Roadtrip: Across Burkina - from one corner to another

On Saturday morning, we pulled out of Bobo around 8am – and headed for Ouagadougou. The first two hours were excellent: great road, little traffic, beautiful Saturday morning sun, great conversation and a few podcasts. We even picked up some pumpkins to cart back to Cape Coast!

The second half got a bit rougher: bad road (expected), heavier traffic, and a 12,000CFA ($24, thankfully) speeding ticket after getting caught in a speed trap just outside Ouaga. Still, we arrived in Ouaga after 4.5 hours on the road in good shape…and hungry.

We met two Nutriset colleagues – Virginie and Pauline – at a great French style resto called ‘Le Verdoyant’. A friend of a friend who recently moved from Singapore – Martin – joined us. We loved the wood fired pizzas…and homemade ice cream – what would be our last French-influenced meal before returning to the less exciting British-influenced cuisine of Ghana. It was so nice to spend that hour together with good food and good company.

It took us 2.5 hours or so to drive to Po – on the Ghanaian border – that afternoon. Great roads and relatively light traffic. We all marveled at the quality of the light on the landscape and villages zipping by as the sun sank low. 

From Po, we drove West on dirt roads for about 30 min to get to the entrance to the Nazinga Game Ranch. The sun was just setting when we pulled up to the Campement d’Elephant hotel…which looked totally abandoned and past its prime. As we drove slowly into the dark, dusty and overgrown complex, we noticed some movement in the parking area…and were informed by the parking guard that the place was indeed open – but they only turn the generator on if/when a guest arrives…and we were the only guests that night! The kids said the place reminding them of Tower of Terror – an abandoned hotel that had outlived its glory days and almost looked haunted when we arrived in the twilight.

In the light of the morning sunlight Sunday morning, the complex looked more charming than haunted. 

We had planned to drive in to the park that morning, but the grass was 10-15 feet high and we realized the chance of spotting elephants was so slim that spending more time on a bad dirt road only to look out both windows at walls of grass would not make much sense. So we walked around the entrance to the park and complex, loaded up and drove back to Po…where Heather guided us on a 90 minute tour of local villages via the guidebook.