http://www.elizareid.com/africa Oct 2 - Nov 20: Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo, Ghana Tue, 12 Dec 2006 12:10:31 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Finally, it's what you've all been waiting for! Visit: www.elizareid.com/africa/photos/ to see 131 of the best pictures from this trip. You can view them as a slide show but without any titles. To see the explanations, click on the first image and the caption will appear along the top. Even better: ... http://www.elizareid.com/africa/archives/62 I landed in Dakar just before midnight 51 days ago. As my new friend Arona drove me to his family’s apartment in the city centre, my first glimpses of Africa emerged from the shadows of the darkness: skinny dogs – or goats – roaming the streets; homeless people sleeping on ... http://www.elizareid.com/africa/archives/61 As the song says, "All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go" - except my bags are not yet packed. But otherwise I'm pretty much ready for my 23.55 departure for Reykjavik, via Milan and London. In an eery symmetry, my final flight is scheduled to land at Keflavik Airport ... http://www.elizareid.com/africa/archives/60 Speaking English! Discovering a book exchange just when I ran out of reading material. My new collection includes a novel about a UK public-school drug addict, the hilarious confessions of an IRS tax collector, and a novel about Newfoundland's coming-of-age Air conditioned buses - one of which was even on schedule! Meeting by ... http://www.elizareid.com/africa/archives/59 OK - one of the last top tens... My only swimming of this trip in the pool of the Hotel Alize in Baguida, with opera blasting from the bar's speakers A visit to the SPES orphanage - although not with enough energy on my part! Crashing the investiture party of the new supreme ... http://www.elizareid.com/africa/archives/58 After ten days or so of fluctuating health and visiting orphanages, it was a nice change to do some purely touristy things in Cape Coast. One was my first visit to a National Park on this trip. Kakum National Park is one of Ghana’s smallest, but is only 35 kilometres north ... http://www.elizareid.com/africa/archives/57 I was grumpy.  I woke up in Accra with a minor cold; my head was throbbing from clogged sinuses. Contrary to what the hotel staff had told me, the buses to Cape Coast, 120 kilometres west along the coast, were not leaving every hour, and the only one that day ... http://www.elizareid.com/africa/archives/56 “So, how did you like Togo?”   I was being ‘quizzed’ by the Togolese border official at the Togo-Ghana border post at Aflao. “Well, it seemed nice, but unfortunately I wasn’t feeling very well, so I didn’t get to see much of the country,” I answered.   “Ah!” – that’s the only ... http://www.elizareid.com/africa/archives/55 Admittedly, I can be a baby when I get sick, but I’ve never considered myself a hypochondriac. Still, maybe I have some form of it that manifests itself only on long journeys. In any case … After happily over-paying to get a taxi all to myself back to my auberge yesterday ... http://www.elizareid.com/africa/archives/54 Earlier I promised I would only be harassing you dear readers twice about donating to a good cause on this blog. One was with the Ecole Christ-Roi in Ouagadougou (and, ok, unplanned was the Peuple du Monde orphanage which is also a good cause) - and the other is Spes. Spes, ... http://www.elizareid.com/africa/archives/53