Bobo-Dioulasso in a day - 'should be easy'

Sorry guys, another tale of how we had trouble making it a very short distance in the space of daylight. But it wasn't all bad! Hold tight, I'll be quick.

We got up and hiked from the volunteer house to the bus station for 7am, eager to catch a minibus or taxi back to Sabou, on the main highway of the city and then onwards to Bobo-Dioulasso, the second city of Burkina. Needless to say, we had to wait for four hours before the mini bus 'filled up' (read that that's when the driver could be arsed to move, as there was only five of us in the minibus). We were drifting in and out of sleep as the miles rolled by and only noticed that he had driven through Sabou and out the other side without stopping. We shouted and the guy said he heard us talking about Bobo and was just going to take us all the way for a set price. But the whole reason for us to go to Sabou was to get a good big bus to Bobo. He dropped us off and got quite annoyed. But we were more annoyed as we were now a few kilometres away from where the big buses stopped.

Some nice young lads who were sat down at the roadside playing checkers (different, better version than the English one) helped us out and tried to flag down buses. The only one that stopped was a large minibus that was going to Bobo. By this time it was late afternoon and we'd only travelled about 30km. We were glad to be moving again.

We all fell asleep on the bus again, and were woken up as we pulled into a busy bus park, not Bobo, and told we were changing buses. Our bags got carried away to the main road and we stayed with them. A guy at the station had been given some money by the driver, and we assumed (wrongly) that we would be put onto a connecting bus straightaway. We sat by the roadside as dusk fell, and at last a big bus stopped. The conductor wanted us to pay 2000 CFA each on top of the money given from the other minibus. We said no, because we'd already paid to get to Bobo once that day! After another hour a minibus pulled up and we jumped on. The guy who was 'helping us out' - holding the money and failing to get us a connecting bus - gave us his mobile number. Yes, we would be calling him for help...

We pulled into the bustle of Bobo quite late and a silver lining to the story was that the driver and conductor of this minibus drove around the city on a wild goose chase trying to find a hotel that no longer existed, because of our out of date guide! Eventually we got them to drop us off in the backpacker area and we tipped them for their trouble. See the drivers aren't all bad! We checked into Hotel Teriana 2, which looked quite posh by our standards, and stumbled across a terribly posh place to eat - choosing a three course set menu and eating every scrap. It was expensive, but within our budget as we had missed breakfast and lunch!