Hopefully this entry will be slightly more coherent than the last.....apologies for Robbie, he was TUI...(typing under the influence) Basically we're all finished with uni now, the exams were interesting to say the least, been a long time since I've seen multiple choice and 'fill-in-the-blanks' questions on an exam paper but still, glad all the 'hard work' is out the way now. After bidding farewell to our chums as they all flew back to the western world, Robbie and I packed up our stuff and with one american and one german headed off toward the Ghana-Cote D'Ivoire border.... Cote was interesting to say the least, highlights included; almost missing our bus out of Accra at 4 in the morning due to Robbie gettting absolutely trashed and deciding it'd be a good idea to set up a travel blog and taking forever to write what turned out to be complete gobbledigoop, Katia crossing the border undetected the day before her visa became valid, masked by the 1st lady of Cote D'Ivoire passing through customs at the same time as us...nothing like a bit of distraction! We then visited possibly the most disturbing zoo on the planet, rabid hyenas, humping tortoises, starving lions and an ape that had gone completely insane and kept smacking its head against the concrete wall. And that was the first day. We also got stopped countless times by 'police checkpoints' which in reality are actually just an opportunity for the police force of cote d'ivoire to line their pockets with our precious pennies and basically exert their illegitimate power over all passing obrunis (whites). Unfortunately one such occasion was when neither myself nor Florian had any form of ID with us and were forced out of the car and made to wait on the side of the road until we could produce something....now, being fresh out of magic powder and wizzardry, the ability to make my passport fly from the other side of the city in my hotel to a lay-by in a dark street in the red light district of Abidjan completely escaped me and we soon learned the only way to a corrupt police man's heart is through his wallet. This was challenged by Katia one night when she too found herself stopped with only a student card (not accepted apparently...?) and when the police man walked off with her id and refused to return it until she handed over some cash she proceeded to attempt to snatch it back.....um, note to self: Do not attempt to anger an already pissed-off armed guard, in cote d'ivoire, a country recovering from sustained civil war. Good one Katia. Surviving this we headed north to Yamosoukro (personally renamed "Yam-fransisco" due to problems with pronunciation) to check out this village-come-capital-city made into something important by houiphoet-boigny, the ex-leader of Cote and bit of a looney toon who had some replica of St. Peter's in Rome built in the middle of the jungle in central Cote D'Ivoire...just because he could and apparently had nothing better to spend $200million on. and why not? After 4 days I left Robbie with Kats in Loon-land and Florian and I headed back to Accra as my mates Lottie and Nick were flying in to meet me and Robs to start our adventure....getting to Accra was far too complicated, Florian had no ghanaian visa, there were no seats on the only bus to ghana and my french extends no further than 'bonjour', so once we bribed our way onto a bus and successfully crossed the border $100 lighter due to the dumb german and his visa issues the bus proceeded to run out of fuel in the middle of no-where....squeezed between a bulgarian UN soldier and a crazy french-speaking priest I began to think i'd never see accra again....but eventually after waking up at 5am we finally pulled into accra the next day at 00.30am, tired and grouchy I was there just in time to pick the others up from the airport! We've spent the last week with Robbie, lottie and nick getting to know each other, which has essentially involved copious amounts of lager, far to many green turtle iced teas (ghana's equivalent to the long-island favourite) at a beach resort down the coast, we then went up to Cape Coast for a dose of historical slavery and the like and then went to Kakum National Park and hung from the suspended canopy walkway like moneys...well Robbie did anyway. We tried to get the 'best pizza in the world' at kokrobite on the way home but due to extenuating circumstances we had to settle for mediocre pizza and barracuda before returning for a day in Accra to get visas and write this post...lucky you! Sorry if i've rambled too much but there was a lot of info, our blog in available at.... and then you can choose if you wanna hear about it rather than me emailing!!! Love to all and look forward to hearing from you all soon, Robyn, Robbie, Nick and Lottie x x x x x x x x