Benin West Africa

The home of voodoo that is what I saw in the Benin embassy in Lagos

I was trying to get a visa for myself and a friend as we were planning a road trip to Benin from Lagos

He was on a British passport so he got a visa very fast I was on an SA passport so was told I would get my visa at the border. the night before we left we were having a few drinks at the yacht club and when the bartenders found out we were going to Benin they offered to kill a white and a black chicken for us we would be given a parcel to put in the boot of our car we were interested but never took them up on the offer instead we offered them a chicken and chips meal on our return.

It was early sat morning when we set with a French chef as our guide after about two hours of Lagos roads and traffic we arrived at the Benin border a tin house on the side of the road with a lot of people standing around there were lots of pieces of string and tree branches across the road each one a roadblock and each one wanting money after about four hours at the border and one or two issues with passports we crossed the border into Benin our first impressions on crossing was a huge informal market with people selling everything and changing money airtime rice you name it.

It is often cheaper to buy food in Benin and bring it back across the border so the border area is very active. We get past the border and travel up to the capital continue the streets are clean and there are separate lanes for motorcycles everyone drives properly and the local French police are everywhere nobody talks English only French so most of the time you are not sure what is happening we visit a local village to meet our drivers family and he is very proud to show us his family house and the other cottages he is renting out. We then go to his uncle’s hotel for a local beer after a round or two we notice the hotel has a lot of small rooms and there are a lot of woman around so it does not take long to work out where we are.

We had booked into a coastal apartment room on the beach very close to the Togo border so close that in five minutes you could cross into Togo. On the way the countryside becomes more rural jungle overgrown and then we are at the coastal village clear blue oceans and two or three small hotels.my friends and I settle into our new room and we send the drivers off to visit yet another uncle. We went for a walk on the beach in the pouring rain and met with some locals who were fishing finally we ended up in a hut chatting to a chap who was selling herbs for a living. Him and his two children in a hut on the beach.

We got back pretty late and my friend was tired so he went to bed while I sat on the veranda watching the ocean we had ordered chicken to eat and to my amazement two plates of raw chicken with rice was delivered to us we sent it back and went to sleep I could hear that our drivers had returned and they were sitting outside our front door chatting the next morning was raining but crisp not the normal heat that we were used to after a breakfast of French bread and fried eggs we set back to the Benin border.

The amazing thing about Benin is you can buy French bread along the road the bread is not sweet it is fresh and great to eat in Lagos you get agaga bread which is very sweet almost like cake cellphone costs airtime is very expensive but food is cheap.

We crossed the border back into Lagos and the roads were very blocked they were also searching vehicles coming back from Benin so we decided to take a longer route back which was less congested.

That same day an aircraft crashed into the city of Lagos another plane crashed in Ghana and the roof of my hotel collapsed.