Greetings from Ghana

[xjohnparkx]

My name is John, I am currently a Peace Corps Volunteers in Ghana finishing up his 2 years of service and I am planning on buying a motorcycle with a friend of mine here in Ghana and getting up to Spain somehow. The countries that I would be going through are Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, Senegal, Mauritania, Western Sahara, Morocco and eventually into Spain. I have been searching and searching on this site for the past couple of hours and have seen that plenty of people have done this trip from Europe, but I have not seen any posts about doing this in the opposite direction. I have tons of questions, but I figured that I have to start somewhere so I will start with some initial questions with my first post on this site.

Carnets
To go through any of these countries will we need carnets? I have read that Ghana and Senegal are the only ones that actually need them, but I have also read that many people do ok without the paperwork. Where can we get the documents as US citizens here in Ghana? Any advice regarding this would be extremely helpful. If it helps at all we would be buying the bikes here in Ghana.

Insurance
Where can we purchase this and do we actually need to purchase this? Are the ones that you get at the border sufficient?

Selling the bikes
We both plan on selling the bikes before getting to Spain and were wondering where the best places to sell them would be. I came across Mauritania and Mali as 2 places that we can do this easily. How easy would it be to sell the bikes in Morocco and would you recommend this?

Paperwork
Besides visas, licenses and passports are there any other documents that are absolutely necessary?

Bikes
Any suggestions for novice riders doing this type of trip? What type of bike and how many cc's?

License
I see that there are some people that are staying in Ghana and was wondering how easy it would be to get a moto license here in Ghana as well as an IDP. And where we can get these documents. We both do not have motorcycle licenses and were planning on going without them, but it looks like a good idea to get them. Have people had experience riding through these countries without a moto license, but had US driver's license and IDP?

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you very much.