After a hot sunny day in Benin on Sunday (when I got quite sunburned), we got a surprise when we woke up to rain on Monday morning. We had already planned to do a bit of sightseeing so it didn't matter too much and it cleared up as the day progressed.

We booked a guide who would show us round Ouidah. Ouidah was one of the most important slave trade ports and the source of the voodoo religion in Caribbean. On the tour we saw monuments to the slaves which were sold from Benin: one as a door with the slaves leaving, and another door representing their spirits returning home. The monuments and the voodoo-inspired statues which lined the streets in Ouidah were funded by UNESCO. I couldn't help feeling that the countries who had been involved in the slave trade from Benin could have contributed something to make the monuments more impressive.










After the monuments on the coast, we went to the Voodoo Python temple, the sacred forest and the Portuguese fort (also a museum) in the village.

The Voodoo temple was a surreal experience. We parked the car in the village square. On one side is a Roman Catholic Basilisk, built by the Portuguese. On the other side is the Voodo temple, which is consists of some small mud huts, surrounded by a wall under a large, sacred tree full of bats (flaggermus).










They told us about the ceremonies they did there (only good magic, we were assured). Then one of the men came out of the snake hut with a Python and we all put it round our necks as you can see in the pictures. Mathilde was intrigued by the snake and kept touching it. She freaked out when we tried to put it round her neck (the poor little thing) and now even Erik's fluffy toy snake makes her run and hide - "Dabo, Dabo" she cries. I feel pretty bad about that. Daniel was very calm about the whole thing, as you can see in the picture of him sitting in the snake hut.

The sacred forest was a small park with some rather grotesque voodoo statues. The highlight was a huge millipede we found in a pile of leaves. Also the museum was woefully sparse. Everything has been taken for private collections or to other museums, it seems. I bought a couple of (new) wooden scupltures and some small, colourful tapestries for the boys in the little shops outside. While we waited to go into the musem, we were surrounded by boys from the village and it was interesting to see how Erik and Daniel interacted with them. Erik was the protective one & Daniel just wanted to be friends.


By the time we got back to the hotel, it had brightened up and we spent some time on the beach. The waves were not as big as in Nigeria and much safer.



On Tuesday we left the hotel around 2pm, 1hr later than we had planned - we couldn't bring ourselves to leave. Despite problems with bad fuel, we managed to get back in 5.5 hrs as the border crossing went a bit quicker. Hopefully next time we can cross the border by boat and get the time down even more. Statoil is buying a new, more powerful (and reliable) boat soon.

All in all it was a great trip and we have already booked to go back there for the long, Thanksgiving weekend at the end of November!

Jeremy