Pendjari National Park

So having 4 days off over Easter some friends and I decided that it was a good chance to go exploring and see a little more of Benin!!!

... So Miriam, Esther, My lovely girlfriend Amy and myself (with 6 other MercyShipers) travelled 8 hours on a bus that had people sitting on oil cans in the middle isle to a place called Pendjari which is right in the north of Benin, so north in fact we saw another country on our travels!

So Pendjari is a national park which has lots of cool animals and such! It even has its own very nice entrance ...


So this be our mode of transport for our time ... now 11 people in this car was a little bit of a squash to say the least ... so we got a little creative with the seating arrangements ...

We got a fair bit of animal action while we were there, off the top of my head we saw ... elephants, deer, hippos, buffalo, water buffalo, baboons, antelope, crocodiles and a little wart hog action! Here be some deer ...

So We really did ride on the top of the car as shown below ... (and we enjoyed it muchly :) )

So of course some pretty sweet views came along with the ride ...

Ok ... so im not a big tree fan, but i have to be honest, i loved these ones, They were really green at the top, then got brownier as it went down, kinda like going through the seasons. They also had some pretty cool fruit growing on the top, which were not really sure what it was because our driver didn't really speak any English! But we did find out that the elephants pull down the trees to get to the fruit, which we didn't get to see in action, but sounds cool none the less!

More sweet views ...

Now not a normal hotel room ... but i tell ya this i was pretty excited by the room! and that said even after realised all i had in the baking hot heat was a little fan that i couldn't get in the right place!

Ok, so we were on our way to the hotel type place (shown above) and Esther and myself were up top and for some reason being surrounded by totally white clouds started talking about rain, so we then decide to sing a little rain song ... and well this is what happened next ...

So we got the chance, very brief chance at that, but a chance none the less to go to some waterfalls and well ... jump off! Im gonna be honest here, i was pretty scared! But jump i did ... in fact over and over and over, 6 times! now not because i was loving it (although it was fun!) but because it really took that many attempts to get a picture of me in mid air ... so here it is...

Fun Fun Fun was had by all :)