Home » Sudan » Khartoum, Sudan - 12 Feb 2001

We've made it to Sudan after a drive from Ghana which would put competitors in the Paris-Dakar rally to shame. It took us just two weks to drive through 5 countries and cover thousands of km's. We also passed a very important milestone - we've survived (just)
15,000 km's on african roads.

Khartoum, Sudan - 12 Feb 2001

Pam.tom
2005-10-15 19:25:21

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We've made it to Sudan after a drive from Ghana which would put competitors in the Paris-Dakar rally to shame. It took us just two weks to drive through 5 countries and cover thousands of km's. We also passed a very important milestone - we've survived (just)
15,000 km's on african roads.
Saying that Togo only took us an hour to cross but it was enough for us to grab a couple of yummy french sticks (Ghanaina bread was truely awful - ex-British colony and all that) and head into Benin.
Only having a transit visa we had 48hours to make it 600km to the northern border with Niger. We did it but had to miss one of Benin's biggest attractions - the snake temple at Ouidah. Such at pity that we couldn't pop in to see the hundreds of snakes writhing around a voodoo temple - shame really....next time!
We did, however, see plently of signs that voodoo is alive and well in the country. White flags hanging outside houses indicating the presence of fetish priests and fetish shrines dotted around the countryside. Tom was even offered a python for sale at the side of the street - regretfully we had to pass up the offer....
Customs into Niger was no problem and we luckly made sure we filled up with cheap petrol in Benin (the price per lt starts dramatically increasing from now on).
En-route for Niamey we decided to go on safari again and hired a guide to take us to see a troop of giraffe's which somehow (and god only knows how) has survived the country's turbelent past.
After about an hours drive we found a small group of 6 giraffe - including some of the tallest babies we've ever seen! A fantastic experience and we can now bore everyone with our new found giraffe knowledge (for example do you know they can reach speeds of 30kph for example and have a valve in their necks to stop the blood rushing out when they put their heads down - fascinating eh?)
Onto Niamey and once we had negotiated the traffic ...