benin

Benin

Tuesday 15th January 2008:

We entered Benin and got a warm response using our green passport, as opposed to the hundreds of questions asked of the EU passport lady ahead of us. We got our entry stamp and went over to the Customs to get the carnet stamped. This took a lot longer, but luckily a guy appeared who really knew what to do so showed the clueless and slow newy what to do. With this all behind us and it still being early morning we passed through Ouidah, a former slave town and now known as the Voodoo capital of Benin. We never saw anything voodooish, but we never stopped or walked throught the markets to find things either.

We drove up towards Allada, trying to find the road to get a pirogue to the stilted village of Ganvie (Gan = we are saved vie = community). We eventually picked the right sand track leading through very water logged plantations. There was water hyacinth everywhere. It was flowering with its multiple layered purple iris lily cross water lilly looking flower. We managed to negotiate a pirogue trip to Ganvie, with no motor, for CFA 7 000 from CFA 10 000. Ganvie is a fishing village built on stilts on a lagoon north of Cotonou and is said to be Africa's largest lake village. It is only accessible by boat. This stilted village settlement started in the time of slavery, 17th century, to be a safe place from the slave trade as the slave traders, for religious reasons, were forbidden to extend their attacks over water. We both felt really guilty not helping with the paddling as it was so hot and very hard work for our two rowers. We passed many fishermen in the water clearing their nets and areas of water of sticks and reeds, where they were going to throw their nets into. Pirogues are a very tranquil way to explore places. It was interesting to pass many women paddling with huge, Mexican type hats on obviously to protect them from the sun. We also passed many school trip boats/buses paddling children home from school with their turquoise uniforms on and new big school bags on their backs. We pulled into a stilted shop selling the locals goods. We bought a gorgeous 3 man pirogue model and some cold Cokes for ourselves and our two paddlers. While we were enjoying our Cokes, we saw a bright and beautiful sewn wall map of Africa, with each country being a different colour with it's French name embroided in it. We bargained down the prices slightly and then hopped into the pirogue to go back to Duzi2. On our way back we saw a lot more birdlife, 3 kinds of kingfishers, at least 2 kinds of bee-eaters, egrets, Jesus birds and lots more.

After a lovely stop, we drove on to Abomey to Chez Monique to camp in their huge grounds. This place let us use a bathroom with a shower and loo and had all sorts of wooden statues, some voodooish, scattered all around its garden. They also had 4 young crocs and some caged monkeys. We were invited to a Voodoo ceremony, but gladly declined this in favour of an earlyish night's sleep. We were in the main thorough fare of people traffic so had the gate constantly opening and closing.

Wednesday 16th January 2008: Chez Monique, Abomey, Benin

GPS Info: N07° 11' 51.6" E01° 58' 49.3"

Miles Today: 271 Total Miles: 10 555

Woke up to the familiar sound of sweeping at some unearthly early hour!!! The whole place is sandy with a smattering of leaves and we had placed our washing, done last night, out to dry. Super intelligently the sweeping was happening right around the clean washing so so much for dust free, clean clothes! We packed up and headed north to Parakou, Ndali and the northern border crossing into Nigeria. We passed many men dressed in brightly coloured suits with short sleeved shirts and matching trousers. We got the carnet stamped at Nikki and decided to bush camp a few minutes on, as the sun was about to set and we both weren't happy about bush camping too close to Nigeria. We had Christmas Cuppa Soups and fresh bread for dinner and a cool nights sleep.