Next on our itinerary was the Monday Market in the city of Djenne. The city is famous for having the largest mud structure in the world (the mosque of course) and a very large market on Mondays. It was here that we've seen more tourists than we have anywhere in West Africa. Literally every tourist in Mali must have arrived in Djenne at the same time to see the Monday Market. To be quite honest, after wandering the market for a while, we were both a little disappointed in what the market had to offer. With all the hype surrounding it, [View Full Entry]

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Following Timbuktu we made the drive back to Sevare (near Mopti) with the repaired truck along the same road responsible for the damage (there is only one road to Timbuktu). We made it without any major consequences this time. From Sevare we drove to the village of Bandiagara and onwards to the village where we left the truck once again to start our 3 day trek through Dogon country. To quote Wikipedia: "The Dogon are a group of people living in the central plateau region of Mali, south of the Niger bend near the city of Bandiagara in the Mopti region. [View Full Entry]

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Hello from Timbuktu! To be quite honest, Timbuktu was nothing more than a small dusty city filled with Mosques, but hey, we made it! What we will most remember about Timbuktu, is the unbearably loud chanting that started at about 4 am and continued on until about 6am from the various Mosques near to where we were camping. The chanting signals prayer time, in the Muslim religion, they pray 5 times daily, and depending on the cities that we have been to, sometimes the Mosques project loud chanting to signal prayer time up to 5 times through out the day. This [View Full Entry]

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At Mopti we said goodbye to the truck for 3 days and boarded our pirogue which would take us up the Niger towards Timbuktu. If all goes well, the truck should be there to meet us on the other side. Lonely Planet suggests 4-5 days for this trip and we planned to do it in 3 which means long days crowded on a boat barely big enough to fit all 26 people. The only space saver was that up to 5 people could sit on the roof which allowed the people down below to stretch out a bit. Our crew consisted [View Full Entry]

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The way I see it, people do not usually come to Africa for the cities, they come to see the people, hear the music, enjoy the scenary and observe the wildlife. Having said that, we have decided that our time in the big cities is time for us to update the blog, go through our photos, do laundry, relax, and chill out away from the everyday rigours of the truck and group travel. We did not rush around seeing all there was to see in Bamako, we did, however manage to make it to the Maisons des Artisans, however trying to [View Full Entry]

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On the way to Bamako, we passed through a morning farmers market, so we decided to stop and take a quick look around. It was so much fun to watch and look at all the food and vegtables they were selling. [View Full Entry]

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Another long driving day heading to Bamako...to break up the driving, Dave, the trip leader, stopped on the road beside a village, and was going to go ask the 'Chief' if we could wander the village and take photos in exchange for a 'gift'. They were thrilled and a formal ceremony was held to introduce us (every one on the truck who wished to visit the village) to the Chief and the people of the village. Then we were free to wander around and take photos. The kids were so excited when we took their photo and showed it to them [View Full Entry]

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Since Dakar, our group has gotten substantially larger, the trip from Dover to Dakar there were only 10 of us, now there are 22 of us. The more the merrier, as they say. Cooking is definately more of a challenge now trying to figure out how much pasta, sauce, etc to make, portion sizes. I'm never actually satisfied that there was enough food to go around, until the last have eaten and I see that there is still lots of leftovers for the next cook group to use if they wish. Supper is by far the most stressful to make, because [View Full Entry]

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It took us two full days of driving on a cramped truck, in the heat, over a road that has so many pot holes, we averaged in some sections 20-30km/hour to get here, but once we got to the national park, it was totally worth it. We saw our first big african animal, the Hippo. We spent 2 nights here, so we were able to relax and enjoy the park. In the morning, we went for a nice relaxing boat ride along the river to spot Hippos, which are apparently one of the more dangerous animals in Africa. During the boat [View Full Entry]

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As a result of skipping an extra day in Nouakchott, we had a bonus day added to our itinerary. So we had the opportunity to take one day longer to get to Dakar and we chose to stay in Zebrabar national park just outside St Louis. Here we had a really relaxing time in the beautiful setting. We took an afternoon boat trip along the river and stopped on a sand spit where you could see St Louis off in the distance. There were literally thousands of crabs scurrying across the sand which made us all smile. [View Full Entry]

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