The Ocean's a Callin'

January 5 – 6

Day #9 – Started : Klouekanme                  Ended: Grand Popo                        Distance Covered: 101 km

Day #10 – Started: Grand Popo                  Ended: Come                                  Distance Covered: 18 km

Highlights

• Side road sidetracks
• Bite of Benin
• Some R & R (a.k.a. - bike maintenance & laundry)

Click on the images below to enlarge

A boy looking after his

family's cows as they  graze.

Rows of the centers from palm

leaves. Many

people use this light, 

solid 

material for construction.

Some of the back roads we took

included some sweet obstacles!

As I explained earlier, due to lack of electricity and internet connectivity, it’s been a bit difficult to update the blog each night as I had hoped.  The posts have still been getting written, though, so if you’re able to neglect the dates that website says these posts are going up – it’s all good.

There are two new posts below this too, so don’t miss those!

The last two days have been a race to the beach.  We've been biking hard for nearly a week and a half now, and we finally made it to our southernmost point at Grand Popo.  Grand Popo is a pretty quiet beach community that's been somewhat developed by tourism, but I think it's got a huge potential to grow given a bit of strategic investment.  It’s shore is part of the “Bite of Benin”, which is home to some viscous side currents and enormous waves that break just meters from the shore.  Going into the ocean here is a blast, but you’ve got to be smart about it – some of the waves can really mess you up (and a lot of people are actually killed by them each year).

The landscape we passed in reaching Grand Popo really emphasized how much the environment has changed since leaving Natitingou on Day 1.  Everything was so dry when we started.  Now it’s as lush as can be: there are palm and coconut trees everywhere, market stands are filled with varied assortments of fruit, and my nostrils are no longer cemented with sandy boogers!

We’re taking it easy for a day on the beach, giving us some time to fix our gear up and give our bodies a break.  The next week looks like it’ll be full of some hard stretches, but the rides should be really beautiful too.  We’ll be going on trails alongside a lot of major rivers, finding some canoes to ford us across the Oueme, and visiting the stilt villages in Dangbo.  More to come soon!

Laundry's done and the ocean's ready