36 hours in Abidjan

No pictures of Abidjan, so here's a scenic view of Tanzania

I got back to Côte d'Ivoire from Tanzania yesterday, after a very pleasant and interesting trip. Between news of Ebola's spread to Mali and the attacks in Ottawa, traveling was a bit tense. My flight was delayed again, but this time only by about an hour, and I got back to Abidjan without too much trouble. Tomorrow it's back to Daloa and back to work.

I would like to say I took this opportunity to explore Abidjan, the Pearl of the Lagoons, but most of what I saw was out of my window in the taxi or the hotel. I'm staying in the Plateau, the central business district, which is famously dead on the weekend. That's ok with me, I was tired from all the travel, and I don't have tv at home, let alone cable, so I spent most of my time watching the tube. Or, as I prefer to think of it, catching up on popular culture.

An agama lizard in Tanzania.
Reminds me of a slightly crabby Spiderman

This afternoon there was Rugby on one of the French channels, with Clermont-Auvergne hosting the Sale Sharks. It brought back lots of nice memories of going to watch Sale play at Stockport, in the Chabal days. Today unfortunately they got crushed, 35-3. But I had fun watching.

Otherwise it has mostly been coupé-décalé music videos (see, I told you it was cultural!) and 24 hour news channels, with a brief interlude of laundry detergent ads on Saudi TV - there's obviously a more diverse clientele here than I realized. I did escape the hotel for a couple of hours this morning to go to a mall, where I bought ziplock bags, a 9 volt battery and a handful of other things I have no idea where to find in Daloa.  I'll have come back again to get a bit of a better feel for the city. Fortunately that shouldn't be too hard.