Last weekend I took a trip to Nimba Mountain with 20 of my mates from the ship. It was a long and exciting venture that had many memorable points. Nimba Mountain (1,752m) is the highest point in Liberia, Guinea, and Cote d Ivoire. The Nimba Mountain region is home to the highest concentration of iron ore in the world and used to account for 1 percent of the total iron production in the world, when the mines were operable before the Liberian Civil War, which spanned nearly two decades.
The Nimba Mountain region is home to many unusual plants and animals due to the collision of the rainforest and savannah climates that mix uniquely in this location. One such animal is a toad that happens to be the only known amphibian to give birth to young that undergo no post-birth metamorphosis. There are also chimpanzees that have been reported to use rocks as tools. While these primates are common on the Nimba range, commonly known as the “Guinea backbone,” none were seen on our trip, as we stayed mainly within the area of the abandoned iron mines and quarry.
We started our trip at the m/v Africa Mercy, the hospital ship that all of the members of the group work on. The Africa Mercy is the largest non-government owned hospital ship in the world and is owned and operated by the Christian non-profit organization, Mercy Ships. The Africa Mercy is docked at the Freeport in Bush Rod Island, Monrovia, Liberia. We took a tro-tro (African van/bus) to Ganta. We stayed the night at Daa Mo’s Guest House ($5 per person, per night. 10 rooms, owned and operated by Amos. He’s got another guest house just down the street, same price.)
NOTE: We rented the tro-tro for 600 USD for Friday-Monday. If you plan ahead, you should be able to get a tro-tro for around 400-500 USD, we had to make emergency plans because our original tro-tro was wrecked the day before. This was expensive, if you do this; it is cheaper and more comfortable to take a taxi, unless you don’t fill all of the seats on the tro-tro. We had a large group and only one of us had been to Ganta before, so we took the tro-tro to stay together.
We left Daa Mo’s the next day in our tro-tro and road to the washed out bridge about half an hour away. We crossed the river via log bridge to argue with some taxi drivers for another half an hour. They eventually gave us a reasonable price and we drove the next hour and a half with four stops; two immigration stops, one UN security checkpoint, one for some fried plantains (25 Liberian Dollars) and provisions for the climb (300 Liberian Dollars).
The last ten minutes of the drive to the mountain was slow because the taxis were in such bad condition and could barely handle the foothills. Once we arrived, we had lunch at the “blue lake.” This lake was formed when the impending civil war caused the mining company to panic and mine as fast as possible. A large wash out on the north side of the quarry was one of the results of their haphazard rush to make as much money as possible.
After we crossed the wash out, we had a nice, flat hike along the old mining paths about a third of the way up the mountain at which point they were disturbed due to natural causes. We stopped here for about half an hour to take in the view and catch our breath. A small group of us decided before the trip that they didn’t want to climb to the summit, so they turned back at this point to take a taxi back to the guest house.
The rest of us began the gruelling climb up the rest of the mountain. About a third of the total climb was scrambling and two thirds was on a path. There was a small vertical section just before the summit that had to be climbed. It was a little hairy, since the base of the cliff was not very flat or wide. Falling would have resulted in a tumble down at least 20 meters.
We made camp on the top of the mountain. I carried a 20 kilo tarpaulin in my pack for shelter. Carlos brought a tent for four people. We had a dinner of ramen noodles cooked over a Pepsi/Guinness can stove with Heet for fuel. After dinner, we got a nice thunder storm show, which Victor was kind enough to take some pictures of. The stars were also out in full force, with the exception of the occasional passing cloud interrupting the view.
The next morning, we had a brief rain storm which we weathered in the tarpaulin. We broke camp around 8:30 am and began our decent. At 11:00 am, we were met at the quarry by a security guard for Mittal Steel (the company owning the land we were on). He just wanted to make sure that we were all safe. Sometimes the locals in Liberia will try to pretend to be protecting you from some danger, existent or make-believe, in order to get some cash from you. I’m not so sure that this guy wasn’t trying that.
I talked to him for a while, since our taxi did not arrive for an hour or so. He had worked at the mine before the war, and fled to Guinea when the rebels arrived. He also told me that there were lions in the area. I was, and continue to be, highly sceptical of that remark. Maybe he meant mountain lions…
We took taxis back to the wash out, took our tro-tro back to Daa Mo’s to settle up with Amos. After paying Amos for the accommodations, we went to dinner in town (about 2 USD) and started the seven hour ride back to Monrovia. We stopped on the way to and from Ganta in a town called Kakata. It was a nice place to stop. If you are into diamond mining, you can find plenty of people around that know some titbits that you may find interesting. The same is true for a lot of Liberia, particularly near the borders…
The whole trip cost around 70 USD per person. Not a bad deal for a great West African experience.
