Blasting through Burkina

As much as I hate saying it, that is exactly what we did.   We blasted straight through Burkina Faso, with a quick stop in the capital for visas and some recuperation.

Breakfast on the road

Coolest kid on the block

Our first impressions of Burkina where fantastic.  The people are very friendly, polite and quite curios.  In one the small villages we unintentionally stopped right in front of a small mosque, with the call for prayer going out while we were having a coke.  The people where so curious about us and the bikes that the Imam stopped the prayer so that they could all watch, with him right in front.  Brilliant.  Still everyone was extremely polite, standing on the side walk, and not bugging us in any way.  But there where more than 20 people happily gossiping about us in front of us, very funny.  Even the town mad woman was out in full force, standing in the middle of the road, dancing and singing and chatting away to her self, while chain smoking one cigarette after the other.  This ended up being a very curious spectacle, but we loved it.

So far in Africa the transport of livestock is a bit of a thorn in the side.  Animals are being tied up in every available space, no matter how small, with no thought of comfort or pain.  Some being in those positions for hours, in blasting hot sun and horrible roads, unable to move an inch.

Transporting goats

We have become quite used to seeing chickens have their feet tied together and then hung upside down from every possible position on motorbikes.  Some bikes where so covered in chickens that it looked like a blanket surrounding the bike with just the drivers head sticking out.  Amazing that they can drive like that.  The worst we saw was a guy transporting goats.  He had at least twenty goats tied up by their feet and then hung upside down around his bike.  They were screaming in agony and you could hear them from very far away, but this was his way of transporting goats and he was happy to do it.  Horrible and inhumane.

Curious villagers, the town nearly came to a standstill 

In the capital we easily and quickly got our visas for Togo and Benin. So we seriously contemplated to do a bit of a detour through more of Burkina, but the owner of our Auberge was a keen motorcyclist and organised regular motorcycle rallies through he area, and he advised us to rather spend the time exploring the back roads of Togo.  He was even nice enough to show us the route he had planned for a tour in a couple off weeks time.  It looked very interesting, so we decided to keep our time in Burkina as brief a possible to give us more time in Togo.  Turned out to be a good decision, with the back roads being gorgeous and the scenery mind blowing (more in the next blog).

Cause of Dominique's crash

The first few days in the capital where spend organising visas and giving the bikes a good service.  This has become the regular routine, first get visa applications away, then make sure the bikes are ok. Only after that do we spend some time exploring.  We do sometimes miss some of the attractions in the capitals, but in the end the bikes have first priority and a capital city is a capital city.  The country side is always the more interesting and rewarding part of our journey.  In Ouagadougou we had the usual guides trying to rip us off, and we found a good restaurant with fantastic pizzas and good ice cream for dessert.  I have become so bored with the lack of variety with the street food that this was good enough to put a smile on my face for days afterwards.

The road to the Togo border was a good mix off potholed tar, good gravel and some bad potholed gravel to keep you on your toes.  Again we had a very easy crossing, everyone very friendly, no hassles, and no attempts at bribes.  My luck seems to be holding.

After the crossing Dominique had his first fall of the trip.  He rode over an empty can which got stuck to his front wheel, causing it to lock up.  He had a nice soft little put down right in front of all the people at the crossing.  Very funny in deed.