Still 3 months and 4 days away from departure but already the excitement of getting back to Africa is building up. Having to organise a visa prior to departure for the Cote d'Ivoire, constantly thinking of the 12yr old who'll be tagging along with me & whether Gianni, my Italian travel partner will make his mind up about joining are all keeping me occupied!

The route 'should' be from Abidjan to Ghana where we'll pass Morree to go & see KingaFreespirits' foundation created by her mother Krystyna who I'm trying to assist http://www.fundacjafreespirit.pl/eng/index0_eng.html

From there we're looking at going north to Banfora in Burkina Faso to keep someone's geography teacher happy - it's in this year's text book, then to Boromo where there's meant to be a great auberge and onto Bobo Dioualasso then a short night in Ouagadougou before catching a bus to Niamey, Niger. From Niamey we should be able to get a pirogue downriver for 36hrs or so; it's a commercial run that many boatmen take and the idea is to get us to the border of Benin. If the train is running from Parakou to Cotonou we'll go south by that but there's some news that it stopped running for good back in April 2007.

Back through Togo & Ghana - hoping to take in a bit of slave history to make this a little more educational than just a 'jaunt' across W.Africa, we'll go back past Abidjan for a few days of R&R in San Pedro near the border with Liberia.

It's a shame, as the original plan had been to go through Liberia and back into my favourite African country; Guinea. Since I left last year the situation with Conte, the dictatorial president haven't been good & I was lucky to leave when I did. I wanted to go back there ... but it'll have to wait until the end of 2008 when I hope to drive down there ... in'shallah