So this trip finally happened…well, it is still happening. I have wanted to check out Benin Republic since about a year ago, but life and constant interruptions kept me from going on this trip. I also thought it would be a solo trip all through out, I thought wrong.
Random story, I made a new friend on Friday evening and by Sunday morning, we got on the road together to visit Benin Republic. My timeline through Benin was a bit open ended, while hers was for only two nights. She made for a very animated travel partner and we also had very similar sense of travel, so we found it quite easy be in sync all throughout the travel. I would definitely do more travels with her in the future. Meet Toks!
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We got into Benin Republic after about a 30 minutes long hassle of trying to avoid bribing anybody. We got out of the Nigerian bit without any sort of bribery, but at the Benin Republic section, we coughed up N500 each to get an unnecessary stamp on our yellow fever card only to find out later that we were at the wrong department and did not need the stamp. #LeSigh
The men at the Benin border also tried to get us to pay N2,000 a pop to have our passports stamped, we said hellz na! Through some miracle, they relented in less than 1 minute, stamped our passports and harried us out. Toks and I celebrated that small victory with a little dance and a solid high five. #TeamNoBribery. (Me thinks, my constant mention of “I am a journalist” musta helped)
About 1 hour later, in Fidjosse Cotonou, we arrived at our host’s home, Mea and in less than 30 minutes later, we were on the road with Mea to have lunch and drinks with her friends. A perfect way to kick start our adventure through Benin Republic!
Her friends were a couple of flirty older French men and a couple of Beninese ladies, we immediately ordered lunch and a chilled bottle of the locally brewed beer, Beninoise, and finally took in a long breathe. We made it to Benin Republic!
On a side note, it was interesting to find that all the French men that we met in Cotonou were either married to local Beninese ladies or Togolese ladies, interesting swirl. #JustSaying.
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With my lunch of a very tasty fish paired with fries lolling in my stomach, I was in the right mood for the next social agenda of the day, a very French game of Petanque. A game that involves throwing hollow steel balls as close as possible to a smaller wooden ball from a designated circle. There are a lot more rules involved, but that’s pretty much the gist of it. It was a pretty easy game to get the hang of, and I felt like a proper local; throwing steel balls in the middle of street, dancing with my new friends in Jubilation when I made a good throw. Attempted to get a cute baby to stop crying and did a bit of the ‘dodge the oncoming car’ dance when our games blocked off the main road. It was awesome!
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By 8pm, Toks and I got on a bike with Mea to her house. Unlike us, Mea had to get up the next morning for work, but we were in traveler mode and had to experience more. Despite the lack of the local currency on us. Ooo! I forgot to mention, Mea paid for our meals and drinks because Toks and I did not have the local cash; the currency exchange spots were not open at that time.
Anyway, we called a taxi, ran off into the airport with hopes to get a bureau de change to change our Nairas into CFAs and found out that they no longer accept Nairas, ha! #gbese!
Toks, a very smart gal, had a bit of dollar on her, so I loafed off her for the night hehe. I got a local sim card with 1gb data at a ridiculously inflated price of 5,250 cfa…for 1 gb! Moov and MTN are chopping serious money in Benin Republic oh!
We got back into the taxi, and drove off to the central part of Cotonou to experience the bougie lifestyle…it was a bit meh for me. By 11pm, we called off our efforts to hunt for more fun and went back to our home for the night.
[ngg_images source=”galleries” container_ids=”9″ display_type=”photocrati-nextgen_pro_mosaic” row_height=”180″ margins=”5″ last_row=”justify” lazy_load_enable=”1″ lazy_load_initial=”35″ lazy_load_batch=”15″ ngg_proofing_display=”0″ captions_enabled=”0″ captions_display_sharing=”1″ captions_display_title=”1″ captions_display_description=”1″ captions_animation=”slideup” order_by=”sortorder” order_direction=”ASC” returns=”included” maximum_entity_count=”500″]Oh yeah, we also met a couple of Scots on the beach earlier in the day and they advised us to check out Ganvie before we left town, so that became our primary agenda for the next day…the pictures from that are absolutely fantastic. Stay tuned!
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