After spending close to three years in Burkina I finally made it to a few other countries in the area, but it wasn’t quite the trip I had planned on.
Starting in December, Didier and I started making plans to visit Togo and Benin. It would be Di’s first time to see the ocean and lazy days sitting on the beach, swimming, reading, lazily hanging out was what was on the docket. Other Americans had told me to stay at a small hotel called Coco Beach that sat right on the ocean outside of Lomé and featured little bungalows for as cheap as five mille ($10) a night.
We hopped on a bus out of Ouaga at 5am on Sunday morning ready for a 16 hour ride into Lomé. A lot of our daylight hours we would be winding through Togo and it would be a great way to see some of the country. We made it across the border around noon and were looking forward to the rest of the ride. Then things started to change. About 30 mins after the border our bus broke down and we ended up sitting on the side of the road for about 4 hours. We made it back on the road but our hopes seeing Togo in the daylight were fading fast as the sun set. After many more hours we made it to the outskirts of Lomé around 2am when our bus decided it didn’t want to go any further. Sitting in the mass humidity we waited for another 2 or so hours until a replacement bus picked us up and took us the rest of the way. We finally arrived 24 hours after having started.
Not quiet the way we wanted to start the trip but we had the beach to look forward to so things were still looking up. Our taxi drove us about 9 km outside of the city center to our hotel…which we quickly discovered had been torn down for reconstruction the week prior. I am not sure about Di, but after the bus ride, little sleep, and then finding out our hotel didn’t exist was not leaving me at my most emotional high. We drove around for a while a finally found a hotel that was ONLY 3 times what we were planning on paying.
Luckily after this point the trip fell a bit more into place. Due to spending more money then planned on hotels we ate cheaply and cut a few little trips here and there but overall had a nice time.
In Lomé, we visited the port (by my wonderful skills of talking out way past guards), visited the marché, and of course hit the beach.
After two days we grabbed a cab for the boarder into Benin and onto the town of Ouidah which is known for its Voodoo festival and also for being a major slave port back in the day. We played the tourists and hired a moto guide who took us to the Sacred Forest (filled with statues and a tree that used to be a man), the Python Temple (yes I held a python) and showed us the road that was used to transport the slaves that is now marked by statues along the way and ends on the beach at the Door of No Return. [We were also informed that they let the pythons out every night to feed around the village…comforting thought when we were out later]
After Ouidah we continued on to Cotonou to find transport back to Burkina. Our choices were to leave at 8pm the night we got in on a little bush taxi or wait until the following evening at 8pm for a real bus. The choice wasn’t that hard. We made the most of our time in Cotonou by visiting the marché (immense but otherwise not so nice), trying out new beers and watching the craziest traffic either of us had ever seen.
Friday night we boarded the bus for an uncomfortable ride back to Burkina but made it safe and sound back home.
