Pictures:
MALI: The Track from Timbuktu
MALI: Most impressive scenery of the trip
MALI: Timbuktu taxi - that's the vehicle behind the donkey and cart
BENIN: Ganvie stilt village
NIGER: Mosque in Niamey
BURKINA FASO: Mud mosque in Bobo
MALI: Our boat in Mopti
MALI: Niger River skyline
Six thousand kilometres, six border crossings and a lot of French bread later, Dan and I have completed our whistle stop tour of central West Africa. We had three and a half weeks and our aim was to make Timbuktu, taking different routes north and south and experiencing as much as possible on the way. This was a tall order and we were both surprised that we returned to Koforidua on the day we planned. The schedule rarely allowed more than a couple of nights in any one place and the need to use long distance coaches meant we rarely strayed from the major towns and cities en route. Our biggest regret was not being able to visit Dogon Country in Mali, one of the highlights of the region. Nevertheless looking back on it now we packed a lot in.
GHANA, 12 August – A bad start. The STC bus to Ouagadougou is fully booked. The next is several days later and will throw our plans out before we even start. Dan makes a quick call to Katie in Bolgatanga and we buy tickets for the following morning’s bus. We spend the rest of the day buying up the paltry quantities of CFAs held by all the foreign exchange bureaux we can find in Accra. We cross our fingers that the ATMs in Burkina will be cooperative. We have more success getting a visa from the Malian Embassy and finish the day with pizzas in the Tuesday two for one deal in Osu.
13 August – South of Techiman, one of the wheels on the bus had to be changed. We reach Bolgatanga at 1 am. The rainy season has created a moat around Katie’s house. It is pitch black and we narrowly avoid stepping in it.
14 August – Katie provides breakfast. Sarah fills us in on her recent trip to Timbuktu with Tim and shows us the Fulani hat she bought. The border crossing at Paga is very smooth and the shuttle bus to Ouagadougou is waiting. We reach Ouaga by four, later than anticipated but with the benefit of some proper sleep in Bolga. The hotel we used at Easter is full but we are directed to an alternative near the central mosque. We finish the day with pasta at Le Verdoyant.
BURKINA FASO, 15 August – We spend the morning at the excellent artisan centre. Dan buys a large mud cloth and I select a batik cloth of a baobab tree. After an early lunch time burger we get the coach to Bobo-Dioulasso. We are alarmed to find our rucksacks packed in a second bus. The staff will not move them, but we travel in convoy for most of the journey and we are quickly reunited with them on arrival. The French/Swiss owned Campement le Pacha provides a peaceful sanctuary and good pizza.
16 August – We visit the striking mosque and the well stocked market in the morning before heading to the Music Museum near the sports stadium. In the evening we eat at the nun run l’Eau Vive, but have to leave Les Bambou bar before the band get going because we have an early start for Bamako. We walk back to the hotel in the rain.
17 August – Take the bus to Bamako. The journey takes the whole day. At home I would never consider long distance bus travel, the kind of journey that takes you from London to Germany or Italy, but here it is the only practical option. An 8 hour journey seems comparatively short. We get our first glimpses of the Niger River at Segou. Africa’s third longest river (and tenth longest in the world) will be a significant factor for the next fortnight of our trip. We reach Bamako after dark. There is chaos at the bus station. We select a taxi which takes us across the city to our hotel. The Hotel Tamana provides me with my best night’s sleep. I am loathe to leave the cool cotton sheets.
MALI, 18 August – Our day in Mali’s capital starts with another ride across the city to buy bus tickets out again. We are amazed at how good the roads are, by comparison with Accra and how little traffic there is. We return to the city centre crossing the Pont des Martyrs on foot. It is Monday and the museums are shut. We explore the centre including the sprawling market. We do not linger at the fetish stalls. We buy provisons at a supermarket for later in the trip – canned paté becomes a convenient alternative to tuna and sardines for sandwiches. We hang around the shop waiting for heavy rain to clear.
19 August – Early starts have rapidly become a feature. Most buses leave at or before dawn. The taxi takes us to the wrong terminal but it is a short walk to the right one. The Mopti bus is nearly full. As we leave we are handed two croissants and a bottle of soft drink. This gives Gana Transport a bonus mark in our West Africa bus operator league table. We leave Bamako by the route we arrived and retrace our steps as far as Segou. Unlike Ghana, the villages we pass through are in different architectural styles depending on the tribe that they belong to. Some have round houses, others domed and others very square. The vegetation is still very green and not dissimilar to much of Ghana. The bus TV shows videos most of time but when it is within range of a town transmitter we see live coverage of the Olympics including the award of one of the British gold medals. The landscape is flat for most of the day but begins to become a little more interesting as we approach Mopti. We reach the town and park on the quay, just in time for the sunset. We take a taxi to our hotel. We book in for three nights.
20 August – We have been on the move almost constantly for the past week so a couple of days doing very little in Mopti provides a bit of a break. We have arranged onward transport to Timbuktu in Bamako and are keen to confirm arrangements here. We make contact with the company representative. I have capitaine, Nile perch for lunch. We are intrigued by the street photographer with his wooden box camera. We have our picture taken. He produces a negative print which he then photographs to produce a positive version. We rapidly get fed up with being pestered by people wanting to sell us things or take us on trips.
21 August – More of the same. A highlight is the chilled fresh mango juice served at Pas de Probleme hotel. We have lunch at the Bar Bozo with its excellent harbour location and its queue of touts waitng to sell us CDs, boat trips, jewellery, and so on. Just below us a man is washing his goats in the river.
22 August – The moment of truth. The question of how we will get to Timbuktu is resolved. Early in the morning, the rep takes me to the port on the back of his motor scooter. I pay the balance to the boat man and see our vessel, the Kerewane. We will be sleeping on the covered upper deck with a dozen or so other passengers. I return to the hotel, we pack and check out. We squeeze into a shared taxi back to the harbour. We are ferried out to the boat. The floor is corrugated iron. We are sold reed mats. These just about take the edge off the unforgiving surface with which we will be intimate for the next 48 hours. A family take the spot next to us. The children are polite and share their nuts with us. I return to the shore for a sack of water sachets. When I reach the spot where I left the boat it has gone and with it Dan, my phone, money, passport and belongings. For some inexplicable reason it has moved a hundred yards up the quay. I find it again and am ferried out to it. We look at neighbouring pirogues laden with people and cargo, with their prows dangerously close to the waterline. Our boat is no where near as full. We have been on board a few hours and little is happening. We resign ourselves to a long wait until it is full but then at 4 pm, the engine shudders into life and we sent off down the Niger. An hour out though we pull into the bank. Another boat joins us. An approaching sandstorm has been spotted. We drop the plastic sheeting and sit out the sand and subsequent rain. It is now nearly dark but we chug on for a few hours before mooring.
23 August – It is still dark when we set off. I have barely slept. The floor is very hard. I resolve to see whether sleeping along the corrugations is better than across them. Life on board is very straightforward. The view slowly changes as we head downstream. Most of it is water and sky. The banks of inland Niger delta make up only a narrow dividing strip. There are occasional settlements, a few trees, and herdsmen with cattle or sheep. The sky provides vast sunrises and sunsets. We stop near some villages. Small boats come out to collect goods or passengers and others come to sell food. The day is taken up with watching the view, reading, listening to MP3s, eating and attempt to sleep. A visit to the toilet is an adventure in itself. The toilet is located at the stern on the lower deck. To get to it involves walking down the top deck, climbing over the side and edging past the engine taking particular care to avoid the hot exhaust pipe. It is then possible to climb into the lower deck area and pass behind the curtain right at the end. The triangular toilet area has a hole between the floor boards and is dominated by the shaft to the rudder. The boat is constantly being bailed out and there is often water in this area as an added obstacle.
24 August – I sleep slightly better. I am more tired, I am more used to the surface or my change of orientation helped. We expect to reach Korioumé, Timbuktu’s port , around lunch time but there is no way of telling when we will actually get there. Questions to the crew solicit vague responses and gesticulation suggesting just around the next bend. When I get a signal, I phone and book a room. There are only a few people left on the Kerewane now. We reach the port as the sun is setting. We roll up our reed mats. They may be useful. A small boy with a pirogue expertly takes us the final leg. The Timbuktu ‘taxi’ is waiting to go to town and we take the two seats in the cabin. The luggage goes on the roof. We are met in Timbuktu by Kalil, a guide Sarah had met. He and an associate take Dan and me to our hotel on the back of their motor scooters. Before we know it, we are there. The rooms are small and reminiscent of cells but they are clean, tidy and adequately equipped. I am overwhelmed by the heat. Although I am tired I wake in the night and feel stifled by the hot dry blackness which engulfs me.
25 August – The hotel is right on the northern edge of Timbuktu. The Sahara literally starts at the edge of the compound. We have breakfast. There is a fresh pot of jam into which we make significant inroads. We have heard that getting out of Timbuktu is easier than getting in and know that we need to start planning this straight away. We head into town, view the Sankoré Mosque on the way and try to find transport. We soon become the target of two groups of tour guides – Kalil and Ali Baba who is linked to the man who arranged the boat from Mopti via his brother. Both are keen to arrange transport and trips into the desert with the Tuareg. Over the next couple of days we have various discussions with them and their associates before eventually agreeing to go with Ali Baba who promises are private 4WD with only four other passengers for a fee nearly twice the public service. We know the journey will be long and very uncomfortable and feel that the extra space will be essential. We buy local cloth in market. Dan orders three shirts which he collects at the end of the day. We have lunch at Restaurant Souvenir on the roof the indoor market. We spend the rest of the day accompanied by a young man who tells us he lives thirty days camel ride from Timbuktu. He is studying English and French in Timbuktu and wants to go to Bamako to train to be a doctor. He takes us to the other mosque, the artisan stalls and a Tuareg wholesaler. We dine at the Restaurant Amanar near the hotel for the second night.
26 August – I take mint tea with the boys who sit in the gatehouse at the hotel. We reach the half way point in the jar of jam but avoid the open can of processed cheese. The sky is grey and there are a few spots of rain as we walk into Timbuktu. We find the post office and have our passports stamped at the tourist office. We have lunch at the Poulet d’Or and meet Calvin from Brooklyn. He is travelling alone around Mali and like us is surprised at how few other tourists there are. While we eat the rain returns and soon floods the streets. It eases and we leave but it picks up again as we approach the hotel. The rain is good news and the kids love it as they can virtually swim in some of the vast puddles but it puts our planned camel ride at risk. Thankfully the rain stops and we are taken out to meet our camels on the edge of the sand. We are dressed in red waterproofs and must look even stranger than the average tourist. We are taken to a Tuareg tent and given hot sweet mint tea and the hard sell on their silverware. We return to the hotel and meet Calvin at the restaurant but not before a show down between the rival tour guides. The first power cut of our trip ends before we turn in, meaning that we gratefully have the use of the fans in our rooms.
27 August – the 4WD driver’s mate is at our door getting our bags shortly after 4 am. It soon becomes apparent we have been put in a public and not a private car. Dan and I share the front passenger seat, rather than sit four across in the row behind. We reach Korioumé, where we join two other Toyota Landcruisers and wait for the sun to rise and the pontoon ferry to take us across the Niger. The port is very muddy after the rain. Dan picks his way through it to buy fresh flat bread from a street oven. After a long wait we set off. On the south bank we start the hundred kilometre plus drive to the metalled road. The three cars travel in convoy so that if one breaks down the other crews are there to provide assistance. Our mate sits on the roof. When the windscreen gets mud splattered, the driver shouts at him and he pours water down it from a bucket. The cars do break down from time to time but it is never serious. After a lunch break a distant escarpment comes into view. This slowly gets closer. At 4 pm, a couple of hours late, we reach the main road at Douentza. It transpires that our tickets are only good to this point and not all the way to Mopti. Two French girls are in the same position. We fail to get hold of Ali Baba by phone and are forced to squeeze into the back of the one car going onto Mopti. There follow three very uncomfortable hours with only beautiful scenery as compensation. We bail out at Sévaré and book into Mac’s Refuge. We are late for the evening meal, but we get served and enjoy beer and excellent food.
28 August – ‘Mac’ drives me to the bus station and I buy tickets for the 2 pm service to Gao. It should arrive at 10 pm. Sévaré is a pretty unremarkable place but useful for transport. Dan and I pick up a couple of things at the small supermarket. The taxi driver we used the previous evening delights in charging us £4.80 for ten minute taxi journey to the bus station. The Maiga Transport bus is being loaded. A motor scooter goes on the roof. One of the bus’s curved front windscreen windows has been reglazed with a piece of flat plate glass. The bus is an hour late leaving. The mesas of the Gandamia Plateau provide scenery which rivals Monument Valley. Unfortunately the light fails before we reach the end of it, but for a while the gloom is punctuated by the hulking outlines of the rocky outcrops. This is not a good bus journey. The cargo on the roof prevents all but one of the ventilation hatches from being opened. Behind the scooter and luggage are stacks of new tyres, covered in black rubber particles which get into the vents for the air conditioning. Dan in particular gets covered in black specks. We later blow our noses and find that the contents have turned black. Because of the heat the rear door is occasionally opened to let in air. This also lets in clouds of dust and sand, adding to whole desert bus experience. The driver makes regular stops to overfill the bus with additional passengers. We are very late by the time we reach a security check point west of Gao. The Bani bus, timetabled to leave Sévaré four hours after us, passes us. Some of our passengers are held at the check point and the driver decides to leave without them.
29 August – We reach the Gao depot at 2:30 am. The crew announce it is not safe to unload the bus until day break but they allow us to stay on the bus until then. I had booked a hotel room but there was little night left and we are not prepared to leave the luggage. Once the luggage is released we make our way to the bus yard of the company with the Niamey service. We arrive to watch a very smart bus departing for Niamey and then discover that this is the last bus until Tuesday, four days away. We find another bus company with a daily service and buy tickets. The ticket seller indicates a small but smart bus that will make the run. We take breakfast - omelette in French bread with coffee. The coffee mugs are prepared with mountains of dried milk . At Gao we are required to register with the police before leaving Mali. We do this. It is now approaching 8 am. We stagger to the Hotel Atlantide, Gao’s one central hotel and book in. By now we have gained a guide – Ali Magnifique. We waits outside while we shower and rest. The hotel is distinctly shabby and appears to have no staff other than the receptionist. Around noon, we feel able to face the remainder of the day. Gao is a remote port on the Niger. We have an excellent lunch of capitaine in mustard source. Ali takes us around the fish market, shows us the giant hippo skulls at a friend’s house and takes us to Gao’s main attraction, the Tomb of Askia. This mud pyramid is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We are taken inside and onto the roof by the guide. On the inward and outward walks we stop for Cokes at a bar cum abbatoir. We are uncomfortably close to some very worried goats. We return to the hotel, watch the sunset from the quay and decide against taking a pirogue out to the Rose Sand Dune. We have a beer and then eat chicken in isolation in the back yard of our lunch time restaurant. We send Ali Magnifique on his way. It transpires that he is acquainted with Ali Baba in Timbuktu.
30 August – Our alarms wake us at 3:30 am. The hotel is in complete darkness. We reach reception and virtually have to break out of the place. We walk to the bus yard. The minibus is not ours. An older bus, part full of passengers, rolls up. In a new twist, this bus has five narrow seats in each row with an aisle between seats 3 and 4. The road to Niamey is fortunately very good. The Nigerien border officials take great interest in our jobs and want to know what we actually do. We struggle to explain, but they let us in. We have the now customary Muslim prayer break in Tillabéri and reach Niamey mid afternoon. A taxi takes us to the Terminus Hotel. This is the most upmarket of our journey and costs three times the rate of the next one. We have a substantial suite with good air- conditioning and CNN. We watch the breaking news of Senator McCain’s decision to choose Sarah Palin as his running mate in the US presidential election. Three members of hotel staff arrive with a substantial camp bed. We set off to find the bus station to buy bus tickets to Cotonou. The bus station takes some finding but we are given a lift by a man in his pick up who is going to collect tyres. We are impressed by the computerised tickets and smart departure areas and have high hopes of the bus. We take a taxi to the Grand Hotel and have draft beers watching the sunset on the far bank of the Niger River. Niamey has an odd layout. There is almost no development on the river bank. There are just a few ministerial buildings including the Palais du Congrès. There can be few capital cities where the administrative headquarters sit cheek by jowl with grazing animals and crops. The heart of the city is set well back from the river bank and is completely invisible from the terrace of the Grand Hotel. We dine at Le Dragon d’Or’s, Saturday night Chinese buffet. The food is good but neither of us feels we do it justice.
NIGER, 31 August – When I draw the curtain I find a peacock sitting on the air-conditioning unit on the ledge outside. We walk to the supermarket, on through the central market and on to the Grande Mosquée. The custodian shows us around taking as much money as he can from us in the process. We take a taxi back to the Grand and have ham baguettes and beer on the now deserted terrace. At the end of the afternoon we leave, walk down to the JFK Bridge, up Avenue Mitterand and veer into Avenue de l’Uranium. The bat colony at Place de la Republique is distinctly second rate compared to the one at 37 in Accra. We hang around waiting for Le Pilier, the Italian Restaurant to open. Eventually it does and we order pasta. I finish with tiramisu and Dan with ice cream.
1 September – Reluctantly we make another early departure and walk very briskly to the SNTV bus station only to find that once again the bus was not the same as previous ones we had seen. It was another 5 seater. We leave. At Dosso, half way to the Benois border we make a scheduled stop at a depot. As we are about to leave, a fuel leak is noticed. Over the next four hours, the fuel tank is removed, the contents decanted into drums and the hole welded. The local traders do brisk business as we buy drinks and omelette baguettes. We leave just before we lose the shade. At Gaya we disembark, pass through the border of Niger and, on foot, we cross the River Niger for the last time before entering Benin. Benin is lush and green, but the roads are the worst we have come across (excluding the track out of Timbuktu). Our progress is slow and we reach Parakou, approximately half way through the journey at about 9 pm. The driver then decides that because of a threat of bandits further south, we will go no further tonight.
BENIN, 2 September – It’s after 5 am before we set off again. We reach Cotonou at noon, after a mammoth thirty hour bus journey. We take another ludicrously expensive taxi to the Hotel Concorde. The main road outside the hotel, apparently in common with many roads in Cotonou, is being completely reconstructed without consideration for pedestrians and local businesses. The path to the hotel front door is something of an obstacle course. We leave our bags and avoiding the road works walk to Le Gerbe d’Or (third and final “d’Or” of our trip) where we eat burgers and frites. We return to the hotel to find our room open and hot water gushing through the bathroom and corridor ceiling. There is a good inch of water on the bathroom floor and it has just reached our rucksacks. We are moved to the next room. We are of course shattered having barely slept since Saturday night. We snooze, intending to go out and eat in the evening but we sleep through and do not wake properly until 5:30 am.
3 September – Cotonou is awash with kamikaze motor scooter taxis. We have to dodge them constantly as we search for and fail to find the bus pick up points for Calavi mentioned in Lonely Planet. On the verge of giving up we find a huge tro tro/taxi station near the Grande Marche. Two taxi drivers nearly come to blows over taking us and one leads me by the hand to his car. At Calavi we walk down to the lagoon and charter a boat to take us to the stilt village of Ganvie. To describe Ganvie as a low budget Venice would be unkind but true. The village has hotels, schools, mosques, a market and so on. All are accessible only by boat. We are dropped at a restaurant/hotel/boutique and served capitaine and rice. I buy a piece of indigo cloth. Children hail us from all directions in the hope of getting ‘cadeaux’ but the guide and boat operator make sure that the tips all go in their direction. On the way back into Cotonou we pass the tables set out with glass containers of petrol and diesel for sale. On arrival we spend some time in the market and in the evening we walk across town to an Italian restaurant. We are disappointed by the pizza.
4 September – An early start to make a 7 am bus to Abomey, centre of the Dahomey kingdom. We end up in a people carrier which arrives at Bohicon at around eleven. Our only choice for the remaining nine kilometres is scooter taxi. We reach the museum in one piece. We watch bronze being poured into moulds to make souvenir figurines. The craft work on sale here is very impressive and Dan succumbs to a very attractive hammock. A guide with no English takes us round the museum opening up one room after another. We see the ceremonial staffs of the various chiefs of the Dahomey kingdom with their emblematic creatures, including a bull and a chameleon. We see the throne borne on the skulls of four enemies of the king and bas reliefs of some of the more unpleasant methods of torture. Not wanting to get stuck in Abomey for the night we make a swift and uncomfortable return. We had bought an extra seat on the way out but are unable to repeat this on the way back. Cotonou’s streets are awash after heavy rain. We shop in one of the many supermarkets, buying ground coffee, paté and chocolate for our return to Ghana. We return to the Gerbe d’Or for salads, burgers and ice cream sundaes.
TOGO, 5 September – We make our way to the big taxi park. We buy two seats on a people carrier to Lomé, capital of Togo and pay as much again for the luggage. While we wait nearly two hours for the car to fill we eat huge omelette baguettes. Fortunately this car only takes three in the middle row. Behind us are three large market women. We reach the Togolese border at 11 am. Two hours later we reach the Ghanaian border at Aflao. During our trip we had regularly debated whether to spend a night in Lomé. Eventually, time, money and general weariness dictated that we did not. The coast of Togo is only about fifty miles long. We see some pleasant resorts, get snarled up in heavy traffic around the port and get a glimpse of Lomé’s attractive beach side location. The car drops us within sight of Ghana. We re-enter Ghana. I insist on taking the Metro bus to Koforidua rather than take a tro to Accra and another out again. We would reach Accra after four on a Friday afternoon with traffic at its heaviest. We have a very Ghanaian chicken and rice lunch with Gulder beer and hang around until the bus leaves at four. The bus makes slow progress, regularly picking up and putting down. It takes a circuitous route via Ho and is stopped at every single police check point on the way while overloaded, decrepit tros sail through. We reach Koforidua, sore and tired at 9:30 pm.
I have never undertaken a trip like this. Parts of the journey were extremely uncomfortable, but it is easy to see that there has never been a better time to do it. All the countries visited are poor but relatively peaceful at present. All, with the exception of Ghana, use the same currency, the West African CFA, dramatically reducing border bureaucracy. Mobile phone networks were available everywhere, (although in Niger we were unable get access to one.) Improvements have been made since my edition of the Lonely Plant guide to West Africa was published in 2006. Then, there were no ATMs in Niger, the new bridge over the Niger at Gao had not been completed necessitating a lengthy wait for a ferry and the old road from Gao to Niamey took up to 24 very bumpy hours rather than the 8 it takes on the new one.
After three and half weeks of Francophone West Africa, Ghana still seems alien in many respects, but in others it has become very familiar.
