Our trip through west Africa had two completely different sides to it: the sweet and the sour. It was a simultaneous story of two trips, played out at the same time. There were the good times - some of the best moments i have experienced while traveling to anywhere in the world - the highs so to speak. And then there was the bus. The bus ended up being our antagonist. The great chariot that was to take us half way across the world ended up being a total bust. It got us places, but thats about all it was good for. Instead of trying to split the two contrasting parts of our West Africa trip into two stories - one of triumph and one of defeat - i’ve decided to try and juxtapose the two side by side. So without further delay, here is our story, from Bamako, Mali to Porto Novo, Benin:

We approached West Africa from the North. As you approach, coming from the vast expanse of the desert, you start to feel the physical world change. The dunes slowly disappear and the desert end, and the Sahel (as its known) ends. To the untrained eye, the Sahel is just an extension of the desert, but you soon realize it does support life. There are trees that appear, small bushes and herds of roaming animals. Before we reached the border of Mali, we could tell things we’re changing. Our first night in Mali was breath of fresh air. We had so many stressful nights in Mauritania, long drives through the dry sandy world, tension that could be cut with a knife. We crossed the border and it felt like everything had changed. The invisible borders of the region were vibrating, hardly contained by the superficial lines drawn on maps. The music was pumping and the people vibrant. This was the Africa we had expected when we set out to conquer the continent. Maybe we had rounded a corner??

With the story of the bus, lets go back to the beginning. I remember being at the Tangiers airport, seeing the bus for the first time, “Moroc’n'Roll” plastered across the side, and the excitement i felt knowing this would be our transport across Africa. But by October 8th, 4 days into the trip, i wrote in my journal “we’re on hold while we kill some time in Morocco. It’s been kinda frustrating because we’re at the whim of the group”. A divide began to grow between some of the occupants (essentially the Americans and everyone else), and the bus was starting to seem like a bad idea. There was also a new concern that arose. Rufus, who was supposed to be the all experienced Africa traveler, had never been past Senegal. Barney, the owner of the bus and Rufus’ brother, had been all over Morocco, but never past Agadir (before Western Sahara).

But maybe that was a good thing? It had a growing sense of adventure to it; we were all traveling to un-charted territory past Nauokchott, Mauritania. There were even glimmers of hope. We got stuck in the mud after a night spent in Todra Gorge, and had to walk through water nearly up to our waist’s, in order to be ready to push should the bus get stuck. We had a couple good days in Marrakesh and Essouria, both of which ended up being my favorite Moroccan cities. Barney and Rufus had a conversation about the bus, about how it was designed to carry 15 people through the country-side of England, not Africa, to which Rufus responded “the bus doesn’t know whether it is in Africa or not, now does it?”.

It was at this point that the first three passengers abandoned ship. Wil (who had his wallet stolen in Marrakesh, and to his credit was on his first trip outside of Europe) Jo and Kam all took a flight from Layyoune to the Canary islands, because it was the cheapest place to fly back to the U.K. from, and probably their last chance to do so before we we’re in the heart of the Sahara. These we’re three of our favorite travel mates, and it was sad to see them leave. Less than a week later, Louise took her flight home from Nauokchott, and being that she was the last remaining link between the Americans and the other travelers, it sealed our fates. It was the 6 of us on one side (the four Canadians - Adam, John, Stewart and myself - and our new best friends from Blackburn, Beth and Nat) the 3 Americans on the other, and Rufus and Barney in the middle. Tensions grew during our five days broken down in Nauokchott and the three days along the road of hope, to the point where by the time we had arrived in Bamako, we were all entertaining the thought of leaving. Our second day in the city, was the location of our first meeting. Because of the situation in Chad we had to deviate from our original plan of going through Niger and Chad and onto Cameroon, and we we’re now going through Burkina Faso, Benin and Nigeria. This is also where i realized that my passport was filling up at an alarming rate (i had 3 blank pages left in my passport, and since every African country likes to issue full page visas, my options we’re becoming more and more limited). We decided as a group to head north through Mali, take a trip through Dogon country and head back down to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and have another meeting there to discuss our plans once again. This is where we first heard the rumor that Barney was getting fed up and wanting to go home from Benin.

We drove north from Bamako the next day and spent the night in Segou. This was one of the most relaxing places in Mali, totally off the backpackers trail, situated along the shore of the Niger river. It is also where we met Amadou, who would be our guide through Dogon Country, where we would spend 4 days and 5 nights trekking through what was to us at that point unknown. The next day we drove to Djenne, where the world’s largest Mud Mosque resides (the entire town is a UNESCO World Heritage site). The people here were unbelievably friendly, and our experience in West Africa was greatly improving. The next day we left Djenne and met Amadou at the edge of what is known as Dogon Country, and began our 5 day trek. There is so much to be said about this place that im not going to get into it now (it deserves its own post entirely) but it is probably one of the most rewarding places i have ever traveled to, and defiantly sits in the top 3 or 4 “sites” (if it can be called that) existing in the world today. The best part was that we were off the bus, hiking around in the out-doors and we could alter our pace as to avoid walking with the Americans. Things finally started looking like they could be improving.

“That goat’s a douche bag, I hope it shuts the fuck up”. I dont think i could have imagined a worse thing to have heard while relaxing in Dogon Country after a long day of hiking. So much of our experiences we’re ruined by comments like that. You cant make these sort of things up. It needs to be in the Bostonian accent to really get the full effect, but Rachel had some of the best (ie, worst) quotes of all time. My personal favorite is still while we were pulled over on the side of the road on a bathroom break somewhere in rural Mali, she proclaimed “why can’t we take a picture? It’s not like we’re in an indigenous culture or anything”. It was moments like these that made me wonder why certain people travel. This is why getting back on the bus after such an amazing experience in Dogon Country was so hard. We hated the bus at this point. From Dogon Country we drove straight to the capital of Burkina Faso - and the worlds coolest named city - Ouagadougou, and went straight for dinner. When we came back Rufus was gone.

This is probably a story in itself, but the shortened version goes like this: Rufus had to leave the trip that he organized, to fly straight to Siberia, because the 22 year old girl he was dating, was pregnant, wanting to keep the baby, and they needed to do something about it before her fiance , who is in the Russian Army, came back from his tour of duty. This sounds like the sort of story you would make up, but it’s 100% true, and sounds so much better than any fabrication i could ever come up with. But Rufus was gone, and the remaining 10 of us held the meeting without him. Barney was in charge (which was a good thing because he was much more organized and a lot more open about things). The trip would go on, and we would re-asses things once we got to Porto Novo, the capital of Benin.

Ouagadougou ended up being a great stop-over, but unfortunately the only city in Burkina Faso we spent any time in, and it was only two days long. We we’re very lucky in our timing though, as the SIAO festival (African Arts Festival) was being held during the week, and we were able to check out some really cool exhibits and listen to some music from all over the African continent. From Ouaga, we drove to Benin and straight into Panjari National Park. We had missed the optimal wildlife season by about a month (the rainy season had just ended, and the watering holes we’re plentiful) but we did see a variety of animals: Hippopotamus, Baboons, Monkeys, many different tropical birds, Antelopes, Elan, Jackals to name a few. The highlight of the park was riding around on the top of the bus, sitting on our backpacks, playing a game that became known as “Grimbo” (or group limbo), which entailed yelling “BRANCH! RIGHT!!” and then trying to duck without being whipped in the face. We all came out of it with a few scrapes, but it ended up being a memorable experience. We spent the night at a lodge in the park. We had set up our tents in the un-used outdoor restaurant at the suggestion of our guide until one of the workers from the camp came up to us and announced that Lions had been walking through the camp a few nights ago, and our guide might not be the one to listen to on this matter (our guide had also told us that one of the monkeys we had seen was a buffalo, but we already knew he was pretty useless at that point). Needless to say, we ended up getting rooms. Our last day in the National Park was spent stuck in the mud, 4 hours of digging and pushing; trying to take a 2-wheel drive van along dirt roads shortly after rainy season is not advisable. From the National Park we drove halfway down Benin and camped out in in the playground of an elementary school in exchange for all of our cooking gear and a few tents - it was pretty obvious that the bus was being sold in Benin.

Barney was flying home from Porto Novo and the bus was being sold. In compensation for traveling half the distance to Cape Town, we were each given 100 dollars, one-tenth what we had paid to come on the trip, but it was “enough to cover our onward travel to Cameroon”, which is what Rufus had guaranteed. The bus had become a major thorn in our side and we we’re happy to see it go, and with it the three Americans that came with it. We were not happy to see John leave us. It was a bitter-sweet ending in that sense. But the bus trip was over, and we we’re free to travel on our own.

My passport had made it this far, managing to fit visas and stamps into already used pages, and as a result i had managed to save two blank pages, and needed to renew my passport at the next embassy: Yaounde, Cameroon or Accra, Ghana. Due to the fact that we had lost the bus, traveling through Nigeria would need more than the 2-day transit visas we had planned on getting, which cost 130 US dollars. After some tough deliberations, Stewart and I decided to travel with the remaining bus mates (five of us we’re still sticking together) and head to Ghana, from where we would fly to our next destination in Africa. The other three would be flying back home, and it would be a perfect trip to erase the burden of being on the bus.

So that’s the ill-fated story of the bus, and the reason we traveled West instead of East. We were 6 weeks in to our trip, and our restless feet had lots of travel left in them. The show must go on! The bus journey was not meant to be, our story played out like it did, and we made the best of it. Africa had yet to defeat us, and no-where on our horizon did we feel any dangers looming! The show must go on, and we we’re prepared for anything!

Related Posts                

• Drifting along the Gold Coast to Accra.
  Well, here we are, alive and well (as if you expected it to be any different). We've been here in Ac...
• Travels Across Africa - Episode Three: Crossing the Sahara.
  ContinentalDrifters.ca presents the third episode of the Travel’s Across Africa series, which cove...
• Quick update from Vancouver, B.C.
  We've been home for almost three months now, but there's still lots of exciting things to look forwa...
• Travels Across Africa - Episode Two: Marrakesh and Essouria.
• Quick Update from Brighton, England