A plethora of elephants

Burkina Faso has many faces, and we have seen a few of them in the last few days.

Our Thanksgiving dinner was at a nice restaurant called Le Verdoyant, which was indeed unbelievably popular (the only place I’ve seen so far where reservations are a good idea). There, we stuffed ourselves with lasagna and pineapple and ham pizza that were delicious, even by American standards. By that, I only mean that sometimes here, things taste so delicious because you haven’t had a pizza in months, but really it’s not that good, but this was legitimately tasty.

After doing some research online, we realized that the bus company we had reserved with to go to Ghana might not be such a good idea, as the buses are old and apparently have the highest incidence of crashes. We decided that we would prefer to get to Ghana alive, if possible, so we pushed back our departure one more day and went to change our bus tickets to the STC bus line, leaving Monday morning. After picking up our visas, we went out for Indian food for lunch.

I would not have expected a fine Indian restaurant in the heart of Ouagadougou, but it was there, and it had delicious cocktails as well. Over lunch, we discussed what to do with our extra time in Burkina. The night before, the taxi driver had talked to us about a safari park called Nazinga and gave us his card, in case we needed anything. After looking it up online, we decided it would be a nice day trip, so we called up Sylvain, the driver, and arranged to go the following day.

After going to India for lunch, we took a trip to the American bar life for dinner. We read about a bar not far from our hotel called the Cactus Bar, reputed to serve burgers and play Western music. It turned out to not actually serve burgers of its own, but you could order from the restaurant downstairs, and it played hip hop. But close enough. We were the only people up there, because apparently we’re square enough to hit the town before ten o’ clock, but we had a couple beers, shot a couple games of pool, and got take-out from downstairs brought up to us wrapped in aluminum foil. To continue the classiness, we went downstairs, where they had a legitimate bowling alley, playing Best of the 90s and everything, except instead of having a big Budweiser sign they had a Castel one. Just in case we forgot we were in Africa. We contemplated going out clubbing, but just went to bed instead.

5:30 the next morning, we awoke to the airy tone of my cell phone alarm, and got dressed and ready for our safari in the dark. We were down in the lobby at 6:00, our scheduled departure time, but I forgot that we were in Africa and nothing is actually on time. The driver showed up around 6:45, and we got underway. On our way out of Ouaga, we stopped at a gas station to fill up, and I went into their minimart to buy water. Again, I was amazed by how modern Ouaga is: prices marked on coolers, clean, stocked, computer and scanner to check out… just like the US.

The drive to Nazinga took about 3 hours. The first half was on the freeway up to a town called Po, and from there it was dirt road. After a little nap, Kevin and I played Scrabble all the way up to the park entrance. The park itself is a very large (about 400 sq. miles) area of protected forest and savannah with man-made watering holes, though they also offer hunting safaris there. Once inside the park’s front gate, there was still about 30 kilometers to go to get to the center camp of the park.

At the gate, we had picked up some local student needing to get to the center. About two or three kilometers in, we spotted a couple of elephants off to our right. The driver stopped, and the rest of us (Kevin, the student, and I) scrambled up on top of the 4x4 to get a better view. Unfortunately, the animals were largely obscured by trees, so we kept going with us still on the roof. Let me tell you, the top of a 4x4 is exceedingly uncomfortable, with the metal bars of the baggage rack digging into your butt as the vehicle bumped along disintegrating dirt road. From up there, however, we spotted a couple of monkeys, some baboons, and a couple of antelope before we even got to the heart of the park and picked up our guide. At one point, the road crossed a watering hole, and there were probably more than ten elephants there cooling off, including one big male making quite a presentation of himself (not for the kids to see).

Finally, we made it to the center, where their little collection of cabins overlooks another watering hole, this one also with seven elephants splashing away in it. Before getting back in the car with our guide, we walked down a little path to an observatory they had built looking out over the watering hole, and we observed the elephants for a while from there.

By this point, it was almost 11:30, not the best time of day to see animals, but we had no choice. We piled back into the 4x4 with our guide and took off on more little paths through the brush. We had terrific luck that day. Not far from camp, we saw a troop of probably thirty elephants, as well as various kinds of antelope (bushbucks, duikers, waterbucks, etc.) and many, many species of bird (eagles, wild guinea fowl, Abyssinian rollers, red-throated bee-eaters, parakeets, to name a few).

We ate lunch with our driver in their screened restaurant overlooking the watering hole. From there, we could see a few warthogs snuffling around in the reeds, as well as a few antelope and deer who had come to drink. Then around 2, we hit the road.

The park was in the process of doing controlled burnings to increase visibility, which I had somewhat mixed feelings about. On the way out, we drove past patch after patch of crackling, burning grass, and the sky was dark with all of the smoke. Around the smoke billows, dozens of birds of prey were circling, waiting for the little animals escaping the fire to run out into the open. The driver told us, though, that the burnings were good for the animals too, because in the open, they were safer from hyenas (which we didn’t see) that would ambush them from the grass. I guess controlled burning prevents raging uncontrolled brush fires, too.

Needless to say, it was an amazing trip. We played some more Scrabble on the way back until we ran out of gas a little ways out of Ouagadougou. It wasn’t a big deal, though, we just paid some guy on a bicycle to go up the road and buy a few liters for us. Around dinner time, we pulled back up to our hotel, completely coated in dirt and dust from the road that may not completely come off for days.

We went back to Le Verdoyant for dinner and got more pizza and lasagna, though this time it was like we were invisible, and the plethora of waiters were nearly impossible to wave down. No matter, the food was still delicious.

So from Italy, to India, to the US, to the savannah, Burkina Faso continues to impress me. It makes me wish I were stationed in Ouagadougou.