As there is no wifi here, I am using my iPad to make these notes. Somehow or other I went back to yesterday's entry and found just a snowman emoticon and a party popper. So I have just had to rewrite it all. There has been a flying ant invasion here overnight and there are literally carpets of them everywhere about 3 deep. Another change of menu perhaps.

We are back to Yamoussoukro today, the weird capital in the middle of the country. This is where cassava and yams are the main diet; in the wetter west where we have just come from, the diet is corn, banana and some rice with maize and cacao being harvested. We have a bit of a diet saga going on ourselves here. The diet in the west is rice and chicken with kedjenou sauce (chilli based). The rest of the country is chicken in kedjenou sauce and chips. Marissa will only eat rice with sweet and sour sauce and won't eat midday so is surviving on bananas. Dave only likes plain food and is dunking it in water.

Anyway enough of this drivel. Yamoussoukro has a basilica built by a former president and such a money wasting, diabolical, egotistical pile of **** I have never seen. It rises from the jungle and is about 6 or 7 times the size of St Paul's. Built in 1986 taking 3 years, there is a 1km marble entrance. When I asked how much it had cost to build, I was met with the answer that it was gods present and money should not be discussed.

It is surrounded by massively wide roads that no-one uses and is built with a stained glass window of the president next to Jesus. To be fair the stain glass is beautiful but it is scandalous to have this folly in such a poor country.

We have also walked past this presidents massive complex ' village' for his family, surrounded by a crocodile infested moat. It is apparently the place to be to throw yourself in and top yourself.

Just off for more chicken! X