauce but it was one chicken quarter between a family of 10. We are skirting the border with Ghana and have now arrived in a town with all houses covered in barbed wire. Our hotel is next to the UN peace keeping compound with them peeping over sandbags in their control towers. we have just been to see a marabout ( or marmot as Dave keeps thinking it is) . This is a guy who teaches the Koran and a marmot would have been more exciting in my eyes. I was very patient though and smiled sweetly throughout. I wouldn't dream of going to see a priest and look at his bible but hey ho. Not even nice old books or architecture.

just for Jonathan & Cathy and of course Emma here is a photo of my current hotel. I haven't had a loo seat since I got here which is fabulous. No lurking cockroaches ! Internet access has been off every evening , not sure if they can switch it off?? Anyway, it,s back so will quickly post this.