Benin and Ghana

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My first trip to Africa and I was really excited. It turned out that Benin was not really the Africa that I had pictured. The wildlife wasn't what I had naively exspected and the city was no way near what i had pictured in my head. Cotonou was a big, big city! I don't really know what had thought it would be like, but it was a big surprise to see how it was.

Theres not really much to see in the city, the main attraction must have been the port of no return. But it was indeed a bit weird to stand where millions of slaves had left the continent to go to a life without freedom in the so-called land of freedom.

But the city was so full of life, the whole country was. They say that africa never sleeps. And I think they right. Drive into the rural areas and stop the car at the most desserted place you can find, it will take about 5 minutes before locals will be standing around you, looking to see what you are up to. In center of Cotonou the traffic was crazy, I certainly didn't exspect that! If you been there I'll just have to say zemidjan and you'll know what i mean. The yellow taxi-bikes that seems to have outnumbered the population. The pollution was pretty heavy there, but still I really enjoyed the stay. We were living private so that part of it was just perfect.

But the trip wasn't only about Benin. We went to Ghana and just passing the borders at Benin/Togo and Togo/Ghana was amazing. People were coming from everywhere passing the border with whatever you can imagine. Big trucks and women carrying things on their head. As we were white we had to wait quite a while but it was entertaning, so no problem there. When we got to Elmina in Ghana we were accomodated in som very nice huts few meters from the beach. You could hear the ocean from the rooms! We were then in a park with crocodiles and in the rainforest on africas biggest suspension bridge. We were also in the "downtown" Elmina, seeing the old portugesee fort and a lot of fishing boats/canoes.

The trip was good, but still we had the feeling that we hadn't seen enough of Africa. We still hadn't been on a real safari, but we will return to Africa, for sure.

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