I've been a bit naive about vehicle registration in West Africa and really screwed up.

In 2015 I rode the west coast route to Cape Town, however due to problems with a couple of borders (ebola related) I missed out a few countries which I've since been dying to explore.

Along with three friends we decided to buy cheap local bikes (125cc chinese copies) in Abidjan in mid December and ride them to Banjul where we would fly home in early January. We would leave the bikes there, return in 6 months and ride them home to the UK. We've paid for our flights, and paid for and received all the necessary visas in advance.

However today I've just found that tourists cannot register vehicles in Cote D'Ivoire. Not only this but if we managed to get a local to register them in their name it takes 8-12 weeks. Even if this was done in time, whilst we could get a letter of permission and ride them in the country we wouldn't be able to leave the country with them not in our own name.

I know it was stupid of me to over look this. I've screwed up badly. Can anyone think of any creative ways to get round this situation? Buying bikes in the UK and flying them out is too expensive.

We can't get refunds on our flights, visas or all the kit we've bought. I'm determined to make this work some how.