Continuation

So yeah, the fetish market was not my bag at all, and they were scammers in the end trying to get us to buy horribly over priced fetishes. I'll post photos of the elephants foot and such later on. We left Togo and headed onto Benin where the border guards were none too friendly but they let us into their country anyway (Glad i don't speak French as we let Dan deal with the mean lady). We stayed at this amazing place in Grand Popo called Awaleplage on the beach. We were so tired and hot from all the travelling that day, we decided to relax on the beach for the rest of the afternoon which was heavenly. The next day Dan and Jennifer headed off for more sightseeing while K and I soaked up some more sun. We had a hell of a time trying to find a ride to the border to go to Tsevie and stood on the side of the road in the sweltering heat for what seemed like hours. We were grouchy and finally caught a lift in this great Bob Marley car. The driver was cool, had great tunes playing and his car had decals of Bob on the side with psycedelic interior, we could not stay in a foul mood after that ride.

However, our ride to Tsevie was unfortunately not as plesant. The driver had no idea where he was going and instead of taking the main route decided to take us down this "road" to avoid paying the police. This "road" was awful, completely awful. I thought for sure he was taking us out into the boonies to rob us and leave us for dead. There were no lights, pitch black, all mud with potholes and pools of water, not safe at all. My other fear other than robbery was getting stuck out in the middle of nowhere which was completely possible. He stopped to ask a lady about the road and wanted to bring her with us to navigate the road. After much discussion with Dan and the driver, we went it alone. The driver told us he knew the road, so Dan asked why he then needed the lady to navigate the road if he knew it. Dan "either you know the road and don't need the lady, or you need the lady and don't know the road" the driver just continued on. He also told us it would be about 5km, after 15km still in the middle of nowhere Dan asked if it was going to take 10 mins, an hour or 3 days. The driver laughed "3 days hahaha." It was an appropriate question given the circumstances. We came upon a pile of garbage to which K replied "hey this is my neighbourhood" how lovely LOL. We made it out alive. We went for dinner and i went to the bathroom beside the worst toilet in the world. It was so bad i could not even use it, i had to go beside it. I'll post a photo and you'll see why.

On our last day we went to K's friends Village. (While getting ready to go Jennifer and I perfected carrying a large bucket on our head....well for the photo at least as that is how the people carry most of their things and we wanted to try it.) It was not something one would normally see on such a trip and it was wonderful. The people in the village made us lunch Fufu and K's friend took us around to show us the sites which were mostly mud huts. The children were amazing and flocked around us and loved their photos being taken. They laughed and laughed when we showed them the digital pictures and followed us the rest of the way. We bid farewell to K and headed back to Lome for our last evening. Tuesday was insane, we were up at 6am, at the market buying last minute things, getting our fabulous dresses from the amazing tailor and heading to the border to go back into Ghana. The border was absolute mayhem, people were crowded around the car trying to "help" us with our luggage for a fee even though we told them no and not to touch anything. As soon as the trunk opened hands were flying, luggage was being carried off in every direction, i had to wrestle my suitcase out of this man's hands it was brutal. We finally made it over the border into lovely Ghana. It was such a breath of fresh air after the whole melee. People greeting us "hello beautiful ladies, welcome" and one of the guards at the border bought us water...i LOVE Ghana!! After even more shopping and dripping with sweat (Jennifer commented that if we took a shower we would be less wet) we headed to the airport.

Our flight left at 8pm and arrived in Frankfurt at 5:30am. Woo Hoo!! Our connecting flight did not leave until 1pm, we saw a lot of the Frankfurt airport. We travelled for about 40 hours straight on no sleep and have finally arrived home. I'll post some pics soon, i'm off to bed :)