Hotel Mirabeau Bamako

... who travel abroad are obliged to return with as many big gifts as the airline will permit. Although we were treated to specimens of luggage, the size of which we had never seen before, the most amazing deposits on the baggage carousel were these large blobs that appeared to be wrapped in anything that was handy- it would not be hard to imagine that herds of small elephants were being smuggled into Mali in just such a manner ...

... must work). They would go crazy when we gave them the 'la crayon' ou 'la bic'. Many cannot afford tablets to write or pencils/pens. This was heartbreaking and we wanted to leave/give so much more ev**y time. <br><br>The villag**s bathe, wash dishes, swim, etc, basically using the ***** Riv** as their source for EVERYTHING. They live in mud huts and get up at 5:30am each morning to begin the day of work which could include fishing, farming and/or harvesting. Each day is about ...

... amusing - A long drawn out greeting is part of the social norm where you are asked about the well being of yourself, your wife, your family, your village, your goats.....before any other business is talked about! The entire exchange is done at a furious pace in Bambara or the local language, but it gives you an indication of how important relationships are to Malians. Interactions are also easily misunderstood by foreigners and often it seems that people are yelling ...

13th - Another puncture before the border town of Nara, Mali, out of spares now. We headed down the long road to Bamako for 4 night's stay and a chance to recover from our adventures on the road to Oualata. Took nearly twice as long to get there as we had 2 punctures!!!! on the RHS.....just our luck. Staying at Hotel Jolieba on the south side of the river.<br><br>Dist cov = 447 km<br><br>14th - Lazy day around the swimming pool, every type of ...

... which inspires you to elation and wond**, albeit the group w**e stunned and thrilled to have opportunity to view such a p**formance...once-in-a-lifetime treat!<br><br>Our final night in Mali filled us with sadness, howev** we celebrated the colour, wond**, beauty and en**gy of this country by dancing the night away in Bandiagara to a Mali band - the locals enjoyed our poor attempts "to shake our booty", but nothing could compare to their natural grace, en**gy and rhythm.

... optimistic for Africa!! It took the whole day for the visas to be issued (and that was only after we "helped" speed up the process - otherwise we would have had to wait for 36 hours). This meant that poor Nats had to spend her birthday in Bamako, travelling from Taxi to taxi to fetch visas, fetch bus tickets etc. I promised to make it up to her later in the journey! We finally left Bamako on 6 January. Direction le pays Dogon...

... time job! - and taking the occasional break to laze by the murky pool with a nice cold be**. I swear if you w**e back home and came across a pool you couldn't see the bottom of th**e's no way you'd go in... h**e it's paradise from the heat and you don't think twice about diving in... or what's lurking at the bottom! We ord**ed lunch from the restaurant for 2.30... unfortunately this meant they cooked it when we ord**ed around 12 and simply left it sitting th ...

... the girls got the more comfy baggy clothes. Whilst all this was going on Oliver was sitting around the campfire playing guitar and making up songs about people. Most entertaining and everyone was thrilled for him to finally be playing the guitar. I ended up sneaking off to bed around 11.30 and I think the rest followed a few hours later. Hmmm I wonder how many hangovers there will be in the morning and if the banchee cries are repeated.....

... LE gars. Il m'a grave dépanné d'un problème que m'aurait fait perdre une centaine de photos : l'ordinateur que j'ai utilisé pour écrire la première vingtaine de posts est tombé définitivement en panne et je n'avais pas fait la sauvegarde de certains de mes fichiers sur la clé usb que je contais « piquer » à Baby. En cherchant du secours je suis tombé sur ce monsieur là, un informaticien qui en dépit de son métier, de son gain-pain a décidé de me aider et non content de ce ...

... It took us three hours to reach our first major stop. When we checked our timetable, we should have been there an hour-and-a-half earlier! By the time we'd been on the train for 7 hours, we were already 7 hours late - an hour lost for every hour travelled!  Have Virgin's west coast trains in England been taking lessons from MaliRail? Not relishing the prospect of a 60-hour journey...to cover the not so impressive distance of 1,500km! We regularly stopped in ...