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Out of Burkina: Ouaga 2 Abomey, Benin
It’s 1st of August, it’s time to say goodbye to Ouaga. We have left our house owner with his house, our employees without employment, and our friends ’n’ colleagues without us.
Nevertheless, we start our trip back to Laufenburg. Somehow we already started the evening before no longer being coal shippers in the coal mine. We converted into the odd tourist: together with 2 fellow travelers we met the same day, Doris’n’Urs on their way from Swizzy to Ozzyland, we went to the only must-see place in Ouage: L’eau Vive – the living water, a religiously inspired restaurant combined with a spiritual beer garden, where nuns and their staff take some responsibility in chanting the Ave Maria at 10pm – of course the active participation of all guest eaters is much appreciated.
The next morning – today– we leave highly enchanted to Fada N’Gourma, then on to Tanguieta in Benin. So really our trip has started.
Ouaga 2 Abomey
The day before, the car had to be loaded – with some useful and all kind of useless stuff, on 1st of August, the tour really starts, as usual in Ouaga accompanied by a few motorcycles surrounding the car.
A last meal in Burkina at the 11th December Hotel in Fada N’Gourma : rice with peanuts in sauce, then we drive on to the Benin border. A few stamps and we’ve passed it.
We move on to Pendjari National Park to see some animals: socializing lions preparing for real things, a hungry lion and its breakfast and of course, some elephants hanging around under the trees munching some grass.
It’s evening in the national park. Time to celebrate with a nice bottle filled with rotten grapes and a beautiful dinner. The right pic shows an appetizing dead guinea fowl on our plate, just minutes before getting eaten and a few hours before creating stomach problems.
Further details at: A Meal With a Revenge …
Next, we reach Natitingou. Ages ago, we shipped some Nati coal for our Mother of all Companies.
Natitingou CBD still looks the same – at least more or less: definitely, they added some cellphone companies along the High Road, and some of these all present plastic bags on the pavement.
Of course, we had to see our former house. We found it, currently we could even buy it. It still looks almost the same, but by now inhabited and decaying, losing its paint on the walls and the iron sheets on the roof.
We move on to the Betamaribe Tribe west of Natitingou and Boukoumbé, their capital.
After all these adventures we drive on, leaving our former coalmine Natitingou for Dassa in Central Benin. Unfortunately, we have to take the road.
More about Benin’s incredible roads at: On the Highway in Benin.
In Dassa we explore some of the voodoo master’s ceremonial places and finally head on to Abomey.
More about the visit to the former kings in the next blog.