Entering Liberia was one of the greatest feelings we had on our trip. Finally everybody spoke English! All the countries we had been in till now they didn't speak a word of it and we had such a hard time communicating with the locals. So entering the border we just stood and talked with the guards for many hours, just because we finally could. The first night we spent in front of the house of a guy we met at the border. Knowing very little about the Liberian people and having heard that there are a lot of kidnappings in the neighbouring country this aswell became a sleepless night. We didn't know if he was friendly or wanted to rob us. Turned out he just wanted 10 USD next day and entertainment for the whole family. (As they sat outside our tent an watched us for 3 hours).
Liberia is a very weird country. It was founded by american slaves who were given a land in Africa by the americans. So e verything in the counrty was copied of the US. They mainly used US dollars, they had a DEA and a homeland security office, all the policemen had the same uniforms as in the US and even the products in the supermarket were american. They even had old imported schoolbusses from the US. We really enjoyed it as it was a very special mix of the african chaos and the american order. After one night by the border we drove straight to the capital Monrovia to get our next visas. Monrovia was the most expensive city so far, the prices were a place inbetween german and norwegian prices. The big amount of imported goods and the strong USD currency made it a very little affordable three days. Anyways we just had to live with it and we had a good time relaxing at our hotel and eating lebanese food at the local restaurants. For some reason there is a big lebanese community in Liberia, and a lot of places are owned by the lebanese. Even supermarkets sell water imported from Lebanon (which doesen't even taste good). But I felt a little bit at home with all the Lebanese products. (I'm a quarter lebanese to those of you who don't know).
So we got both our Ivory Coast and Ghana visas here and we were ready to go after the three days.
