Where the Hell Are We? Part I, March 8-10: Travel in West Africa is HELL

March 8: Getting to Burkina Faso

Benin à Burkina Faso à Mali

Tanguieta  à Ouagadougou à Bobo à Mopti

The tro-tro (overloaded van) picks us up in Tanguieta at 3 am and we are on our way.

After a few stops in town we head north-west toward the Benin-Burkina border.  We had already purchased our Burkina visas so the border crossing was quick and easy, and we arrived in Ouagadougou around 11 am, then decided to continue to Bobo, where we were told that onward transport to Mopti (in Mali) would not be a problem. 

Arrived in Bobo before nightfall and got a taxi (no zemijans outside of Benin) to our hotel, Casafrica.  We ate dinner near our hotel and decided to spend the next day in Bobo, because we were promised by friends that Bobo was a cool town to hang out in.

March 9: Day in Bobo

We set out early to check out the marché and search out some strawberries.  Burkina folks (Burkinabé) are a lot more relaxed than the Beninese.  Nobody in the marché tried to grab us or get really aggressive, though there were a few creepy guys who followed us for a little bit at one point.

After the marché we went looking around for bus tickets for our onward travel the next day.  Unfortunately Bobo does not have a central bus station so we ended up walking all over the city to go check out all the different bus companies, but nobody went to Mopti.  We could not find a tro-tro and got really frustrated, but then we were saved by an adorable little old French man who moved to Burkina in 1976 when he worked on a Moringa project with the World Bank and just kind of stayed there.  He drove us around in his ancient, busted-up Peugeot 505 to a few different places to secure our bus tickets to Mopti; we were promised that the bus would leave at 9 am the next morning and go direct to Mopti, no problem.

Our savior in Bobo, with Erin

We met an interesting French guy at our hotel who works 4 months a year driving trucks and spends the rest of the year split between Cuba and Burkina Faso, and a very interesting family who live in Germany in the Spring/Summer and spend the Fall/Winter traveling around the world in a van.  The couple have two small children and are able to finance their trips through a combination of some rental properties they have and the money that the German government gives them for their small children. 

They have traveled from Germany to India and back again, and are currently on their way to Ouagadougou to fly back after driving from Germany and visiting places in West Africa.  They have a website, www.ourvan.de.

March 10: Travel in Africa is HELL

We got tickets yesterday but didn’t pay for them, just in case something better came up.  That the bus direct to Mopti would leave at 9:00am seemed too good to be true so we had a sinking feeling that something would go wrong.  Oh yes.

We arrived at the bus station where we had made our bus reservation at 8:30am and reluctantly paid for our tickets.  Now they had us locked in.

We were directed to a different bus station, where we were told that we would be the first folks on the bus and avoid the crush of folks getting on at later stops. 

Note: the buses in Burkina Faso and Mali are basically big bush taxis.  They strap luggage to the roof, overfill the inside of the buses, and stop every few minutes to let people on and off.  They are also in HORRIBLE condition.  Grâce à Dieu for Benin’s reliable, modern-ish buses!

Inside the "bush taxi" bus

It was there that we were told by different employees that the bus leaves at 10am; wait, no, it leaves at 12pm; actually, it’s not going to Mopti at all…it goes to Bamako but it’s ok, the road to Bamako and the road to Mopti are the same road, and the bus will let you out at Bla (a town between Bamako and Mopti), and you can catch a bus to Mopti from Bla, no problem.  And the bus will arrive in Bla by 5:00pm at the latest.

We were flexible; we didn’t have to be in Mopti until the next day, so we waited.  And waited.  One hour passed, then two.  Then three.  At noon they began loading the bus, strapping all sorts of luggage (and a bicycle) to the roof, since the undercarriage was already full.  At about 1:15pm the bus finally filled up with people and even more baggage, and we are off.

Burkina has relatively good roads but terrible transportation options.  We would learn that Mali is the same way.  Our bus was probably 40 years old and when it sits stationary and idles, the inside fills up with clouds of smoke and fumes.  As it kicked and sputtered down the road, most of the fumes exited out the windows, but we were always breathing in those fumes.

Large-scale garden projects on the side of the road

Every 10 minutes the bus stopped to pick people up.  Fortunately, we had no problems crossing the Mali border.  We tried (and failed) to purchase Mali visas at the border, which almost caused us problems later in the trip.  The officials at the border had us fill out a visa application, then took them and stamped an entry stamp in our passports, sans visa.

As day turned into night we started to wonder if we had missed our stop in Bla and were blindingly hurtling towards Bamako.  We made a nice Togolese friend on the bus who explained that Bla was not far away.  We finally (at 9:00pm) arrived in Bla and were dropped off at a Carrefour in the middle of town.  This was the crossroads between Bamako and Mopti, and where we would have to catch our next bus.

Their “bus station” is just the road next to the crossroads where we were dropped off.  A few guys tried to hustle us into overpaying for a private car, but we were saved by a bus that pulled up after only a few minutes and, lo and behold, it had just 3 places available, so we piled in.  A few hours later we FINALLY arrived in Mopti, at 3:00am.

Total travel time (including the wait at the bus station): 18 hours.  Total distance covered: about 500 kilometers (about 310 miles). 

We took a quick (and expensive) cab ride to our hotel to sleep for 3-4 hours before we were to meet our guide, Oumar, at 7:30am.