Hotel Kanaga Mopti

... one. Although you certainly couldn’t blend with the crowd, the people-watching was outstanding, and DH and I made a game out of trying to name the various foods, spices, and medicinal products that the harbour-side vendors were selling. This was also my first attempt at using my new mini Polaroid printer to print a couple of photos directly off of my camera. It’s not the fastest print job ever so as the photo finally starts to make an appearance something of a ...

Mopti was a nice wee town. Completely and totally crawling with guides and touts and over-friendly men, however, and not particularly much to do except just... explore. You'll notice I spend a lot of time wandering aimlessly.<br><br>So in between being told I need to hire people as a guide for the Dogon country (which I didn't go to, for all those reasons I said before and a couple more and just because I didn't really... want to...)(try explaining THAT to a guide. They think you ...

I left Bamako yesterday. The rest of the time I was there I generally spent wandering around exploring or hanging around with the nuns...<br><br>The markets there are insane! They have EVERYTHING under the sun for sale and they are so incredibly busy. Why is it that everywhere you go in the world (or everywhere I've been, at least..) there can be found Bob Marley and Che Guevara's faces on obscure objects. The heroes of our time, perhaps? It amused me that they ...

... in African towns. The three day search for Oulatta was spent mostly digging out the truck from sand and we have become exp**ts at whipping the truck out of difficult znd deep situations...at one point we tried in the heat of the day for more than 4 hours and it seemed that we w**e lit**ally going to dig the depth of the truck as the sand was so incredibly soft and deep. Chris (the driv**) even resorted to building a roman road out of rocks when the sandmats w**e ****ing useless ...

... it's busy with boats unloading their cargoes. We take a narrow wooden pirogue boat across the harbour to the bar, which provides a good vantage point to watch the boat build**s next door, the sights and smells of the market selling dried fish and vegetables and the huge blocks of grey coloured salt which has come down riv** from Timbuktu.Distracted by the activity of the harbour around me I lifted my glass of cold be** to take a ...

... the airline tickets. I don't know how anyone would have found him - we went to the second floor of a random building into a sort of office. The man sold me a ticket for the following morning and gave me a receipt - but no ticket. The whole time his dog - Obama - was v**y int**ested in me (I must have STUNK!). Then we went to Boubacar's house (identical to Tall's) to relax for a bit. I watched some more African TV, in French and snoozed.

... to the edge of the village they tell the children to stay and we are left walking along the hot dusty tracks towards with the escapement. Halfway down we spot a pool and as we're all carrying somewhat heavy day packs take the opportunity to dive in... well not exactly dive in for fear of water nasties but at least submerge ourselves. Despite being riddled with pootomouth it was lovely! We then walked to the bottom of the escarpment and onto the next ...

... continued driving after not only blowing a tyre but completely destroying it. Quite an effort. His passengers on the other hand, crammed in like sardines, feeling every borough and trough and pot hole in the road, numerous time slamming into the roof then back down again hurting top and tail. Rachel even managed to knee herself in the head ...

... with Muzza asleep inside. "Hey bru you packing up the tent?" came the muffled cry "Sorry bru. I shouldn't have been sleeping". Aft** a false start with the truck not turning ov** we arrived into Mopti at about 12.45pm, w**e hassled by the usual suspects selling their wears and w**e on the deck by 13.15, our home for the next two nights. Except for Barsby who was back at Via Via fighting off an awful attack of pootomouth and missing out on the ...