26 April 2008: Again, all of the road from Segou (Mali) to the Burkinabé town of Bobo on our journey was paved. During this stretch of the journey, there were quite a few road blocks. Whilst private vehicles like ours were let through, commercial ones had to pay their way through. We drove over an interesting little bridge known as Bani, again over the River Niger, though this portion of the River was thin on water, clearly frying up in the scorching heat. Although this part of Mali isn’t that far up north, you could already see that it was the transition to the Sahel, due to the extremely dry and scorched brown earth and withering trees. Even the cattle, donkeys, and goats seemed to suffer under the weight of the Sahelian sun and most looked starved, barely able to walk. We came close to hitting animals on the road quite a few times, they didn’t seem to jump or budge at the sight or sound of vehicles.
About an hour and a half into our journey, we reached the border town of Koutiala, and then Kouri, where we came to a police border post. I got my passport stamped by a nice, unassuming border police man. The driver, Keita, said we also had to stop at the next post about 100 metres up, the gendarmerie – the driver had earlier warned me, perhaps quite unfairly that ‘les Burkinabés peuvent etre un peu compliqués’ (Burkinabés can be a bit complicated), and that if any demands for money came up, I should let him do the negotiations. Hugh the cheek, like I was incapable, no seriously, guess he was right, as I wouldn't have known where to start. Luckily it was a smooth passage, relatively. We had to pay CFA5,000 at the customs post another 500metres or so up the road, and about 30mins afterwards, yippee, we came across a Celtel billboard, saying ‘Bienvenue a Burkina Faso'.
The terrain and trees had already started turning noticeable greener and lusher, once we've crossed over into Burkina Faso and we came across a very green field (not greenfield as in mining/geological terminology), rice field, apparently, which could have fit right into the English country side.
When we entered Bobo, it wasn’t spectacular, actually a lot less exciting than I had expected (thanks to the frequent exxagerations of Lonely Planet (West Africa)). Anwyay we wandered around aimelessly -Keita didn't know how exactly to get to the hotel - for about 30mins before locating the Auberge, which wasn’t spectacular either, but seemed to be about the best hotel in town frankly. I was just glad to have a place to lie and put my head. At least I was in Africa.
The terrain and trees had already started turning noticeable greener and lusher, once we've crossed over into Burkina Faso and we came across a very green field (not greenfield as in mining/geological terminology), rice field, apparently, which could have fit right into the English country side.
When we entered Bobo, it wasn’t spectacular, actually a lot less exciting than I had expected (thanks to the frequent exxagerations of Lonely Planet (West Africa)). Anwyay we wandered around aimelessly -Keita didn't know how exactly to get to the hotel - for about 30mins before locating the Auberge, which wasn’t spectacular either, but seemed to be about the best hotel in town frankly. I was just glad to have a place to lie and put my head. At least I was in Africa.
Places to go: Musée Provencale, Bobo D, shown in my picture above
Journey time: 4.5hours
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