Not by boat. Not even by train, though that is quite an attractive option. The way to cross a border is to walk. We had set out from the Ivorian capital, Abidjan, from a section of town called Treichville, where small white hatchbacks hire out to go almost anywhere. The Ivorian border town, Noe, bustled with the organized chaos of a frontier.
Cars awaited hire and vendors hawked all manner of odd items.
A smiling man with a tiny mobile phone that doubled as a calculator affixed himself to us. If it ever had upholstery, it was during the Eisenhower administration. The driver's brother and his friend piled in with us. At first, the road to Biriwa Beach featured remnants of what may have been pavement and potholes brimming with brown water. We tackled it like a game of Pole Position, winding a serpentine helix, sometimes veering off into the brush to avoid fissures that could have swallowed us whole.