holidays and vacation

Hi! Yes, Christmas is gone past but here in the land of sand it was of course an unusual Christmas & New years time for us! Our experience in driving through snow drifts in Canada is helpful as the sand is getting deeper, I've almost had the vehicle stuck in the sand dunes (on the road) on many occasions. Over the holidays we had a couple of weeks vacation and adventure along with...

We visited Bénin - a small country which borders on - yes - the ocean! as well as Niger. Very tropical there on the coast. We took the bus there and back (see photo), cheap on the wallet but hard on the body - 17 hours bumpy ride each way, no washroom on the bus. We spent New Years eve at the bus station, not too exciting but we had a great week of travelling.

We spent a week at a 2-star small resort on the beach called Awalé Plage, in a town called Grand Popo. It was a real nice change to see so much water!! We enjoyed jumping in the waves. Grand Popo is a small friendly town, nice quiet beaches and few tourists, good eats as well.


Benin is known for its mobylette or motorcycle taxis, we took those a lot despite dangers I suppose.

Grand Popo is a fishing village as well, so interesting seeing the local life there too. Photo below shows some of the local people pulling in the fishing nets.
They sing songs as they pull on the nets. There was an African music group playing on Sat night.

Our other adventure!? Visiting the wildlife reserve called Parc W which borders on Niger and Benin.
Very cool experience - you drive through the reserve and wild animals are living and roaming about in their natural state. Including our surprising discovery of a lion which was right next to the road. Yiikes! We stopped, it went and sniffed the truck and looked at us, then walked away. Christine likes the little things - especially the termite hills - see photo. This style of termite hill is called the cathedral. When the queen termite dies, the termites abandon their castle. Nature - bizarre stuff!
We missed out on seeing elephants, but we did see fresh tracks from them.

We're glad to have the chance to see some interesting things while out here, although we missed having the family get toethers at Christmas. We appreciated a lot our Christmas gifts like tea, sweetner, DVDs, etc!

That's it for now!