Travel Report: Guinea-Bissau
Date of visit: March 2020
The nature looks beautiful when the ASKY plane descends in Bissau, the capital of Guinea-Bissau. Thousands of green trees standing next to each other on brown-reddish soil and in between are some little houses and streets. A scenery that is so typical for Africa.
It is March 8, 2020 and I am back in West Africa. It is my third trip to this region, after I have visited Côte d’Ivoire, Togo and Nigeria in 2018 and Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea and Sierra Leone in 2019. West Africa, they say, is the most difficult region to travel to in the world because of the high crime rate, political unrest, widespread corruption and horrible infrastructure.
So far I have a love-hatred relationship with West Africa. On the one hand I have had great travel experiences in this part of the world, on the other hand West Africa has always been challenging and has caused me many frustrating moments. Therefore, I was curious how this third trip would turn out.
Despite the omnipresent corona virus, entering Guinea-Bissau was relatively easy. All passengers were quickly measured for fever and in addition, we had to fill out a form where we had been for the last fourteen days. Since I live in a high-risk country, I was a little nervous, but as there were some COVID-19 cases in Senegal too, no passenger coming from Dakar could leave this field empty anyway.
Fortunately, I didn’t get any problem. The next challenge now was to get the visa. The airport in Bissau is very basic and there is no booth or room for the visa on arrival. At least I couldn’t see any sign. Only when I asked one of the employees in front of the passport control, I was sent to a man who took me to his office.
The process for the visa then went pretty fast. It cost 85€ and after a harmless bribery attempt by the lady who stamped my passport (I didn’t give any money), I was finally in my country no. 101.
Bom dia Bissau
The crowd of rather aggressive taxi drivers competing for passengers was relatively large and finally I paid twice as much as a local for my ride from the airport to the city center of Bissau. But as that extra amount was about one dollar, I didn’t care at all. I was rather happy that the taxi fares at the airport cost about a twentieth of what is charged in Dakar.
So, where had I just arrived? When I told my friends that I was going to Guinea-Bissau, the answer was either “never heard of it” or “haven’t you been there already?” Thereupon I explained that I had already been in Guinea but not yet in Guinea-Bissau, which is a different country. Hence, a short introduction:
Guinea-Bissau is a small country on the West African coast sandwiched between Senegal and Guinea. It’s one of six lusophone countries in Africa, which means that Portuguese (or sometimes Creole, a simplified variant of Portuguese) is the official language. And it’s also one of the least visited countries in the world.
There are several reasons why only a few hardcore travelers make it to Guinea-Bissau. One of them could be that getting there will either take a lot of time or cost a lot of money. Only five countries offer flights to Bissau and Senegal seems to be the only one with flight fares that don’t cost 500 dollars or more for a return ticket.
Getting to Guinea-Bissau overland would be the cheaper option, but maybe you check out my trip reports about the Gambia or traveling overland from Conakry to Freetown to get a vague idea of what traveling overland in (West) Africa means. Spoiler: it will be a very long and uncomfortable journey.
Another reason why Guinea-Bissau is not the most popular travel destination are the military coups that happen every now and then. Consequently, the employee in my hotel tells me after my check-in that there was a military coup just on Wednesday before my arrival. He tells me this as casually as if he was just talking about the last New Year’s Eve party. It’s seems to be something normal here.
The good news is that military coups usually don’t affect travelers and so I was all the more surprised to find the most tranquil country in West Africa among those I had already visited.
Guinea-Bissau, the odd West African country
I have to confess that Guinea-Bissau was not a country I was particularly looking forward to. The neighboring country of Guinea, where I was a year ago, is still among my five least favorite countries to date. Guinea-Bissau, I feared, was the little brother next door, who simply speaks Portuguese instead of French.
But the difference between Bissau and Conakry, the capital of Guinea, could hardly have been bigger. Bissau didn’t look even half as run-down as Conakry. And somehow everything here seemed to be much more civilized. While in Conakry there were masses of people sitting at the side of the road and letting the day pass by, the people in Bissau went about their business without much concern for people like me.
I soon realized that Bissau was a special city that somehow didn’t fit into West Africa at all. West African capitals are usually loud, crowded, polluted and chaotic cities that will exhaust you after a while. Bissau is the complete opposite. I have actually never seen a West African capital (or maybe even on the whole continent) that is so quiet. The streets were not really crowded and there was almost no traffic.
When I started to explore Bissau, the first thing I noticed were the colorful houses of the town. Coming from the rather dull looking Dakar, Bissau seemed almost like an LSD trip. Many houses are painted in bright colors, so that it becomes clear once again that this is a former Portuguese colony. Like in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, which is also a former Portuguese colony, the many colorful houses make the cityscape more attractive.
About 400,000 of the 1,800,000 people in Guinea-Bissau live in the capital. 400’000 is not really small by European standards, but Bissau still feels more like a village than a city. Maybe this is also because most of the roads in the city center are dirt roads. That makes the city look even more rural.
That’s why I enjoyed my day in this tranquil “village” and visited every place Bissau has to offer. However, Bissau is not a city full of sights, but there are still a few places worth visiting.
I started my sightseeing tour with the Monumento aos Heróis da Independência on a square just two minutes away from my hotel. The monument is next to the presidential palace, which looks rather like a normal villa than a palace. Anyway, the monument for Guinea-Bissau’s independence is quite nice and probably the only real landmark of the capital.
Another building that TripAdvisor lists as an attraction of Bissau is the cathedral. Some reviews say that it’s not worth going in, and the cathedral itself is neither very spectacular. But as you don’t have a lot of other sights in Bissau, I still wanted to see it.
Maybe the only real attraction that Bissau has, is one that you cannot enter. Bissau has a fort in the middle of the city center. Unfortunately, the military uses is now and you are not even allowed to take pictures of it. Some travelers managed to get in with the permission of the military. Since they just had a coup, I didn’t even want to ask, though.
I did not notice much of the military coup, though, except a relatively high presence of soldiers. However, an employee of my hotel told me to be rather careful when taking pictures, especially when soldiers were in sight. But I was already used to that from cities like Conakry or Maputo. So I took pictures in a rather discreet way.
Apart from the sights I mentioned before, Bissau has unfortunately not much to offer. Plus it doesn’t take more than 30 minutes to see all of them. Therefore, I really didn’t know what to do anymore after a while. Consequently, I used my time to visit one cafe after another and observed the street life while sitting outside.
To get in contact with the locals was unfortunately not easy. Here in Guinea-Bissau, only very few seem to speak English, hotels and restaurants included. Especially in restaurants, ordering food was often a gamble. In one case I even randomly pointed at the menu. Luckily, the somewhat strangely looking food contained the best piece of beef I have ever eaten in West Africa.
Another thing I wanted to do was the rooftop bar of the Bissau Royal Hotel, one of the three five-star hotels in the country. However, the entrance fee for the bar was 10,000 CFA (~16 USD) so that I hesitated. I mean, I don’t mind paying 10 USD for a beer or even a coke in a roof top bar, if the view is excellent. But paying 16 bucks on top of that just for entering the bar seemed like a joke.
I didn’t rule it out to visit the bar, though. I said to myself that if I don’t find any better activity in the next few hours, I might even pay this exorbitant price. Fortunately, my salvation came in the late afternoon: Muniro. I posted my trip to Guinea-Bissau on couchsurfing and one 26-year old man wanted to meet me.
Muniro made the last hours of the afternoon more entertaining. Together we walked down the most important streets of the city center again (which I already did about three times earlier in the day) and we also visited the port. There we saw hundreds of containers filled with cashew nuts, Guinea-Bissau’s main export crop.
During the walk he told me a bit about his life in Guinea-Bissau. Muniro told me that he regularly meets people from couchsurfing. This helps him to improve his English and learn about foreign cultures.
As I have written in other travel reports, I occasionally meet people from the couchsurfing community when I travel alone. On this portal there are many locals, especially in non-tourist countries, who enjoy spending time with a traveler and showing him around their home town.
Muniro and I ended our meeting in a restaurant near my hotel, where I bought us a crepe and a drink. It was nice that he took some time to meet me and I had a good time with him. Afterwards, I already had to go back to the airport.
How I liked Guinea-Bissau
My time in Guinea-Bissau was short, as I had only a bit more than 24 hours. That was not my intention, though. Originally I had booked two days in Guinea-Bissau. Unfortunately, the date of my flight from Dakar to Bissau changed, so I had to find a new flight route. As a consequence, I could only find flights that gave me one day in Guinea-Bissau instead of two.
But honestly, this was not even inconvenient for me. Two days would have been definitely too long to stay in Bissau, but probably too short to leave the city. There would have been several possibilities for day trips. But to be honest, none of the options gave me the feeling that I absolutely had to see the place. At least not for the price the operator quoted on his website.
So, my only day in the country was maybe not the most eventful but it was still okay. It was interesting to see Bissau and I am glad that I met Muniro just when I didn’t know what to do anymore.
I guess the real highlight of Guinea-Bissau is not the capital but the Bissagos Archipelago. Some call it the best archipelago in Africa. I met three Germans in my hotel who just came back from the islands and raved about it. “It’s like the Seychelles, just without people,” they said. When you look at the pictures you find online, you will see that the archipelago looks indeed stunning.
However, getting to the archipelago takes time. This is also the main problem with Guinea-Bissau. Although the country is quite small, you need a lot of time if you want to explore it. For example, the boat ride for the Bissagos takes about half a day. That means it would only be worth it if you eventually spend at least two or three on the islands.
That’s why, my conclusion is that Guinea-Bissau is mainly a country for travelers, who have a lot of time and want to see beautiful places that don’t see tourists very often. So if I had wanted to see the Bissagos, I would have had to plan about four to five days in Guinea-Bissau.
For me personally, there was still a little disappointment in Bissau. I booked a hotel run by a Swiss man. Although many Swiss love to emigrate abroad, the choice of their future home country usually falls on Spain, Australia or the United States. Or any other country in the western world.
Guinea-Bissau, however, is a rather odd choice. I would have been very interested to know what made this gentleman decide to continue his life in Guinea-Bissau. Unfortunately, I did not see him once during my stay and so I will never know.
Guinea-Bissau will remain in my memory as the country that somehow doesn’t really fit into West Africa. It is too quiet here for that and the people are far too unobtrusive than in countries such as the Gambia or Nigeria.
Reality caught up with me again at the airport when another bribery attempt happened. The three gentlemen who searched my luggage asked me several times if I would buy them a coffee. When I played dumb, one of them said “money, money!”, which I simply answered with “no, thank you”. In the end, Guinea-Bissau is still a West African country.
