A lot of people believe that Cotonou is the capital of Benin and pass out on the quieter actual capital Porto Novo. Having spent the last couple of days looking for our group in Cotonou, Abomey-Calavi and Galvie without luck, me and Travis decided that we would just be tourists on our own in Porto...Read More
When driving into Lomé I was surprised to see how well paved and lit up the roads were- apparently having a port that is also used by its neighboring countries is good business and the Togolese capital was thriving. Walking around in the city itself was not that exciting, but in the outskirts there was...Read More
When trying to exit Ghana on a tiny border crossing we were told that they did not issue visas at the border so we would have to turn around and drive down to the coastal road which would take a couple of days with our slow truck and the horrible roads along the border. Some...Read More
After visiting a couple of beach towns in Ghana it was time to see one of the country’s natural beauties called the WLI Waterfalls. After a couple of days drive from Accra we had reached our destination which was laying directly on the border of Togo. Because it was on the borderland it was compulsory...Read More
Getting into Ghana was a delight after having spent over three months elsewhere in West Africa. The main language in West Africa is French. That is, with the exception of Nigeria and Ghana where they speak English. Ghana is also known as a West Africa for beginners as it has more stability, a better infrastructure...Read More
Having to wait for Benin and Angola visas to be finished at the embassies in Accra, we had plenty of days to kill. Accra is not the most exciting city, so most of the group stayed 50 minutes away at Big Millie’s Backyard in Korobite while others headed back to Cape Coast. Taking so called...Read More
Burkina Faso’s landscape ranges from the dry and sandy Sahel in the North to Savannah covering the center and then there is a region in the South- West called Banfora which receives a lot of rainfall making it much more green and fertile than the rest of the country. Everywhere we looked we saw trees...Read More
After more than 3 months in West Africa I have found out where the people are the friendliest; in the Ivory Coast. Ever since we got off the train from Burkina Faso, people have been smiling and greeting from across streets and we were given free stuff purely out of generosity, with no other motive....Read More
Having to wait nearly a week for our Ghanaian visas we had lots of time to kill in the capital of Burkina Faso. In my opinion it is the capital in the World with the funniest name, but it was definitely not the most fun one. Just like most cities in West Africa it feels...Read More
Bobo-Dioulasso is a city famous for being the cultural city of Burkina Faso with a lively art and concert scene and a beautiful old mosque built in Sudano-Sahelian architectural style just like the famous one in Timbuktu. It was all built only by clay and sticks in the 19th century and is the biggest clay...Read More
Staying a whole week in Ouagadougou, waiting for our visas to come through was a bit too much so we were looking for an excursions from the capital for a day or two. Reading up online and in guidebooks we came across a village about 30 kilometers outside of the Capital called Bazoulé where people...Read More
Getting into Mali I thought we would drive into a place feeling almost like a war-zone where we would have to be escorted by convoys and have to go through even more police checkpoints than in Mauritania, but that was not the case. Driving through and bush camping here has shown us that most of...Read More
Because of an attack on a UN base close to where we would cross from Mauritania to Mali, it was decided to instead go a safer route further South through Senegal instead. Senegal has a reputation of being one of the most stable countries in West Africa, but when crossing the border at the Senegal...Read More
Riding the World’s longest train was somethinng I had wanted to do ever since watching Palins Travels. What he did though was to go in one of the passenger carts, but I wanted to get the full experience of riding for free on top of the over 2 kilometers of iron ore carts. We had...Read More
As the security situation in Mali had worsened we were told that we would go through Senegal to enter Mali at a different border than originally planned. As it was weekend with embassies not opening before Monday we had a couple of extra days to kill which five of us decided we wanted to spend...Read More
Rarely capitals can be said to be a highlight from visiting a country, but for Nouakchott it could. The city is Africa’s youngest capital with its fifty years, but that does not mean that it is modern with tall buildings etc. The city center itself was pretty much like Nouadibou with just a market, a...Read More
The border crossing between Morocco/ Western Sahara and Mauritania went smoothly. We had to wait a cou ple of hours on each side and pay a hefty visa fee of 120 euros each and we were through. On the other side we could feel that there was a whole new adventure awaiting. People were different....Read More
The night before arriving in Dakhla we made camp a cliff pretty much right on the Tropic of Cancer. That is the Northernmost point around the earth where the sun would be directly overhead, so days should start getting longer and temperatures will get higher from there on. Dakhla was a much more beautiful town...Read More
Western Sahara is a country currently occupied by Morocco and most of its inhabitants have fled to the refugee camp in Algeria called Tindouf. Most people living in the country now are Moroccans but some of the original citizens, the so called Saharawis still live there and they have previously made some violent protests in...Read More
After more than a week in Marrakesh everyone had recovered and the truck had been fixed. We had never been more ready to get back on the road and continue our journey. We set off to Essaoira, which is a small coastal town for a couple of days to relax , get back to communal...Read More
