We were there in February 2019 and it wasn’t a friendly welcome.

We approached from the Fderik side and followed well-worn trails. As we approached Pelican 16 we saw a new building and a “technical”, a 70 Series pickup with a .50 cal mounted in the rear. As we were pretty close at this point we approached being as friendly as we could be and 3 soldiers came out of the building and had us reverse about 30m from their compound - nothing more than a few rocks 20m from the building.

We tried chatting them in the English style (lol that never works, not even in England) the fluent Spanish speaker we had with us could hardly communicate with them and our bad Arabic made no headway. They were clearly pissed off at us and we’re in two minds whether to make us wait for El Jefe to turn up or just be rid of us.

This process took maybe 30-45 minutes. They weren’t aggressive but it wasn’t a great vibe and we felt bad being the Western tourists just showing up and expected to be entertained. Poor buggers were only doing their job at what must be a fairly crappy posting.

Anyway, while I’d love to have another go, I’d try and find a way of having permission (rather that forgiveness) as I think just turning up doesn’t present us in a good light. I have no idea how you’d get permission though...

HTH
Nick.

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Nick Taylor, a Colorado Mack'em
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