Possibly the longest and more aggravating day of my life... Decided to go to Benin today after getting dropped in Anèho in togo whiwh turned out to be a bit of a hole. It then only took an hour for the shared taxi to fill up, by fill up I mean 2 people to every seat except the drivers... nic and comfy!

Ah, African borders. Such a joy! After having some guy just grab my passport and march off I thought I was being assertive by demanding that he "give it back right now!" turns out that was a bad move as he was delivering me to the visa people. Tip for future Benin travellers - don`t annoy the officials. He was then very keen to return me to the Togo side of the no mans land in between.

After that I waited for an hour while they gave me a temporary visa. My taxi driver stood right b ehind me the whole time and told me to hurry up about once a minute... because obviously I can tell the Benin officials to go faster with the process... I then had the joy of sitting in the middle seat of the car. No, not the middle seat in the back, in Africa they have another seat. Its the area between the 2 front seats where you sit half on the hand brake. Changing gears in great too, you get your leg smushed - it makes you dread 5th gear although without it the torture goes for longer...

Arriving in Cotonou I dropped off at some random place to be surrounded by zemi jong drivers (more motorbikes). I was assured that the driver knew the hotel. Ten minutes of driving later he stopped by the peace corps... why I hear you ask? No idea! Not to worry, he really did know where it was, which obviously explains why he asked about 5 people while driving around. I eventually decided to find my own way, which led me to the hotel - not too hard to find!

So, overall very frustrating! At the moment I am very envious of anyone in Europe, America or lovely New Zealand where things are generally more straight forward!