Day 68: Hamrattan
Soutpiel Safari
John & Jenny
Tue 11 Jan 2011 19:46
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Day 68: Tuesday 11 January 2011. Bush Camp 10 km south
of Po, Burkina Faso N11 04.157 W001 07.750 Distance driven 179 km
We had the luxury of a late start today and
breakfast at the hotel. We deliberated for a long time whether to stay in
Burkina Faso and see more of the country or to move on. The interesting
part is away in the south west around Bobo Diassalo but that would have meant a
day's drive to get there and another day's drive to get back to Wagga, probably
a 4 days round trip in total. In the end, when we collected our Ghanian visas
and found them to be immediately valid, we opted to go straight to Ghana.
This decision was heavily weighted by the very dusty atmosphere in Wagga for the
last few days. The Hamrattan has been blowing out of the desert and the
whole area is heavy with dust. one cannot see any clear blue sky and
visibility is less than 500 metres. Frankly, we have had enough of dust and just
want to get away from it. We both still have hacking coughs and wake up in
the night coughing. We figured that the closer we get to the coast the less dust
there will be, so we decided to head south. it is a pity in some ways as
we like BF and would have liked to have seen more of the country.
Ouagadougou is a friendly, laid back place and is the nicest capital
city we have visited.
We went for our Ghanian visas at 1100, as instructed,
but had to go back an hour later. Once we had them we headed out of town
but got caught up in the midday rush hour and it took nearly two hours to get
clear. We had been told that the road to the border was "a good tar road"
but before we had even left Wagga it had deteriorated into a very rough and
rutted dusty track. This lasted for over 50 km where the road was being
re-built. Our beautifully clean car soon became filthy again but we
minimised the dust inside by driving with the windows closed and using the AC,
which we normally never do. It worked pretty well and the inside is still
clean.
We didn't have any pre-planned camp site so we pressed
on to Po, just north of the border, but Po turned out to be a dump so we pressed
on and are camped in the bush just off the road and only a few kms from the
border. We have had a chicken curry that has been in the fridge for a week
and Rudy and Stephanie's Sevenoaks apple chutney which Jenny had hidden
away and I have only just found - delicious! We still have mounds of
stores in our trays, most of which were the initial stocks. we could
survive for months without shopping!
Along the way today we saw lots of vultures and, a new
feature - pigs. In places on the dusty track water had been sprayed to
keep the dust down, but in places it had filled up the holes in the track and
little pigs wallowed in the mud pools while cars, busses and trucks ploughed
past!
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