Still in Banfora

Still in Banfora

It is very pleasant sitting in our courtyard, under the trees at the rear of the hotel. We decided to have a bit of a 'breather' today and remain here a little longer.

After breakfast we walked out to explore the town. They must be used to white faces here as apart from a greeting no-one takes any notice of us. There's a lovely atmosphere to the place and feels much more relaxed. There are shops in abundance and I don't think there's anything we want that we can't buy here, including dried animal parts and other strange objects used in alternative medicines should we wish. There is a strong animist religion in this region, but there is at least one mosque and the call to prayer was quite soothing early this morning. Our first objective was to find gas. There was a small shop with a couple of larger cylinders of butane nearby but they said we could not recharge our tank there. We tried a couple of filling stations but all the tanks were empty so Chris was worried we would not be able to get enough gas for our next flight. He had filled one whole tank and a part tank, very slowly, before leaving Bamako, but we were wanting a reserve and a bit more in our cooking gas tank. We purchased 2 items from one store: a 'draining' spoon for me and a panga or machete for Chris. The shops of course are all open-air and most goods are out on the street. We found a very good vegetable market and stocked up on nice carrots (hard to find since Morocco), aubergine, red onions and a cabbage! The main fruit here are oranges, tiny blackened bananas and pineapple. There are lots of papaya and mango trees, but I think mangoes are out of season. I have had a very ripe papaya from a roadside stall near Bamako.

The people are the main attraction for me, both in dress and looks. Yesterday we saw a very striking man wearing colourful pyjamas, a stripy trilby hat and wellington boots and today, a schoolgirl riding a motor cycle had bright pink high heels with her smart school uniform. Mostly though the women are in traditional dress, either with head scarves tied in a topknot if they have not got a basket or bowl full of something or other on their heads, or they have elaborately braided hair, sometimes with beads woven through. Three young girls trying to sell woven baskets and fans, roasted peanuts in their shells and bags of sweet cakes braved the gardener here and came to see us. They are very cheeky and are giggling behind the entrance gate. We invited them to look inside the Enterprise and I took a photo of them.

We returned from our first shopping excursion to have coffee and mango juice in the hotel garden and to cool off under the trees. There is a beautiful jasmine like tree beside where we are parked that smells delicious. They speak very little English here but my French has improved considerably, either that or the Burkinabe version of the language is easier to understand. I found in Mali that I could understand very little and they appeared not to understand me very well.  I did learn the Mali greeting from Pam which was "Anche". The owner of this hotel is French and comes from Brittany, hence the Crepes Bretonnes on the menu. We haven't met him but the receptionist telephoned him on our arrival to ask his permission for us to park here.

After a rest in the shade we took our almost empty gas tank back to the small shop, where it turned out they had no gas, but the young shopkeeper walked us across town to somewhere that had, so we are now full to the brim in all our tanks, one still full of good British propane and a small one with the dregs from our last flight.

This afternoon I have been catching up with writing and bird identification. While sitting at dusk where we had our barbecue, a fantastic bird flew over, trailing long feathers which I at first took to be  two smaller birds chasing it. I have discovered it was a standard-winged Nightjar.  In the meantime, Chris has been very busy: cleaned the air filter, checked and adjusted the tyre pressures (Ron, your concern over the rear tyres chafing together at lower pressures has been thoroughly tested and all OK), oil and water levels checked and a full investigation of the steelwork supporting the rear box. A bit more welding may be required at a later stage to add more steel, but hopefully that can wait til Ghana where the language will not be a problem.

I missed a wonderful photo opportunity while sitting out eating a late lunch: 2 donkey carts towed by 3 donkeys apiece loaded with ‘hay’ came trundling past the gate.

This evening we will eat in as we have so much food in our store cupboard and fridge. The meal last night was very good, but expensive compared to our stay at the Sleeping Camel, where we had a meal on two occasions (Chicken Yassa, a typical Mali recipe, and a spicy beef dish which I forget the name of), had two loads of laundry done in the washing machine, several bottles of beer, electricity, use of hot showers and three nights parking all for less than the cost of our meal last night.

Tomorrow we will go in search of possible exciting balloon launch sites.