Trip Report: Liberia
Visited in March 2023
Roberts International Airport in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, is notorious for its safety flaws, mainly caused by power outages. A few years ago, a Royal Air Maroc plane could not land at night because the runway and control tower lights went out. After an hour of circling over the airport, the plane continued to Sierra Leone because technicians had not managed to get another generator running.
Stories like this led Air France to suspend its route to and from Liberia, reportedly after several warnings toward the Liberian Ministry of Transport. Brussels Airlines, the last European airline with flights to Liberia, also suspended flights to Monrovia for several weeks in September 2022. In addition, all flights from Monrovia to Brussels were also canceled from Jan. 1-12, 2023, with no reason given. These incidents caused me to travel to Liberia with a certain amount of nervousness.
Liberia was my last stop on a one-week trip to Africa, in which I had visited Ghana and São Tomé & Príncipe before. The fact that I wanted to visit Liberia at all in combination with these two countries was a result of my poor planning in the past. Actually, the best way to get to Liberia is to travel overland from either Sierra Leone or Côte d’Ivoire. However, for whatever reason, I had skipped Liberia on both visits to these two neighboring countries.
Liberia is a country that is poorly connected to other countries in terms of flight routes. Just six destinations are served from Monrovia and five of them are from countries I have already been to. Ghana was my only remaining country that has direct flights to Liberia. That’s why I knew that if I ever traveled to Ghana, I would have to go to Liberia as well. And if anything went wrong on that trip, the consequence would have been that I would have had to fly from Europe to West Africa again just to visit Liberia. It would have been both an expensive and time-consuming undertaking.
Due to the unreliability of the flight connections to and from Roberts International Airport, I also knew that I might have to find a plan B at short notice in order to get home again. It would have been difficult via a neighboring country, since none of them is visa-free for me. As I had a double entry visa for Ghana, it would have been the easiest option to fly there first and from there to Europe. So as you can see, a lot of stressful thoughts for an eventuality that likely wouldn’t even happen at all.
That was not the only reason that Liberia was a country that I somehow didn’t fancy at all. On the one hand, Liberia is not necessarily a country known for its many tourist attractions. On the other hand, West Africa is an exhausting region and the strip from Guinea-Bissau to Liberia is probably the hardest part of it. I’m thinking, for example, of the legendary drive from Guinea to Sierra Leone. A drive that Google Maps said will take 4 hours or so, but in the end took 19 hours.
At the same time, Liberia is a country that does not have the reputation of being the safest. Although there are no travel warnings, the Departments of Foreign Affairs of most Western countries call for extreme caution during visits. The crime rate is high and armed robberies occur frequently, especially in front of international hotels and on the way to and from Roberts International Airport.
Based on this, I saw Liberia more as a mandatory stop and not as a leisure trip on my journey to all countries in the world. Therefore, I planned to spend exactly one day in Liberia and no more.
The ride from ROB to Monrovia
My ASKY flight from Accra landed in Monrovia on a Saturday evening and the procedure at the airport was relatively pleasant. I showed the visa I had ordered through the embassy in Berlin (price: €75, got my passport back in less than 10 days) and received the stamp in the passport. Welcome to country no. 147!
Roberts International Airport is called the airport of Monrovia, but it is not really located in the capital but 56km away. It is even located in a different state/county. According to Google Maps, the ride from the airport to the city center takes 90-105 minutes depending on the traffic.
A few months before me, Andrea Ungaro, a fellow traveler visited Liberia, through whom I got the contact of a taxi driver. The driver’s name was Solomon and he drove Andrea for 35 USD each way from the airport to the city and back. When I contacted Solomon, he demanded 50 USD each way. I said that this was a bit steep, he argued that he had a bigger car now and that’s why he was charging a higher price (as if I cared about the size of the car).
In the end we agreed on 40 USD each way and so I left the airport around 18.30 towards Monrovia. The sunset was already approaching, but it was still possible to notice that the scenery in Liberia was quite beautiful. At the same time I saw that the road to and from the airport was a big construction site. Apparently, they want to build a multi-lane road here.
I was optimistic that I could be in Monrovia around 8pm. Google Maps showed no significant traffic, however, my contact in Monrovia, whom I will introduce later, was rather pessimistic. He told me I should count on two to three hours. I referred to Google Maps, but he said I should not trust this app too much. Fair point. I realized over the years that Google Maps is quite useless in West Africa when it comes to distances.
The closer we got to Monrovia, the worse the traffic got. The road had one lane in both directions, but because this narrow road was full of car, many cars were driving next to the road. At the end of this article you can find a video how this looks like during daylight. But at some point this trick didn’t work anymore, because even next to the road there was no gap. The traffic came to a complete stop.
In the meantime, the sun had set and it was completely dark. It was 8pm, I should have arrived in Monrovia by now. Instead, we were still far from the capital. According to Google Maps, we had covered about 60% of the distance. It turned out that my contact in Monrovia was not pessimistic but realistic. There was absolutely nothing happening here. It’s not that we drove at walking pace, we didn’t move forward a centimeter in an hour. Honestly, I have never seen a traffic jam like this before.
Solomon didn’t talk much and when he did, I understood only about a third of what he said. The national language in Liberia is English, but people speak with a dialect that was quite difficult to understand, at least for me. At the same time, Solomon didn’t seem to understand my English, so when we did talk, we had to repeat each sentence about three times.
“What do you think is the worst case scenario here? What’s the latest we can arrive in Monrovia?” I asked, looking at the clock. “2am,” was Solomon’s reply. And all I could think was, “Dude, are you kidding me right now?!” It was 8pm. Worst case scenario, it would be another six hours after we had already been in the car for two hours already! I was hungry, I was thirsty, and my mood was starting to get really bad.
After an hour, we were moving forward again and I arrived at my hotel at 10pm. That’s at least four hours earlier than the worst case. Nevertheless, the journey from the airport to the hotel took 3.5 hours. 3.5 hours for 56km! This is so typical for West Africa. Fortunately, the hotel restaurant still prepared a meal for me, although the kitchen was already closed. So at least, I did not have to go to bed hungry.
One day in Monrovia
I mentioned that I had a contact in Monrovia. Just like Solomon, he was recommended to me by Andrea. He is a young man named Windell who regularly meets travelers who visit his home country. Since I like to see places together with a local, I also asked Windell if he wanted to meet me. He was in. We agreed to meet in the lobby of my hotel at 8am. He also brought along his buddy Abu, with whom he is running a project that I will write about later.
But first he wanted to show me the sights of Monrovia, of which there are… not many. The main attraction of Monrovia is an abandoned hotel, the Ducor Hotel. From my hotel we took a cab to the main street of Monrovia, from where we walked to the hotel. Since it was Sunday morning, the city was deserted. I could see a few people on the street, but apart from that most of the city seemed to be sleeping.
In front of the hotel gates there is a statue of Joseph Jenkins Roberts, the first president of Liberia. The statue tells at the same time the history of Liberia and it is mindblowing: Liberia was originally a project to settle former slaves from the USA on the African continent.
When the former slaves from the U.S. arrived in Liberia, they encountered a native population that had lived there forever. This quickly led to conflicts that still characterize the country today. In fact, the former slaves, who lived according to American culture, behaved like masters and wanted to dominate the natives. Just imagine, former slaves coming to a new country and making the natives their slaves. How crazy is that?
Liberia’s recent past has also been quite turbulent. The country experienced two civil wars in the late 20th century that claimed about 200,000 lives. In addition, about half of the population had to flee the country. The roots of this civil war go back to the conflicts between the American immigrants and the indigenous people. Just as with Sierra Leone, it is probably these sad episodes that most people in the West associate with Liberia.
The Ducor Hotel dates back to before the civil wars and it used to be the best hotel in Liberia, maybe even in West Africa. Today it is a tourist attraction, although it must be said that you can’t just go there and walk in. You need a security guard to unlock the gate of the hotel for you and then show you around. Fortunately, Windell took care of this and we could enter the premises.
The Ducor Hotel belonged to the Intercontinental Hotels Group and was built by an Israeli construction company in the 1960s. In the following years, statesmen such as Nelson Mandela, Haile Selassie and Robert Mugabe slept in this hotel. The most memorable appearance at the Ducor Hotel was probably Libya’s late dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi. He allegedly swam in the hotel’s swimming pool with a gun strapped to his swimsuit.
The security guard led us to the roof of the eight-story hotel, which gives the impression that it could collapse at any time. From the top you have a tremendous view over Monrovia.
The Ducor Hotel is a pretty awesome sight in my opinion. On the one hand, you get a cool history lesson about Monrovia in the 60s and 70s. On the other hand, the Ducor Hotel is probably the place from which Monrovia looks the most beautiful. But as I said, you need connections to be able to visit this place.
From the Ducor Hotel, Windell took me to West Point, the largest slum respectively township in Liberia. We walked there through very narrow alleys littered with puddles, which passed between the shacks of the more than 30,000 inhabitants. Somehow I always feel a little invasive when I visit places like this, so I held back on taking photos.
The people were very nice though. The children were waving when I passed through. One man allowed himself a joke and asked me where the rice was, as if I were some World Food Program employee. So it wasn’t like there was anything to feel uncomfortable about. Nevertheless, places like this are not exactly easy to bear either. Here you can see how the poorest of the poor of this world live.
The reason why we went there was the project of Windell and Abu called Four Hunger. They have made it their mission to provide food and clean sustainable water for the residents of this community. They have now already built three wells in West Point, and plan to build 25 to 35 more.
For me it was the first time to see such a project live and I was highly impressed by the work these two guys do here. You have to imagine, here in this township people live without tap water and contaminated water can cause epidemics. The Four Hunger project is therefore making an extremely important contribution to this community. By the way, you can leave a donation on their website. Since I have seen the project with my own eyes, I can assure you that the money will be used in the right place.
After West Point we visited some other places of Monrovia, for example Providence Island. However, as I mentioned before, Monrovia doesn’t really have many sights. The city looked to me like a typical West African city, which was actually quite similar to the capitals of other countries in the region.
Another highlight for me were the many election posters of George Weah, the president of Liberia. George Weah is a former professional football/soccer player who played for teams like AC Milan and Paris Saint-Germain. When I was seven or eight years old, he was one of the best strikers in the world. However, according to Windell, he is more of a symbolic president than a real statesman. After all, Weah was the only positive thing to come out of Liberia in the 1990s, which makes him an icon even today.
Shortly after noon, I was already back at my hotel. Our sightseeing tour took only about four or five hours in the end. Once again, this is because Monrovia is not a city with many attractions. However, the places I saw were impressive and without Windell it would not have been possible to visit them.
Epilogue: back to Roberts International Airport
When I asked Solomon after the 3.5-hour drive from the airport to the hotel when we should drive back the next day so that I could safely catch my flight at 21:35, he suggested 3pm. And once again, I was like: dude, are you f***ing serious? My plan was to leave at 5pm, but he eventually convinced me that we should go at 4pm. Better safe than sorry, if it should take over three hours again.
This time it actually didn’t go that long. I think we actually made it after 2h15. Nevertheless, also this time there was a lot of traffic on these super bad roads. Also, I want to share with you the video of how many cars are driving next to the road:
At the airport I had to kill about four hours until departure, which I did in a restaurant next to the terminal. A waitress was so nice and made me a hotspot on her phone. The people in Liberia really made a very friendly impression on me. By chance, I learned at some point that you have to be at the gate two hours before departure. I already did the check in online, but since I still had to get the boarding pass, I thus also rushed into the terminal.
There was absolute chaos inside the terminal. Seriously, I have rarely seen such a poorly organized airport. At least I was allowed to keep my hand luggage, although when weighing at the counter instead of the allowed 7kg the scale showed 14kg. My fear that something can go wrong with the flight, then fortunately did not come true. The Brussels Airlines flight left Monrovia on time at 21.35. Thus, this short chapter in my 147th country was already over again.
So, how was Liberia? I will remember Liberia for two things in particular. On the one hand, because of the miserably long drive from the airport to the city, which I have never experienced anywhere else. On the other hand, because of Windell, an incredibly inspiring personality. Certainly one of the most memorable guys I have met on my travels.
Apart from that, Liberia was unsurprisingly the most American country in Africa due to its history. Even the flags of the two countries are similar, and Liberia also has the dollar as its currency. The Liberian dollar, however, although you can pay with USD practically everywhere. Monrovia was by the way named after the fifth US president James Monroe.
I must admit that I had a good time in Liberia. This mainly thanks to Windell, who made it possible for me to see the Ducor Hotel and West Point. I am not sure how my conclusion would have turned out if I had spent the time in Monrovia alone. Chances are my stay in Monrovia would have been rather uneventful.
Will I ever return to Liberia? Not anytime soon. Liberia, as I wrote earlier, is not that well connected to the rest of the world, and I have other countries in that region that I need to visit first. They are Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, probably the most difficult and also most dangerous countries in West Africa.
Anyway, Liberia was a good end of this one-week trip. I had a few days in Ghana, which were alright. After that, I spent two days in São Tomé & Príncipe, which I found an amazing country. And as the grand finale, I had one more day in Liberia, which turned out to be way better than expected.
Edit: a few months after my trip, someone else I know used Solomon for the airport transfer and called it “taxi from hell”. Not only did they have a flat tire, at a checkpoint it also turned out that Solomon had no license. My friend had to bribe the police so that they could continue the journey. TiA! Because of this incident, I removed Solomon’s phone number from this blog.
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