Bonjour, We dragged ourselves away from the hustle of Cotonou on Tuesday and in two legs (first stopping at Abomey) are now in Parakou. The journey north, facilitated by the now mandatory Peugeot 504, was without hassle (by African standards) and we soon remembered how different things are up here as the thick forests petered out into harsh, quite barren scrubland. Things are definately heating up with the hot, dry air doing little to cool the cramped interior of the 50 year old car (4 in the back, 2 in the fornt passengers seat). It will not be far north now [View Full Entry]

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Got up today at 6:30, late for this part of the world, and spent our first full day in the chaotic city of Cotonou and I can safely say that I love it. We arrived yesterday and were dropped by our Peugeot 505 taxi along with the 8 other passengers in the ultimate nightmare location with a backpack. Stood on a traffic island with roads on three sides it all bulging with battered cars and a million 'zemi-johns' (motorcycle taxis). We walked one way, tried to cross then gave up and repeated this farce with the other three roads all the [View Full Entry]

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So we left Ghana a while back now and after entering Togo on a river-bed type road where the delapidated border posts were filled with mountains of corn on the cobs (don't ask - I don't know) we have headed south through Togo and then crossed at a slightly more uptempo border into Benin where we now reisde in the eastern most town and capital of Porto Novo. Togo was very small but very beautiful, the town of Atakpamé our highlight which was a small town with a real French colonial feel to it, Peugeot 504s rolling down the cobbled streets [View Full Entry]

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Well we have finally managed to prise ourselves away from the relative comfort of southern Ghana and are now residing in the hotter, dustier, less developed north of the country with our route on Sunday taking us east across the border into Togo. We made it here on the Yapei Queen, a ferry which for the last 40 years has been the only boat to undertake the journey from the south to the north of Lake Volta - the largest man-made lake in the world (Fact). Before we left we went on an educational trip to the hydroelectric dam responsible for [View Full Entry]

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Since we were with you last, and we are well aware that was an almost obcenely large amount of time we have done the following: -Been away for 100 nights -Crossed from Burkina to Ghana in a dugout canoe -Got shouted at by Ghanian immigration officals -Been in the road for 20 hours in one day -Waited 5 hours at the side of a dusty road for a lift -Walked with a travelling salesman complete with a sack of dried cows feet -Walked on a rope bridge 40m above the rainforest floor -Saw a chameleon -Wasted a week lazing on a [View Full Entry]

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We have continued south west and after some fruitless searching for elepants near a small town called Boromo we have arrived in Burkinas second city, Bobo. The biggest change is how the land looks. In what seems a ridiculously small distance the savannah which appeared around Ouaga has been replaced with lush forests and vegetation so thich you can barely see a few metres off the side of the road. The rainy season has really kicked in now too which is great for us as it means long respites from the heat and the chance to sleep without sweating. Another huge [View Full Entry]

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Well we succesfully made the crossing south and are now settling into a new city and a new country. Contrary to out expectations Burkina seems to be somewhat richer than Mali. Can't really find out if this is true or not but the paved roads, reliable electricity and the fact that Ouaga (Burkinabe capital) makes Bamako (Malian capital) look like an oversized shanty town. We've enjoyed our time here so far, we spent about a week in the most northen city where we met 30 Peace Corps volunteers. It was great to speak some English and even better to spash out [View Full Entry]

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Well we made it to Timbucktu and it only took 3 days by boat. Lying in the same position as our our slow moving, heavily laden old pinasse chugged it's way up the River Niger to the sounds of radios blaring, children crying and mosquitos buzzing. Timbucktu is a town which has been eaten alive by the desert. A guy we were talking to spoke mournfully of a time fifty years ago when the place was in the middle of a savannah and lions roamed around. In that short time the place has become drowned in sand and it is probably [View Full Entry]

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We safely arrived into Bamako international airport (a 2 storey little building) at the convenient time of 2:30am on Sunday. Luckily for us we met a French guy during the eight hour wait at Casa airport. He was going to visit his girlfriend who has been living in Bamako for some time. By some crazy chain of events we ended up at her house that night and now are renting a room in the next door apartment sharing with three French medical student who work at a local hospital. We live in a local area called Lafiabogou down a unpaved, uneven [View Full Entry]

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Don't be fooled by the exotic name, this is not a city where Humphrey Bogart sits in a bar muttering "of all the gin joints in all the world......et cetera". I haven't seen the film and I even have a mental picture what Casablanca is about, smokey charm and men with strong jaw-lines. Casablanca is not about this. It is a sprawling, filthy, sweaty African city which is a product of that all to frequent mass rural to urban migration. It is a city that gives the distinct impression that five million people have moved here and about four and a [View Full Entry]

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