Last Saturday, we stepped outside Nigeria for the first time in 3 months. We drove across the border to a beach hotel in Benin called La Casa del Papa with our friends, the Maiers.

To avoid the worst of the traffic, we left at 8am in a convoy of 5 cars with a police excort in front and behind. Three of the cars were going to another hotel in Cotonou. The whole journey took us 6 hours: 2 hrs to the border, 2 hrs of bureaucracy at the border and 2 hrs from the border to the hotel. On the left is a picture of me in Benin, taken from Nigeria...!

I don't know whether it was the fresh baguettes being sold on the side of the road or the style of road signs but Benin had an almost tangible French feel to it. (or it might have been because everything was in french...). The towns looked just as poor as Lagos but cleaner and better organised. The place has a nice feel to it.

We drove through past Porto Novo, through Cotonou and turned towards the beach at Ouidah. The hotel was 15km along a dirt track parallel to the beach, but was well worth the trip. The hotel is owned by a french family and has a charming feel to it. The restaurant was right on the beach and next door to the 3 pools. The food was also excellent (especially the breakfasts with croissants, fresh fruit, bacon and scrambled egg, baguette and hot coffee). Delicious.










We spent most of the next day camped out by the pools, apart from a short morning excursion up the beach with the boys to the next village. Erik, Daniel & Alexander played football with the village boys. Daniel was more interested in chasing sand crabs, so they caught one for him and he carried carefully back to the hotel with him.