Our last week in Ghana has been very good. We ran into Joanie and Phil again in Hohoe (pronounced Ho-hway). A wonderful small town in the Eastern Volta region of Ghana. We enjoyed a couple of evenings of food and conversation with them, and they very generously let us borrow their cell phone so we could make phone calls home. Surprisingly Ghana has been the hardest country for us to call home from. There are no working pay phones, the phones in the street (basically a phone on a table) are few and far between for long distance calls and they [View Full Entry]

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Remember the saying about best laid plans?? Well, once again we were foiled by Africa! We dutifully arrived at the bus station in Tamale at 4 am (after yet ANOTHER taxi failed to show up!) and then stood around for almost 2 hours before our bus finally left, packed to the rafters. We arrived in Makongo and followed the crowds to the dock and are told the ferry will come shortly. We were pretty excited by this, ad it means we will be on the lake earlier than we thought. Since it is a hot, sunny day and there is no [View Full Entry]

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Warning - LONG BLOG ENTRY BELOW - As the last blog indicated, we left Banfora in Burkina Faso and made our way to the northwestern corner of Ghana. Although one of our general rules is "don't arrive after dark", sometimes it is out of our control as it was with the bus from Banfora to Hamale. We arrived into Hamale just as darkness descended to find out that there is a Hamale, Burkina Faso and a Hamale, Ghana. We, of course, are still in Burkina Faso and need to find our way in the darkness to Ghana. Luckily there are plenty [View Full Entry]

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Banfora, in the southwest corner of Burkina Faso, is unlike any terrain we have seen thus far. Large fields of irrigated sugar cane, lakes, waterfalls, green fields and Drumheller-esque rock formations. The bus journey was uneventful, except for the young man that I was sitting next to, who spoke excellent english and was explaining the sugar cane crops to me. As we neared Banfora he told me he was getting married the following Saturday and he invited us to his wedding! We would have went, but we didn't stay long enough in Banfora. We arrived into Banfora with the four guys [View Full Entry]

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Back in Bandiagara after the Dogon trek. We needed a day to get caught up on laundry and repacking. We opted to sleep on the roof back at the Hotel Satimbe, rather than the cell-like room, but it was different with the noise of a larger town and more lights. In the courtyard at the hotel we met Adele and Anne-Spohie, both from France. They are travelling separately, on bikes, but have hooked up for this leg of their journeys. It was nice to share the hotel with fellow travellers for a change, we really enjoyed visiting with them, regardless of [View Full Entry]

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Pays Dogon. Dogon Country. Beautiful. Spectacular. Surprising. Our trek into the Dogon Country started early from Bandiagara with a drive to Djiguibombo (delightfully pronounced Jiggy-boom-bo). After a brief tour of the town we started our walk to the edge of the Falaise de Bandiagara (Bandiagara Escarpment) and then down the escarpment to the plains below. Our group of two had grown to four with the addition of Yo and Mama. Yo is from France and Mama is from Burkina Faso. They speak almost no English and we speak spotty French. Our guide, Lac, helps us to translate sometimes, but for the [View Full Entry]

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Sorry about the lack of bicycle story from the last blog, we were encountering computer difficulties and in the mad dash to finish before our time ran out, I totally forgot about the cycling adventure. On our last day in Segou we hired bikes and imagined a full day of exploring the area on bikes - mountain bikes, as the roads are almost all sand. Once again, we forgot we were in Africa. The bikes arrive, and one is not bad at first glance, thick tires, sturdy frame, 21 gears. The second bike - for the girl - is straight out [View Full Entry]

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The plan was to take the train from Tamba to Bamako. But you know what they say about plans ... We wanted to take the train because we were ready for a different sort of transportation, besides the bone jarring, jam-packed, dusty, sweaty minibus travel we have been doing for so long. After inquiring several times at the Tamba train station, and having our hotel call the station, we found out that the scheduled Saturday train may come on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or ... Once we were sure that it would not be arriving on Saturday or Sunday, we [View Full Entry]

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Unfortunately I think the combination of travelling all day on a bumpy road, arriving after dark, finding out that the boat tours in Georgetown were very expensive and PMS, I did not enjoy Georgetown at all. When we left to explore, a young man from the hostel accompanied us and was to be our guide. As soon as we walked out the "Toubab!" "Toubab!" started and hands out for money. It was all a little overwhleming for me and after about 15 min I headed back to the hostel and just stayed inside the room and read. I needed a break [View Full Entry]

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We ended up staying in Serekunda one more day, we were lazy and decided to take a lazy day before heading upland. Serekunda was the longest we've stayed anywhere since Mohammedia in Morocco when I was sick. We needed the break, and we enjoyed Serekunda and our little motel. Our plan was thus: we would travel to Tendaba Camp first, then onto to Georgetown (now called Jangjang-Bureh). Just to explain the transport system a little - to catch a bush taxi (for long journeys) you must get to the right "Garage". Each destination has it's own Garage and they are almost [View Full Entry]

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