We had closed out the Mali portion of our West African Adventure and now needed to make our way to Burkina Faso and it’s wonderfully named capital, Ouagadougou (pronounced just as it looks- O-wa-ga-doo-goo, although the it’s widely known as Waga). We changed vehicles three times before hitting the border which was driven by no apparent logic but by this time we have been in West Africa long enough to not even question some of the daily idiosyncrasies ...

Just before we left Canada we had read through a poll that had ranked the worst travellers and the top of the list was dominated by Continental Europeans with the so-called 'Ugly American' dropping well down. We had seen some evidence to support this, but a French tour group waiting in the Timbuktu ferry queue with us was about to put on a show like none we had seen before. All road vehicles have to cross the Niger by ferry as they head south and the ferry dock a...

Given the encroaching desert, the Niger doesn’t quite make it to Timbuktu anymore (although there is an effort underway to re-establish that link). As a result we had to catch a shuttle to the town itself- the driver was only too happy to inform us that we were now officially in the middle of nowhere- we were also able to get the needed picture in front of the sign pointing to Timbuktu. We had to struggle to find a suitable sign and in this respect, Timbukt...

Having learned the lesson of our last false start, once we were back in Mopti we tracked down our boat crew to confirm that they would be leaving the next day with as much certainty as one can muster in Africa The ‘crew’ was a grand total of two people, the captain (although he quickly relinquished that title and I was hereafter known as ‘mon capitaine’- I suspect that this was more related to the impossible task for West Africans in prono...

After the initial disappointment of not going to Timbuktu as expected, we resolved to try and enjoy the schedule change and hope for the best with respect to the new promises of the river trip to Timbuktu. We were hanging out in the bar/restaurant of the Pas de Problem Hotel enjoying a pretty reasonable facsimile of a cheese omelette and fried potatoes (is it possible that we’re sick of Couscous already?) and the guide showed up to introduce us to our trave...