Benin
Is another nice easy country with beautiful sunsets. Busier than Togo but no hassles, I was very comfortable driving around on my own exploring. We had a relatively relaxed time here as things are very close together so not much driving ( not complaining…).
A lovely day trip to Ganvie a village built on stilts in the lake, apparently the firsts villagers “flew” across from the mainland to escape the slave traders! We also had one of the best school visits so far, dancing and singing greeted us on arrival so much fun (loved it, was getting hugs and kisses from the kids…). The DHL customer function was great, a tradition dance troop performed 11 dances with costume changes and a bit of Voodoo magic (really cool, except they brought me up to dance, I wasn’t cool…!).
Was able to get a visa in record time for one of our next countries ( won’t name the country in case I get them into trouble…). I wanted express service (everything is on this trip) which would have been 2-3 days but after some flirting and very bad French was able to get it on the spot and named my price that I wanted to pay for the visa!!!! They even called the next embassy I needed to visit and arranged things there for me. I love Africa! But there’s more on the visas….. The next day I found out my visa from SA had been issued incorrectly for this country and would expire before I got to the border, so back I went with a bit of makeup and brushed hair… Jumped the queue, got my visa right away and an escort to the Niger embassy. I must tell you the whole visa application process is one of the most stressful things for me, as we visit a new country each week we are continuously getting visas swapping passports to get the next one. We have had to miss two countries due to visa delays. If only we could get them all in advance life travelling through Africa would be a breeze, but most are valid from 1- 3 months from the date of issue, on a trip this long you have to get as you go along. So getting 2 countries visas issued in less than 12 hours made me extremely happy, and the 3rd I was able to get in 3 days ( it was a woman, my flirting didn’t work…).
At the moment we are only 5, as one of the cars is catching us up from Gabon. Normally the boys jump around sorting out the cars (they usually tell me “to leave it”), but as we are missing some of the guys I am sorting things out while the others film etc. The faces of the 7 guys at the garage in Benin as I was up on top getting of the car getting a new fuel filter, spare tyre and finding other bits in our boxes for them, explaining what I need in bad french and sign language then strapping it all down again was a picture (a very funny one!!!). Women don’t do “man’s work” here!! It was hectically hot up there happy to let the boys do it next time…
An amazing function on the beach, with a troupe of dancers that did about 10 costume changes really cool (Songi’s photos).
On our drive up through Benin we hit really bad roads for the first 130km, at one point we were directed to go through a little village. The village roads were tiny the Land Rovers just fitted through in places. The power lines were so low I caught Princess up in one and pulled it down, after borrowing a stick to unhook us the villagers said no problem they will fix it (so understanding, I thought we would be there all day making a plan).
Another guy started walking in front the cars directing us through the village as we were told to go straight ( no straight existed…), it seemed to be a long way so I asked Mohau to jump in the other car behind and brought the guy in front with me, in the end it was about 6-7km to the road ( he was going to walk us the whole way!!), A few times I tried to get him out of the car ( he didn’t speak any French) but he was having none of it, he had set himself a task to show us the way, he stayed in the car until we got to the main road again then jumped out very chuffed with himself, I think he just liked Princess… ( don’t worry I gave him some money to get home!). The town we were heading to that night was Abomey, were one of three kings of Benin used to live. We stayed in a backpacker type places all green and lush but didn’t sleep much. 1000’s & 1000’s of bats filled the sky at sunset and then decided to have a party in the trees above our rooms from about 1.30am what a racket, just what we needed before a long drive the next day, no sleep!
