Entering was far less of a problem than I had been convinced to believe: numerous stories of 'problems' with documents had always required other travellers to pay a 'fine' to enter the country, though my own experience was one of a tiny crowded airport and an exit into humid humanity to an overpriced cab ride to Lagos Island. The city itself is two islands and a mainland, Lagos Island being the Nigerian business centre per se and Victoria Island being the pricier, more orderly expat island where the better hotels and bars and restaurants and embassies resided.
The stench of fuel is everywhere though this is the only similarity with that other third world oiling hole, Iraq: no, Nigeria is Africa's most populous country and Lagos its most populous city. A highway sits between a mess of towers and a short break of water and then the mishmash of oil rigs that obscure any general beauty that the shoreline here may have once offered. The road connections are good but there are quite simply too many cars: when oil comes out of your country, and is the sole reason for so much foreign interest in it to begin with, surely alternative means of transportation seem like a silly idea.
Though perhaps not so silly, as we soon discovered that the best way to navigate the urban environs of Lagos was on foot, dodging motorbikes and dented minibuses and surrounded by street kids and their grabbing prying hands. Invalids on skateboards would roll by soon after under the steamy afternoon heat and the market stalls would blare unnatural noises from broken speakers and the finely woven robes of West Africa mingled with Nigerians in suits who were surely squelching in such tight attire in this sauna of a city while the requisite throngs in rags provided further background noise.
Lagos at night is like a dazzling light, metaphorically speaking and certainly not literally. Some expat clubs might thump on into the early hours but like a lightswitch the crowded streets empty with amazing efficiency as the clock strikes twelve.
"Do not say anything!" our expensive driver snapped at us as we approached an impromptu roadblock - simply two soldiers with their ramshackle guns waving their flashlights around. The driver seemed nervous, then relieved when they let us pass and we could return from an evening on Victoria Island to our modest hotel in the heart of Lagos' chaos.
Options abound from here though I am bound to an early exit at the end of the week: I intend to be back here for the weekend and see this African city legendary for its nightlife, and in between I may venture forth to other destinations: perhaps Ibadan, a 'suburb' of Lagos one hour's north of the city that boasts a population of only eight million and serves as the third largest city in all of Africa; or east to Benin City and the more pastoral existence of people merely on the edge of this huge shanty town-cum-metropolis and see how they live so close yet so far to black Africa's largest city.
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