This trip has gone through many planning stages. It spent years as a vaguely cheery amorphous blob sitting somewhere in the back of my brain. It gradually attained some nebulous lines on my mental African map, some half-formed pictures of what I would find, and, eventually, an air ticket to begin it.
That's as far as I got before leaving home. I didn't know how long I'd stay out, where I'd go, what I'd do, or where I'd eventually catch my flight home from. All that's now settled, and I suddenly find myself a good bit more than halfway along. Intense.
One of the things I got sorted out while in Accra was the last piece of the puzzle: the ticket back to the T-dot. I fly out of Douala, Cameroon on April 12th. After a couple nights in Paris (Necessary for the cheap connection, I swear!), I'll be back on home turf on the 14th. Neatly enough, my flight from Cameroon takes me via Casablanca, making this whole ramble into a bit of a circle.
Not only do I know when I'm coming home, I know roughly where I'll be at any given time from now until that flight. Extremely roughly. This is West Africa, where timetables don't exist, and I certainly am happy to abandon my own best-laid plans if I find something more interesting. Still, after having umpteen hours to peruse the ol' Lonely Planet (I must have the thing pretty close to bloody memorized by now), I have a general sense of what places I want to visit as I go.
Here's the general agenda: I'll be kicking around southern Togo for another week or so, then it's off to Benin. I'll be there a few weeks, checking out all the old centres of Voodoo and nifty creaking old colonial towns, before meandering my way north to the Burkinabe border. I'll spend the last 2 or 3 weeks in December in Burkina Faso, meandering to markets and mopeding to tiny villages and generally enjoying what is supposed to be a mighty laid-back place. Christmas will be there, in the city of Bobo-Diassolo I think.
From there, the pace picks up a fair bit! From Bobo it's a short bus ride into Mali, where I'll head just after Christmas. Hopefully in Bamako by the 28th to set the wheels in motion on my Niger visa, and then on the 30th is the big day: Lauren flies in to Bamako from Canada! Since she has only until January 23rd, it'll be a bit busier than usual - but what a time to be there. We'll catch New Years in Bamako, which is known as a great party town for live music and dancing, and then likely make our way north to Timbuktu for the Festival au Desert (www.festival-au-desert.org) , an amazing music festival in the middle of the Sahara that lasts 3 days. We'll hopefully up some Niger river travelling, some trekking in the Dogon Country, and some serious hanging out in gorgeous old towns. It'll be high tourist season, so we'll be braving some hassle, but it'll be well worth it.
After Lauren flies back home, I'll have 10 days to kick around on my way to Niamey in Niger. There, I'll be fetching my mom from the airport and spending 3 weeks with her - checking out the best national park in West Africa, the last remaining wild giraffe herd, tons of market villages and old cities, and a desert expedition (which may happen in Mali, depending on the vagaries of security and travel restrictions). After she heads back home in late February, I'll be off to Nigeria. There, I'll spend a while in the old cities of the North, meander down to Lagos to check out the craziness, and then meander back north before crossing into Cameroon. This'll probably be three weeks all told.
After my last African border crossing ever (tear!) I should have somewhere near a month to explore Cameroon, which is good, as there's tons to do, and it's a huge country with sloooow transport. There's a ton of trekking in my Cameroon plan, including the Mandara mountains in the North, the Ring Road in the South, and some rainforest action. Hopefully, I'll wind up this whole adventure in a very similar way to how I started it - on the top of a mountain. Way back in May, it was Jebel Toubkal, the highest peak in North Africa. Next April, hopefully, it will be Mount Cameroon, the highest peak in the West.
Then? Home. Intense. One last summer in K-W, then it'll be time to pack up and move out East where the plan is to settle in St. John's, NL. Wonderfulness.
Right now, I can look ahead any length of time I want, and see nothing but awesome. It's pretty damn humbling.
Peace
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Three things. One, lucky you - I totally looked into doing the Festival au Desert, but couldn't swing it.
ReplyDeleteTwo, "last African border crossing ever"? Really? You're 24. You're ruling out any future visits to the continent?
Three, since you sound like you have a pretty solid plan in place, congrats. It seems all the stock-taking you set out to achieve has borne fruit. I plan to be in Ontario somewhere next summer, so we'll have to be sure to make that last K-W summer of yours an epic one.
Enjoy the rest of your stupidly awesome trip, good sir!