The Final Chapter: Suits and Kidnap

We arrived in our final city, Cotonou, after hailing a private taxi by the roadside in Ouidah; once again we couldn't be bothered with the hassle and cramped space of a minibus, and were willing to pay a little bit more for comfort on our last big journey on four wheels.

On the way to Cotonou (where the national Beninese airport is, not in the nearby capital of Porto Novo) we saw some crazy vehicles that had been overloaded to the brink of collapse. Boots overflowing to the road below, furniture piled up on the roofs like jenga and people playing some kind of weird game of twister in the back seats!

The transport didn't improve in Cotonou. Thanks to a ridiculously incompetent map in our Bradt guide, we had no idea where we were, and chose to get some motorbikes to go to our hotel. With huge backpacks on the handlebars in front of the drivers, and each of us clinging onto the back seats, we set off in an unorthodox convoy through back streets, across dual carriageways, through puddles of murky liquid and zooming across very busy junctions with no braking... At one point we cut across one lane of fast moving traffic, jumped up the kerb to the central reservation and hopped down the other side before cutting through another lane to the 'safety' of the loose-sanded avenues. Terrifying!

After getting lost we made it to our hotel and decided to not pay the extra money the drivers had asked for (we had asked them to take us to one hotel and they had said they knew it). Unfortunately we were shoved on the fifth floor of this gigantic building, and had to go up/down just over 100 steps each time we wanted anything like a drink or something to eat. Lot of work, but think we all worked out our thighs going up and down a few dozen times!

Kez was unfortunately feeling unwell, and fainted whilst we were filling out our forms. Went white as a sheet, but Barney did well to catch her. After that, Kez rested for most of the next day or so, while us three checked out the market, looking for a few presents and trinkets for home. Specifically we wanted to get some of the loud 'suits' that most African men and women sported. There are literally hundreds of thousands of designs on print, in varying patterns, made up of any colours you could dream of. You chose the material and then took it to a tailor who got it made for you.

We spent about two hours looking around at all sorts of material, and after what felt like another two hours of bartering with stubborn women (I hate shopping), me and Barney left with some particularly loud pieces of material! Dree was a bit disappointed - he really wanted a piece of Barrack Obama material that he'd seen someone sport. Unfortunately, it wasn't to be found anywhere, but to make up for it he bought a couple of Obama bags - complete with the President's face plastered all over it! Stylish!

Me and Barnes went across to opposite our hotel, where there was a row of tailors working late into the night. On second thoughts, this could have been a sweatshop. The man in charge (slave master?) offered us quite a good deal to make the whole suits and I asked to have another shirt made up from some extra material I bought. We went around a few other places trying to barter for a better deal, but most weren't interested in our custom. Or maybe it wasn't the done thing to waltz into a factory and ask them to make a special suit for us tourists! we went back to the original man and were told to come back on our final full day in the country to collect them. They only took a few measurements, including not measuring waist. Concerning to say the least. What on earth would we get?!

The next day Kerry was feeling a bit better and so we headed to Ganvie - one of the apparent 'highlights' of Benin - a stilted village on the edge of a giant lake just outside Cotonou. Perfect for a day trip we thought. Quick taxi out to the lake's edge and we couldn't find any office or anything to lead us to believe this was anything more than a fish market. Then, out of nowhere, six or seven smartly dressed guys brought out a school exercise book and told us it would be about £15 each. One helluva chunk of our budget. We dillied and dallied, but eventually paid. It was our penultimate day, and we'd heard about this stilted village for quite a while.

Onto the boat and we were pushed out onto the lake. The man at the back pushed us along like a gondolier in Venice, while the man in front turned around to us and told us to pay an extra £1o each, or something equally ridiculous for the guide. we had already asked if the £15 covered everything, and they had said yes. We argued with this guy for about fifteen minutes, while floating in the lake. He was an absolute....you-know-what, and we shouted and voiced our anger in French and English. He refused to take us back and was essentially kidnapping us!

We couldn't believe what was going on. Barney got up to stop the 'gondolier' at the back, who was still pushing us further out into the lake when we were asking to return. The 'guide' at the front wanted us to pay more and said we couldn't go back. He eventually backed down after a lot of shouting and we headed off to the stilted village, not feeling particularly happy about the situation! The 'punt' to the village took about an hour, in the morning sun, with two kidnappers taking us on the way. Even when we got to the village it wouldn't have been worth having a guide; he only spoke French and didn't explain anything at all! To make matters worse, he kept annoying us by saying "Don't cry, don't cry", because he'd obviously ripped off tourists like this before. There was an opportunity to get off and stop at a restaurant. We declined as we didn't trust the guys to wait for us, and then we would have been truly stranded.

The village was okay: a few boats were around selling wares to other boats (each family had two boats each, to get to work, the market, to the school, in the same way we'd have two cars!). It was interesting to see how the houses were built - on mud banks in the middle of the lake. According to legend, a man had been transported there by a stork whilst trying to find a place for his family to hide from the King of Dahomey, who wanted to turn his family into slaves. Quite a likely story if you ask me! Sadly, the trip was tainted by the a***holes that wanted to steal our money. Shame really.

Back on dry land, and after NOT tipping, we headed to the artisans' market to buy some goodies to take home. We all wanted specific things, but mainly we were looking for some wooden carved masks and voodoo type things. I, as previously mentioned, hate shopping with a passion, and as the market involved walking in and around a maze of tiny shops each with similar stuff in, apparently carved out of the most precious trees in existence by genies hundreds of years ago (therefore explaining the extortionate first asking price - over £200 a couple of times...).

Every 30 seconds it was a new shop and someone else saying "hello my friend". i am getting worked up, just thinking about it! Angry Dum came out and I ended up going back after a night's sleep and bought some African art and masks. Because we'd all bought so much, we had to buy another bag to keep our souvenirs in. Kerry and Barney set off to find a suitable one, and came back with the biggest, vilest burberry holdall imaginable. But it did the trick perfectly, and we padded the sides with clothes and plastic bags.

(On the way back, Dree, in his Mr Bean-esque way, ended up walking smack bang into a tree branch, causing a deep cut in his head. It was pouring blood and we were thinking about getting stitches for him! He was okay in the end, but sported a lovely red gash on his forehead. Keep your eyes on the prize dribbley!)

Back at our hotel we had to check out, as our flight was that night, but there was a problem - our suits weren't ready... and we were due to leave the country in about 9 hours. We carried on with our original plan, as we were told the suits would be done in a couple of hours. The original plan was to go to the poshest hotel in Benin, leave our bags in a side room, and use their pool. This plan had two main plus points; a) we could use a pool and b) we could use the showers before we got on the plane! After yet another poor taxi journey, we blagged our way through the $250 room-per-night hotel and chilled out in the pool for a couple of hours. It was brilliant!

I left after a few hours to go and pick up the suits, which went surprisingly well, as there was nothing we could have done if they were wrong/not ready, and we even got the extra material back! Two perilously moto journeys later, almost dying a number of times, including a lovely overtaking manoeuvre facing an oncoming lorry at a crossroads, I made it back to the hotel and we all set off for the airport. After some incredibly expensive soft drinks (costing the same prices as in a bar in London) we said goodbye to Kez, who had to go via Kenya, and although she set off one hour before us, arrived home one whole day later!

Barney mentioned something to me about the cost of the flight, and it being wasted by falling asleep, and not taking advantage of the films and TV shows on offer... I took this to heart in an overtired mood, and ended up staying up the whole night, creating a messed up sleeping pattern that has just about got back to normal!

Oh one last 'funny' little thing - as we waited for our bags at Heathrow, the carousel (only time I'll probably ever use that word in a blog haha) stopped and the lights went off. "Right" we thought, "this cannot be good". We only had one rucksack and (somehow) the Burberry monstrosity! After a quick chat with the AirFrance desk, during which we were told that we were "lucky to get any of our bags", we filled out some forms, and my and Barney's bags arrived in one piece about 24 hours later. The excuse? The cold...

Well it was a truly awesome trip, seeing some sights that I shall forever hold in my memory (Voodoo festival, Senegalese wrestling, Dogon country views, Timbuktu sunset, River Niger ferry, Burkina adventures on bikes, masked dances, seeing a wild elephant up close, climbing the highest mountain in Togo on New Years Day... the list goes on). I would like to thank the guys that I went with, for making it such an unforgettable experience, and saying to anyone reading this, just take a chance, go on an adventure... get ready for a cliche...

...just buy the ticket, take the ride!