Equatorial Guinea – America's Finest Ambassador

Intro

: The two main parts of present-day Equatorial Guinea (circled on this map of West and Central Africa) are the island of Bioko on which the capital Malabo is located and Río Muni which is the continental region of the country. Although I’m sure it would’ve been pretty interesting to check out Río Muni, Bioko had been the only stop on my visit to EG.

: An old map of Bioko Island (formerly known as La Isla de Fernando Póo) that I encountered during my 3-day tour there where my main base had been Malabo (shown on this map by its former name “Santa Isabel”). One of my main draws to this obscure nation that the majority of my family and friends have never heard of is that it’s the only – if we’re not including Western Sahara – Spanish-speaking country in Africa.

: A photo of my guide Augustin in front of Ureka Falls. When doing research on Equatorial Guinea, the only guiding service I could find had been Rumbo Malabo. I didn’t like their prices and in my email correspondence with them, they avoided several of my questions and just overall felt pretty shady to deal with, so I ended up cancelling my reservation with them. I decided I was just going to wing it and visit the island without a guide when one of my travel friends suggested that I try this guy Augustin that she was planning on using about a month after my visit. So, I ended up contacting him and liked his prices, his itinerary and his quick replies to all my questions on Whatsapp. He was a nice guy and a pretty good guide and is fluent in English and Spanish. If you ever find yourself in Equatorial Guinea, I’d definitely recommend his services. He can be reached at: +240 222667764

: Equatorial Guinea is not exactly an easy place to get to from North America. The best flight I could find from Chicago to Malabo was through Addis Ababa on Ethiopian Airlines. Since I’d have a layover lasting a few hours at the airport in Addis Ababa, I figured this would be the perfect time to get rid of this hundred-dollars-worth of Ethiopian currency that I had leftover from the last time I’d been in this area about a year beforehand. Since there’s pretty bad inflation in the country and their currency is constantly losing value, I knew I wouldn’t get a full hundred back but figured I could at least get like $70 or somethin like that. Well, that wasn’t the case. Much to my chagrin, the guys at the currency exchange told me they only sell Ethiopian Birr, they don’t buy it back. “But it’s your country’s money,” I said. They just shrugged and proceeded to ignore my existence. Since this money was of no use to me, I decided to use it to make some people’s day. I went around looking for employees cleaning the bathrooms and handed em stacks of Birr to thank em for their hard work doing one of the most disgusting jobs I can think of.

: I don’t normally stay at nice hotels, but kinda felt like splurging during the four nights I’d be staying in Malabo. Here is the room I stayed in at Colinas Hotel. It was nice to have what at first glance appears to be a nice clean air conditioned room to retreat back to after a day of sightseeing. That said…

: …if you really pay attention and look closely, there were some kinda roach-lookin things all over the place. For example, here’s one that’d been living in the bottom of my room’s wifi router.

: The town of Batete. And at the bottom of the photo is an example of the pretty nice paved roads they got all over the island – much nicer than most of the streets I regularly drive on in Chicago, at least.

: First off, I really like what that one dude’s shirt says – that guy in the gray. “A salt with a deadly weapon” and it’s got a salt shaker pointing a gun at a pepper shaker. But anyway, before going to visit Ureka Falls, my guide said we should first stop by to get a blessing from this local priest dude – the one in the middle of the photo hoisting up that little bowl thing. After saying some prayers in the local language, everyone was passed that bowl which contained some kind of holy water that we were supposed to swish around in our mouths and…I’m pretty sure I spit it out. I can’t remember. It was six months ago at the time of writing this.

: Hanging out with Augustin for a drink at his local bar after a day of sightseeing. Whereas the oil-rich regime of EG has a bunch of money, your average citizen does not

: A bottle of “puissant aphrodisiac” (powerful aphrodisiac) that Augustin keeps in the glove box of his vehicle just in case

: Swan pedal boats in the stinky putrid water of an extravagant tourist park called Hacienda Marcos where I was the only tourist

: Augustin said that locals from the smaller villages on the island pack their vehicles full of goods and drive them up to Malabo to be sold

: Not the easiest to see, but all the little dots in the sky are bats. Not sure where exactly they come from, but they come out every day around sunset and fill the sky over Malabo

: Around Bioko you’ll see men wearing shirts and women wearing dresses with President Obiang on them. Obiang has been president since 1979 when he overthrew the regime of his uncle whom he soon after had killed. He’s widely considered a brutal dictator and has dominated every election held since then having even, according to some reports, managed to get 103% of the vote in a certain district during the 2002 election.

: At the start of our last day cruising around the island, I saw these guys selling bush meat by the side of the road and asked Augustin to pull over so I could take a photo. Not the guy in the orange shirt, but a different guy that’d been behind the tree came over and started yelling at me and demanding that I give him money for photographing his dead animals. Augustin basically told him to suck it and we drove away

: One of the most interesting things I’d heard on the trip… As we were driving past it, Augustin told me that this hotel along the side of the main highway – Hotel Carmen Galaxy – is owned by some guy who is “muy brujo.” He’s like very into evil voodoo witch doctor typa shit. And they say that he causes a bunch of accidents that kill people on the highway right in front of his hotel (definitely not a direct result of all the reckless driving done around there). And apparently the guy has done it so much that “curanderos” (healers or good witch doctors, I guess) have confronted him about it and threatened to take him down if the killing continues. And it’s supposedly slowed down since then. I then asked why would he be causing these all these accidents – what’s in it for him? And Augustin explained that the deaths are like sacrifices that will result in him having more customers and making a lot more money which is a good business strategy, I suppose.

: I wonder if that hotel-owning witch doctor fellow is one of the guys always sending me these emails about traditional African secrets that can add a bunch of inches onto my pathetic shriveled-up white man penis

: One last selfie on Augustin’s phone before he gave me a ride to the airport

For a more thorough visual experience of Bioko, I invite you to check out the video below…