Preview of Bronwen's blog at TravelPod. Read the full blog here: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bronwen/africa/1139837100/tpod.html This blog preview was made by TravelPod using the TripAdvisor™ TripWow slideshow creator. Entry from: Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso Entry Title: "Ouagadougou" Entry: "Well, you thought we were chugging along slowly but, here's a surprise, since our last update in Mali, we've now not only "done" Burkina Faso, but are well into Ghana!" There's no stopping us now (well, apart from the humidity and oppressive heat which is totally zapping our energy...)! Burkina Faso was fun: totally relaxed and quite different from all the other countries so far (well, maybe a bit of the laid back Mali shows through...) First stop Bobo. Or Bobo-Dioulasso to give it its full name. The bars and café culture really gave it a relaxed atmosphere, and anyone who knows us at all would be confused as to why we didn't stop longer. But, needs must... Anyway the local Brakina or Sob-B-Bra beers really aren't that nice despite being cheap, so one night was the most way made. Our journey to Ouagadougou (Ouaga, or Wagga if you like using the vernacular) was to be indirect, allowing us to take in Banfora and the Lobi country (the corner of Burkina nestling between the Ivory Coast and Ghanaian borders). We also found ourselves in more desperate need of a hose clip to stem the petrol leak we have been getting when filling up one of the tanks. Jamie has been trying to get one since Bamako after the duck tape we had been using since Morocco finally wore out. It is not a difficult thing to find but not knowing the French for hose clip (or hose or clip for that matter ) didn't help and Jamie was left just gawping at all shelves of car part stalls he went past. Even when we did find out the word in French ("Collier" if you ever need to know) the sizing was not accurate being simply the length of Jamie's finger. After purchasing 2 of the wrong size, I eventually gave Jamie a lesson in basic mathematics to find the diameter of a circle by measuring the circumference. The only reason I think Jamie took any notice was because a small crowd of children had accumulated around Bronwen since we parked for the night who he was desperate to ignore (especially the poor girl who obviously had a particularly bad skin disease and could hardly walk. I found myself giving her a large slice of water melon so at least she had some vitamin C but the memory of her diseased face appearing at the door will remain with me through nightmares to come...) We were camped at Lac du Tengrela which was a lovely spot and a chance to see hippos. We spent an evening enjoying listening to them "laughing" and we could hear them coming ashore after dark. The next morning we walked further around the lake getting much closer to where they were lolling in the water and I think we scared the poor woman who obviously gets her water from the very spot we decided to sit in the shade. The cascades de Karfiguéla were in the same area and the chance to swim was too great a draw with the heat we'd been experiencing over the last few days. It's late 20/early 30's by 8 in the morning and Bronwen has become a sauna 24 hours a day! So, with obligatory guide at our side, we headed up the cascades. They are impressive (I'm a bit of a sucker for waterfalls anyway) and the water was lovely to swim in, although there's quite a current and bilharzia is not unheard of there, but probably still less dangerous than the English channel that we're used to. The whole area around Banfora is taken up by sugar cane, which I think is the main export for Burkina. It was lovely to see an area so lush and hilly after all the Sahel landscapes we've been driving through. The guidebook pointed us towards the ruins at Loripeni which are old ruins, old by African architecture standards but not on a European level. As no one knows who built the structure or why, the "obligatory" guide's explanation was probably concocted in a bar one evening. After multiple translations from Moré to French to English between people without a common language we decided it was probably more fun to make up our own explanation based on the few words we could understand, therefore: Old king got a bad leg ..." Read and see more at: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bronwen/africa/1139837100/tpod.html Photos from this trip: 1. "Cow Lac de Tengrela" 2. "Lac de Tengrela" 3. "Bronwen Lac de Tengrela" 4. "Cascades de Karfiguela" 5. "Jamie bathing" 6. "Sugar Cane" 7. "Early morning in Burkina" 8. "Loripeni ruins" 9. "Loripena ruins" 10. "accidental nunnery stop" 11. "Burkina village" 12. "Elephants at 2 Bale" 13. "More elephants" 14. "Jamie up a tree" See this TripWow and more at http://tripwow.tripadvisor.com/tripwow/ta-00cb-9c94-599a?ytv4=1

• published: 18 Feb 2011
• views: 1258