Ivory Coast

Abidjan rises from a lagoon in a way that should not quite work, and does. It is West Africa's most unlikely skyline - towers, bridges, a neighbourhood called the Plateau that means what it says. Away from it, the country runs to cocoa and coffee and forest, and the pace changes completely. Cote d'Ivoire is a country of registers: urban and rural, French and local, coast and interior. Learning to move between them is the whole journey.

Our guide is being written from the ground up, with the time this place deserves.

We are still gathering the notes that make a guide worth keeping: Abidjan's maquis restaurants, forest lodge routes, cocoa country roads and the markets where the city's real cooking happens.