I finally saw some animals!!! Despite the fact that Togo is in Africa and could potentially have really cool animals to see (elephants) and to run from (lions), there is—sadly—nothing.Rumor is, Togolese peeps killed them all off. There is a National Park, which has some animals (like deer and stuff), but nothing big or cool. So, I went searching; I ended up in Benin (the country bordering Togo on the East). A friend—Jarrett—and I went on a 3-day excursion to Pendjari National Park in northern Benin. The trip was long, hot, and frustrating: approximately 24 hours round-trip and since only a 48 hour visa can be purchased at the border, it was all done in a 3 day span.
When we arrived at the hotel, we [luckily] found a driver/guide who does tours in the Park and we were scheduled to leave the next morning at 6am in his tricked out truck:
The next morning, we ate breakfast at 5am and headed out around 6am. We bumped our way through the park on our perch above the truck. Due to faulty craftsmanship of the seat, our backs and derrières were slammed constantly into metal bars under the skimpy seat padding. Luckily, we both sustained only minor bruises and a few days of sore muscles. At one point, a metal bar behind our heads broke free from its welding and was flying about uncontrollably, threatening to impale one or both of us. Jarrett daringly snatched it out of mid air; while I unfastened the bar, Jarrett secured the plastic rug that was serving as our roof, and were back on our way. In our adventures, we saw many different types of deer and antelope, monkeys, warthogs, baboons, hippopotamuses, crocodiles, elephants, and various types of birds. Unfortunately, we missed the lions’ morning visit to the watering hole, because, as our guide continued to point out, we “slept in” (which we found bizarre, considering we left the hotel at exactly the time he told us to the day before—but we later found out that there is an hour time difference between Togo and Benin and we were, in fact, 1 hour late to everything…).
The park also boasts being home to many other animals such as cheetahs, water buffalos, hyenas, leopards, and many others, but despite Jarrett’s confidence that he could “see the cheetah before the cheetah sees him,” we were not lucky enough to catch a glimpse of these animals. However, the park stretches across several different countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger and/or Nigeria? So perhaps they were all vacationing elsewhere that day…bummer.
At the end of the day, our guide took us to a beautiful waterfall where we swam and relaxed after a tiring day of searching for lions and cheetahs.
Overall, the trip was a great time. From seeing elephants up-close, taunting hippopotamuses to try to get them to come out of the water for a photo shoot, the threat of decapitation, the weird French dudes that paid a Beninese woman to eat lunch topless with them, to having our lunch expertly snatched away by a baboon, it was an experience I’ll never forget.
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