A glimpse at Equatorial Guinea: A day at the beach

This past Saturday we ventured to one of the very few tourist attractions Bioko has – an old wooden church in a small village called Batete. The whole area used to be cacao plantations back when that was the island’s main export (now replaced by oil). A lovely drunk man gave us a short tour then proceeded to sit in our bus afterwards; he was expecting us to give him money. When he left, we were off to the town of Luba where we ate lunch and went to the beach. Once again our lunch took about two hours, we waited a good hour and half for our food. Guineans really do take their time. I ordered porcupine, which is common to eat here – you can buy it in the central market. I also tried my friends’ duiker, which is a type of small deer. The porcupine was pretty good, once I got past the really thick, fatty skin. Some portions just tasted like beef, others tasted like, well, porcupine. It had a slight tang to it I guess I would say. The duiker was really good too.
After lunch we headed to the beach. It was beautiful, with soft, smooth sand, lots of cool seashells, and palm trees lining the shore. It was extremely disappointing to see the mass amounts of garbage and broken glass, though. There was literally a wall of garbage a couple feet high at one portion of the beach. The water was really nice and warm, so we swam for most of the day. The beach is my favorite place to be so I couldn’t have been happier. There were people barbequing and selling Cebu kebabs, to which one of our UNGE partners treated us which was really nice. It was extremely delicious, covered with mayo (of course) and an extra-spicy sauce. After watching the sunset, we called it a day and headed back to Malabo for the night.