the search continues...

After two days of travel (including one of the worst train trips ever), numerous conversations, subterfuge and three days stuffing around trying to organise to share a 4wd and driver with fickle, cheapskate French tourists, we finally managed to go on a safari with an unusually sweet & sincere French dude we had met back in Abomey (ok I'll stop the French-bashing now). West Africa's national parks aren't really set up for tourists, but apparently Parc du Pendjari in North Benin is one of the easiest to visit. The others must really suck.

After getting up at 5.30 and driving for nearly 2 hours we got to the park, and started out sitting on the roofracks of the car (yes; I know 4wds can overturn easily!) - this got too hot for me quite quickly but Dave and Christophe were up there for hours. Didn't see any lions but lots of gazelles and other hooved bounding creatures, hippos and elephants.

Near the end of the day we saw a group of elephants, a family as it turned out - a couple of smaller ones went scurrying off into the bush. But the biggest elephant hung around, and after a minute or two decided he'd had enough of us and our cameras and charged towards us, trumpeting and flapping his ears. Suddenly our vehicle didn't feel very big or safe. Our driver, Kassim, revved the engine and tooted the horn; as did the driver in front, and this seemed to work for a moment. The elephant smashed a small tree to show us he was for real, and then decided to charge us again - this time coming much closer, within a few metres. After more horn-blowing and revving he chilled out again, but this time we didn't hang around. The people in the other car must have been even more scared as they were in the back of a ute with their 2-year-old. Of course Kassim thought it was very funny that I had been afraid, and of course he was probably right.

My life could have really flashed before my eyes a few hours later when a drunk guy on a bicycle wheeled in front of the car from the darkness, forcing Kassim to do some crazy steering and braking to avoid hitting him and smashing into a ditch. Fortunately he was a much better driver than most of the blokes in charge of 'bush taxis', which are the main method of travelling long distances here.