We arrived at 'Le Relais de Diebougou' a nice enough hotel, managed to get a room with a double bed & a mattress was brought in for Maddy after a fair bit of negotiation. We had a few drinks with our minibus driver & his friends and the hotel cooked us a great meal.
The following morning it was decided to unfortunately miss the Lobi region via Gaoua as our driver had said it would take 8 hours to go from Gaoua to Banfora.
We decided to catch a bus to Bobo Dioulasso and see the mosque. We walked the kilometre to the bus station, bought tickets and settled down for breakfast in a shack with coffee & omelettes. Some 'nutter' was there entertaining us all when another bus to Ouagadougou turned up with a German couple on board; they came over to join us for breakfast and were busy chatting to us when their bus started to leave! Luckily they caught it! Our bus came and again there wasn't any room to sit down so it was standing room only but Dani got lucky with a lovely Burkinabe lady who offered to let her sit on her knees!
We rolled into Bobo a few hours later in time for lunch and got a taxi across town to the mosque, as soon as we got out we were pounced on by touts - the most annoying & frustrating part of travelling in Africa. Ignoring them we walked across a square and found a small restaurant, ordered lunch and chilled out deciding to take it in turns to see the mosque. I received a text message on my phone which had us all in shock; JB was in Abidjan having buried his father the previous day, I'd sent him a text from us all and the one received said that he now had to bury his brother; the one that had malaria and we thought he was on the mend, the kid wasn't 14 but 9 years old!
Dani & I went off to the mosque, as soon as we arrived we were met by a guy just getting off his scooter claiming to be an official guide and wanting 1,000CFA; I ignored him but he went on & on, so I decided to speak Japanese to him asking him if he could speak Swedish. Completely perturbed by this white woman & child who didn't speak English, French or German (he tried all) he left us in peace! Hallelujah!!!
Maddy went off to see the mosque alone & received similar hassle and we all decided it was time to get a bus to Banfora which we hoped would be quieter and we wouldn't receive as much hassle. The bus station was minutes from the restaurant, we bought tickets and found ourselves in Banfora by 5pm or so. We picked Hotel de la Comoe from one of our guide books and turned up to find a gorgeous courtyard garden and a room for 7,500CFA for the three of us. However the room had two single beds, so I got the short straw this time and had a mattress on the floor which made things a little cramped.
