Going "bos" in Burkina.

After a few days of relatively civilised camping in the parking lot of a lakeside lodge, Djin and Tonic hit the back roads towards Ouagadougou.

 

They rattle along in the dry, dusty countryside, past baked mud houses in waterless fields. When the sun is “too hands above the horizon” the team sneak off the road to find a place to camp for the night. Sneaking is hard to do in a 3 ton Land Rover, but Precious is practiced and keeps her head low. Tonic does some skilful driving, weaving around bushes and dodging tree stumps. Once they get a fair distance from the road, they set up camp in a suitable spot.

 

They have large bottles of tonic, so Djin shares out the last  few fingersof the gin and they toast the setting sun. After cold leftovers, Djin and Tonic retire to their tents. Peggy keeps watch. They team rise with the sun and do a spot of birding over mugs of freshly brewed coffee. Djin spikes hers with the last of her gifted whiskey.

 

All too soon, the time comes to move on and they set off back to the road. But alas, where is it? It can't be far. Perhaps if they follow this track it'll lead there. Shortly, they meet 2 elderly Burkinabé men on bicycles coming towards them. Tonic gets out to ask directions. The locals are polite, but their mirth shows through their gap-toothed smiles. They must turn around and follow the track. The town isn't far. Djin offers them he 2 empty liquor bottles. They nod in an understanding kind of way and strap them on their bikes, alongside their hoes. 

 

Shortly, a Land Rover, 2 white women and a pink-tongued dog inside can be seen following a couple of bicycles along a track through the African bushveld. It's not long and the track joins the road to town. Djin and Tonic call out their thanks and wave goodbye. Peggy barks out a warning. 

 

One can only imagine the talk around the fire that night. “Les blanches! OOh la la. Elles sont absolutment fou!”

New Year - New Hair

B for Benin

A belated and brief blurb about our "besoek" to Benin

• began with a beach for a breather - but that was brief - we were bothered by barking that drove Peggy beserk
• battling with French - Belinda becoming bilingual
• brown, barren bush beset with baobabs and boulders
• bathing in blue pools below beautiful waterfalls
• bountiful birding - barbets, bush-shrikes and bulbuls 
• bargaining for bric-a-brac - beads, bracelets, batiks and bronzes
• a banquet for Christmas - our beverage . . not beer, a bottle of wine with blissful bouquet
• Abomey - barbaric kings of before - battles, bloodshed and beheadings
• Ouidah - bondage and slavery - a "billion" barefeet, chained - broken souls boarding boats from the beach, bound for beyond
• bon homie and new friendships - buddies my bru
• "black magic and voodoo - bones, beasts and boas
• a birthday - blessed am I

The Contiki Tour

On 3 Jan, we did like Contiki and saw 3 countries in one day.  We left Ouidah, Benin in the morning, had brunch in Togo and a roadside lunch in Ghana, reaching Accra in the late afternoon.  Crossing Togo's coastline took less than an hour, being all of 56km long.

In Togo, we crossed into GMT and stopped for a G&T in Lomé.  As we left the restaurant, I realised I had moved my watch forward one hour, instead of back and we had ordered a G&T at 10 o'clock in the morning.  No wonder the waitress' smile was pitiful!

Dear Margie and Janet

We would like to express our heartfelt thanks to our dearly-loved mothers for bringing us up so well, for ensuring we have impeccable manners and are two perfect young ladies without actually having sent us to finishing school.

Well, alas, we're sorry to say our standards have dropped a little whilst on the Djin and Tonic tour of Central and West Africa. We have been known to :-

• wear the same clothes for a week at a stretch, only putting on clean things when we know we can do the laundry
  
• when lunching on the road, we lick the knife clean first, give it a rinse from our water bottle, dry it on our skirt and we're good to go
  
• drink the leftover juice straight out of the bowl after eating the mango
  
• shout profanities out the window at the appalling drivers on the road
  
• not wash our hands
  
• hang our knickers on the back burglar bars to dry after washing them in the shower (not sure what they make of it at police check stops)
  
• use the same dishcloth to dry dishes and our hands and only get around to washing it every second week
  
• go out without a bra. Support isn't everything, comfort and coolness is.
  
• eat peanut butter/Tartina straight out the jar
  
• let Peggy sleep on the beds
  

But, you'll be pleased to know we still brush our teeth twice a day.

Thanks Moms, we love you!.

Merry Christmas from Benin

Here we are in Benin, having arrived 14 days ago after a 6 day dash across Nigeria where we encountered many scary police and military checkpoints and almost had the car impounded after it passed all other tests of lights and presence of fire extinguishers and triangles but they were delighted to figure they could bust us for the right-hand drive car! However, the further north and east we got, the less intimidating it became and we crept over a little used border into the safety of friendly Benin on 6 December. We made our way south to Porto Novo, then east along the coast where we've holed up for nearly a week at Grand Popo (which apparently means “Big Poo” in French!). There, the Atlantic crashes into a steep shelf, making swimming very dangerous. But other than that, it's idyllic – the sea is a beautiful blue, the sand golden and we were treated to a pod of porpoises dancing in the breakers one day. Peggy had a fantastic time running free, and now even sleeps outside the tent at night, although I do tether her, for fear someone will steal her. (More than once, we've been asked to give her away!)

We're back in Cotonou now to collect our Ghanaian visas (which were issued yesterday) shop for our tour of the north and get the car seen to. Preshy has ongoing fuel supply issues (probably as a result of the accident in DRC) and the latest looks like a fault in the fuel injection pump. More thumbs must be held that the Land Rover dealer in Accra can resolve this in early Jan without the need to import more parts from South Africa. It's becoming a bit expensive and DHL is making a fortune out of us, never mind local import duties.

Tomorrow we head into the Muslim north for Christmas, escaping the Crimbo tat that even little Benin is victim of – note our cheesy Crimbo hats. The Tanongou Falls are on the edge of the Park National de la Pendjari and it sounds like a good place to be if we can't actually get into the park itself. We'll try, but it's unlikely Peggy will be allowed. No matter, we know that birds don't respect park boundaries and we expect to be able to sit in our chairs at the falls sipping a nice crisp Sauvignon Blanc (a little “dear Djin 'n Tonic from Djin 'n Tonic Christmas present) on Christmas day while thinking of our dear families and friends at home and around the world. The Sauv Blanc probably won't last very long, so we'll have to remember to have a back-up supply of tonic for the cheap “Le Vieux” gin we currently have in stock! Same gin must see us through New Year too, it being Djin's birthday on the 31^st.

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas and a blessed New Year. May 2013 be full of happiness and adventures!

We did it!

We reached the summit of Mount Cameroon on Sunday 25th just before midday in sleet, howling wind and blasts of thunder, crunching through volcanic ash at 4095m. Perhaps not a huge feat for the mountaineers amongst you, but for us it was quite an achievement.

It was hell, but exhilarating. The gradient so steep my ears kept popping on the way up and on the way down again - no gradual, winding tracks, just straight up the side of an active volcano. The descent was radical - will our toenails recover? The temperatures ranged from flippin' hot to freezing cold, so cold we couldn't move our hands and poor Peggy shivered whenever we stopped to catch our breath.

Other than that, Peggy took it all in her four-legged stride and probably hiked the mountain twice with all the running up ahead and then back to herd us up. She'd give the runners in the Race of Hope a run for their money. One of our porters is preparing to run the race for the 5^th time. Look out for William Ekema in Feb next year!