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 movin...

A 250 km drive led us through Abidjan and up north weaving through banana and mango plantations. Most of the journey was through jungle and malarious swampy pools with little boys splashing about in them. The roads here have been good but today saw red soil and the start of the Ivorian whacky races. Cars and lorries swerved from one side to another to avoid potholes which was good fun until a huge logging juggernaut started to bear down on us. Connor the driver ...

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! Cote D'Ivoire has risen to the occasion by men on the streets peddling red roses made out of lacy knickers. Dave has failed to cut the mustard and us 3 girls are without so much as a chocolate between us. Christmas is still going strong here too with Christmas trees everywhere - one in the hotel in Abidjan, Marissa knocked one flying in a cafe and one laden down with tinsel where I come to get wifi. I thought this was a bit odd un...

Day one led to a double christening of Kaye and I - people here are named after the day of the week they're born. Luckily to make things less complicated we are both Wednesday born and so christened Amina 1 and Amina 2. Armed with our new names and some hot chilli sauce on breakfast eggs, we headed to the market via the museum. We lea that not all plastic comes from China but as luck would have it there was plenty of cheap Chinese tat to keep me happy. Ladies w...

The day has arrived! After months of worrying that Dave won't get his passport in time, Marissa will go to the wrong airport, Kaye will arrive a day early and I will forget my hair straighteners, we are all safely at Terminal 2. The only thing forgotten is my dietary emergency card in French which last time I saw it was being used as an ice scraper on Vomit. We have: Dave who is so laid back he makes even Dylan from the Magic Roundabout look like he's on spe...