From Mali through Burkina Faso and Benin

Blog update 02/22/13. Parque National de Pendjari, Benin

Mali/Burkina Faso/Benin

We left Bamako early in the morning thinking it would be an easy drive. Getting out of the city was a fun experience.

Who is ignoring the police?

Traffic out of Bamako

From Bamako we made it to the border with Burkina Faso in one day. On the way out we stopped at a "Bakery" to buy french baguette.

We were able to cross the border the same afternoon. Again a boring (that is a good thing) border crossing. We are getting the hang of it, it always is the same process. Leaving a country it is first the gendarmerie, then the Customs and lastly the police. Entering a country it is in the opposite order. They all enter the same information in a big book: vehicle info, passport info, visa number etc. They each have their own office with usually a couple of beds, a TV and numerous people of whom you don't know whether they are just family, friends or officials. At the police you get your entry/exit stamp, customs signs the carnet or gives you a passé avant for the car. The gendarmerie just checks all your paperwork again. You think that it would make sense to have one office and take down all that information once.

 

 

Finding the right office, always a problem

Anyway no problems leaving Mali or entering Burkina. At the gendarmerie in Burkina they told Marc that he needed to pay 5 euro, Marc just said that he does not need to pay that and then it was OK. This was a little bit disappointing as the name Burkina Faso means something to the extend of the "incorruptible people".

Toll roads in Mali and Burkina Faso, fortunately not the same price as the peage in France

Total Gas stations everywhere

Gas by the liter

Until our last day in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina, this was the only time that people were asking for anything. We found the people in Burkina very much like the people in Mali, very friendly and with a lot of self respect.

On the day before we left Ouagadougou we were going to go to the bank, get diesel and do some groceries. However at the roundabout just outside the hotel where we stayed we got pulled over by the police municipal because supposedly we drove through red. The police was not friendly and even though we did not drive through red as we were one of the first cars to go through the traffic light, they wrote us a ticket (which looked fake) took Marc's drivers license and ordered us to go pay the fine to the boss who was on the other side of the street. We tried to explain them hundred of times that we did not drive through red, that the light was green, that other cars crossed after us but they did not want to budge. So Rosana pulled out the form for the protection of the tourists and asked them to fill it out and then we would go pay the fine (by the way we never asked how much the fine was). This got them a bit worried and after they talked amongst themselves they handed us the drivers license back and we were free to go.

But 15 minutes later the same thing happened at another intersection. We were pulling into the parking lot of a supermarket and the police came to us saying again that we drove through red. Now we were a little bit fed up, so we decided to ignore Mr policeman, finish parking the car and do our shopping. So while Rosana went to the shop and Marc locked the car, the policeman kept on talking to Marc about paying a fine for driving through red and giving his drivers license. Marc told him that the drivers license was with Rosana in the shop so he would have to wait. Marc also told him he was getting tired of getting stopped by police for driving through green. When we came out of the shop the policeman was still there and he wanted to see the drivers license. Marc handed him the drivers license and now Marc was ordered to follow the police man to pay the fine. Marc got really upset and shouted to the guy that he was done with the corrupt police in Ouagadougou and he grabbed the drivers license out of the police man's hand. The police man looked a bit frightened murmured  something about last warning and then walked away. During the heated exchange quite a crowd had assembled and they had a good laugh. The remainder of the morning we did not get stopped anymore. Later we heard that the local police is very corrupt in Ouagadougou. Outside the city when we got stopped by the national police we never had any problems.

We spend about 10 days in Burkina Faso. The first night we camped between the cashew trees away from any villages and we did not see anyone the whole night.

Fresh Cashews

The second night we ended up in national park de Bale. We had to take a 10km dirt road that obviously had not been used for a while. When we finally arrived at a small lodge in the park the first animals we saw were donkeys, goats and cows.

Wildlife? No elephants but donkeys in the National Park

The lodge was being renovated/reconstructed after it was completely flooded a couple of months ago. We stayed only one night and were lucky to see some elephants late in the afternoon. That was very nice.

The next day we drove to Ouagadougou to hook up with a French couple (Patrick and Martine) we met in Mauritania. We will be traveling together through Nigeria as we have read and heard that it can be challenging. The challenge being the bad roads, bad driving habits and the corrupt police.

In Ouagadougou we stayed at the hotel OK inn near the Airport. They let you camp for free, use the pool, showers, bathroom and wifi assuming you eat and drink so now and then at the restaurant. For a city it was a nice set up. We were waiting for some spare parts for the truck to be send from Holland. In the mean time we would apply for the Nigerian visa. This was another story. 

On Thursday morning the four of us went to the Nigerian embassy. A very arrogant low level clerk was at the door. We said  bonjour to him and he shouted back at us that we are in Nigeria now and they speak English. We immediately knew that this was going to be a fun experience. We asked him what we needed for the visa and he told us that we needed to fill out a form and give two passport pictures. It took him 20 minutes to give us the forms, even though we were the only people at the embassy. After we filled out the form he asked us whether we had an invitation letter from someone in Nigeria. We explained him that we are traveling overland and that we will be driving through Nigeria and that we don't know anyone in Nigeria. Well in that case you must get a letter from your embassy in Ouagadougou stating that you are the person who is was mentioned in your passport and the ambassador has to allow you to travel to Nigeria. We told him that by the fact that we have passport it means that we are the person in the passport and that our government allows us to travel. Our little Nigerian nazi did not care. We needed a letter.

So first stop was the Italian consulate. (Rosana is using her Italian passport as we thought it would be easier to use 2 EU passports). Here the assistant of the Italian consul was not prepared to create the letter because she could not be sure that the Italian passport that Rosana carries was really for Rosana. She made a phone call to the Nigerian embassy to find out why it was needed and was told that it was because we did not apply for the visa in our home country.  So she basically told Rosana to go back home and apply for the visa there.

Next stop the French embassy. No luck there either they also said to go back home and apply there.

The good old Dutch embassy was the savior. The assistant of the ambassador was very helpful and she discussed our issue with the ambassador who told her that this was a ridiculous request. Not the Dutch embassy is giving out a visa but the Nigerian so they should determine whether we are allowed to travel to their country. Besides that imagine that anyone who wants to travel abroad will need a letter from their own government or embassy. So the Dutch ambassador was going to call his Nigerian colleague and at the same time he was giving Marc a letter stating that he is the person in the passport and that he wants to travel to Nigeria. Some nice stamps on the letter and that should do the trick.

In the afternoon we went to the Brazilian embassy and when the ambassador heard the story he called the Nigerian ambassador right away. 5 minutes later he was back and told us that the Nigerian ambassador had already received a call from the Dutch ambassador and we were told that we could come back the next morning to get our visa without a letter.

The next morning we were back. First the guard told us that visa applications could only be done on Tuesday and Thursday. However our little Nigerian friend was there and he obviously was told by his boss that the ambassador was not happy to have received a couple of calls from other ambassadors. So he took, reluctantly, our visa application. Later, his boss came in who was super friendly. This guy took the paperwork and half an hour later we had our visas.

YES.........We have our Nigerian visa

At the Brazilian Embassy we met Angelica and we were invited to a brazilian get together over the weekend where we met ALL the Brazilian living in Ouaga (well, almost all of them)

This meant that we could leave Ouagadougou on Monday as soon as the spare parts had arrived. However on Sunday morning Marc decided to tighten the air conditioning in the cab, but when he did that the screw drilled a hole in the ac unit and all the freon gas escaped. Half an hour later we turned on the generator to charge the batteries as we were running low due to the heat and the fridge needing to run continuously. After 10 minutes the generator died. So much for leaving the next day.......

Fortunately with the help of Patrick we were having the maintenance people of the hotel help us fix the ac. The generator was another problem, it has been a problem from the moment we picked up the the car at Twiga. Many people have spend many hours and even more euros to try to fix the generator and every time a new problem popped up.

Marc with the help of Patrick or better Patrick with the help of Marc took out the whole generator and worked on it for two days, having the exhaust removed, the air filter and carburator cleaned and the regulator refurbished (African style) but with no luck. The generator runs but it does not adjust the power when the batteries are pulling more. So in the end we decided to retire the generator and sold it to a local mechanic who had been helping us.

No more generator means we don't have to think about it anymore and we gained some storage space. That is the good news the bad news is that we are writing this blog while it is 40 degrees outside (105 F) and it would have been nice to sit inside for a bit with the air conditioning on..........ah well this is part of experiencing Africa. It gets really hot during the afternoon, but fortunately it is a very dry heat.

 

It is a long way to Austria

So Wednesday we finally left Ouagadougou and we went straight towards national parque Pendjari in Benin.  We wild camped just before the border.

Burkina Faso / Benin 

The next day we did the border crossing between Burkina and Benin within an hour. The most time consuming part was the bloke at customs in Benin. First we had to watch him finishing his lunch and  when we gave him the carnet de passage, even though it is not valid in Benin, he did not know how to fill it out. We asked whether we could use it and he said yes. Patrick and Marc had to tell him where to put his signature and where to put the stamp. In the end he also put his signature on the exit voucher.

From the border it was a short drive through some villages to the entrance of the Pendjari parque.

Anyone hungry?

A couple of guides were waiting for us but we wanted to go in the park by ourselves. The excuse we use is that our cars do not seat three people, we can even show the car registration paper and tell them it is illegal to have more than two people in the car.

In Pendjari they have three places where you can wild camp, so we stayed three nights. Pendjari is a nice park, we did not see any cats (heard lions roaring) but the many birds, hippos, elephants, cobs antelopes, roans, and the fact that the park still feels wild (mainly bad roads, very few tourists, only one hotel).

A cob, the Benin Impala

Updating the blog

Difficult to see, but bumpy road because of dried up Elephant foot steps

After Pendjari we drove via some challenging pistes to Parque National W. This park was a bit of a disappointment, badly maintained (except for the main road), a burned down lodge, a deserted hotel and very few animals.

They still allow hunting (only for tourists - really???) in Benin. Both Pendjari and W park are bordered by hunting reserves. We noticed that all the animals are very shy, especially compared to the animals in the Southern African Parks.  On top of that they still have the problem of poaching. In park W we were stopped by a car full of soldiers that were patrolling the park at night to prevent poaching.

In Pendjari there were a few other tourists but in W we did not see anyone. When we entered the park we saw that the last person visiting was more than 10 days before us.

We are lost

Take close look, yes they are the Benin version of the Guinea Fowl

Slow going between Pendjari Park and W Park

Lunch break

Driving through the villages in northern Benin has been very nice, all the people are smiling and waving like crazy. Last night we wild camped just outside a village and in no time we had about thirty people around our cars. They just stood there and stared at us while we were setting up camp. They did not speak any French but they found everything we were doing very funny. We took some pictures and made a printout for them and that was a big success. There was a risk that the rest of the village would come now as well to have their picture taken but fortunately as soon as it became dark they all left, so we could start our cooking. In the morning when we woke up a small crowd started to gather again, so we left before the whole village got up.

Sunday Afternoon entertainment for the village

They liked the picture