West Africa trip: Nigeria, Bénin, Togo, Ghana

 Having never been to West Africa, I figured it was about time to go. I booked this tour in early December and was on the plane by early January. That’s especially impressive given the crazy Visa requirements for Americans going to Nigeria – the tour operator, Confidence, got everything rolling quickly.  I was also really happy to find a tour that included these four countries with overland border crossings! I flew into Lagos, Nigeria and flew out of Accra, Ghana. I would definitely recommend this trip, despite some substantial hiccups. Here’s how it went, with lots of advice:

The location

Channeling Carmen Sandiego

From west to east, Ghana, Togo, Bénin and Nigeria form a chunk of West Africa’s southern coast. Bénin and Togo look adorably small, but together they are about the size of Florida. All four countries combine to form approximately the same land mass as Texas and California put together. Be prepared for some very significant car rides.

California and Texas superimposed on the West African countries I visited.

Preparation and packing

In hindsight, it would have been helpful to know a few more things before I left the states, so here they are. 

Weather:

It’s the equator, and it’s freakin’ hot. 

The guide, Confidence, told me which hotels to book and when. My hotel in Lagos did have AC, but I was wary when I saw that it was connected to what looked like a homemade bomb. That sketchy device turned out to be a surge protector of some sort. If the AC was on for more than a few minutes, all the lights in the room would go off, as I discovered when I was in the shower (more dark shower stories to come!). So bring lots of light/loose fabrics to wear. Water is scarce and temperature control is not common even in big city hotels, but the cold showers were welcome given the ambient temperatures. 

Environmentalism:

Be prepared to drink only from bottles. It’s depressing and generates tons of plastic waste, which you will see from time to time in mountain-high dumps on the street. I still brought my own water bottle and was able to fill it up every now and then at restaurants or airports, but definitely not enough for the full supply.

Money:

Bring big bills. You’ll be paying visa fees in USD, and those are the biggest costs ($260 for Nigeria, $250 for Ghana, Togo and Bénin are more affordable and can be purchased online with a credit card). But aren’t you usually advised to bring small bills because other countries are less likely to take big ones? Yes, and I thought that would be the case here too: I purposefully got tens, fives and ones to use for everything, but I was wrong. Most money gets changed on the black market, whether the guide takes you there personally or you pay an official at a place like a border office. But both the official AND the black market will charge 30% MORE IF YOU HAVE SMALL BILLS. That’s right, the face value on the currency only means something if it’s a hundred-dollar bill. Five twenties only yielded me about $60. Even worse were the visas: the Nigerian visa, ostensibly $200, cost me $260 because I didn’t bring two hundreds. The Ghana visa was supposed to be $200 but I paid $250. Even the guides weren’t pleased when I tipped them with multiple ten-dollar bills, because the value was cut almost in half in the exchange. So my advice is: for the visas bring about $450 in big bills, then use your ATM card and get local money for meals, tickets, and souvenirs. The Nigeria leg is short and it’s the cheapest country on the list, so don’t get too many naira. Bénin and Togo use the same money (lots of other countries do too!) so you can safely get a bigger amount there and have it carry over to the next destination. Ghana uses cedis and was the most expensive destination.

Specific destination highlights

Arrival in Lagos, Nigeria

Landing in the airport, you realize right away that the phrase “developing country” is not a misnomer. I was ready to put that stereotype to bed, but alas, it’s true. Lagos is the 14th biggest city in the world by population, bigger than any city in the entire US. But the airport seemed to be outfitted in the 1970s and never updated. Getting off the jet bridge, we filed through a tiny little hallway, with only about every fifth light working. It was a little scary.

We went to the water village of Makoko, which despite the abject poverty was one of the highlights of the trip. After a brief walk from the street, the guide and I got into a canoe with a local boy pushing (they push with sticks rather than paddle) and the village chief joined us briefly to explain the way of life. 

It was fascinating to see how families live in the houses raised on stilts, but also very depressing: healthcare and running water are nonexistent. The smell is awful and people wade through water that has to be teeming with disease. There are, however, a few schools, one of which I got to tour. The entrance fee goes to improvements for the schools and villages.

Me with the Makoko chief. Pretty much everyone I passed wanted a pic; I would never have tried to intrude by asking, but I'm glad they did. 

In this village and everywhere we went, there were TONS of adorable African children. It seemed like every adult was accompanied by at least two kids, which makes sense when you review the population predictions for Africa (globally, one in four people will be African by 2050). Each and every one of those children, upon seeing me, would delightedly scream "OYIBO!!!"  (White person!!!) and call over their friends who would also scream it. It's nice to be a novelty! Sorta.

We went to a few Nigerian museums, which were wonderful, but definitely small and hot compared to US museums.  

Nigeria was the least expensive country. Nearby countries smuggle the gasoline from Nigeria and set up black market stations along the roads, which we used quite a bit. Fascinating.

On the way to the border crossing at Bénin, we drove past a few military checkpoints. It quickly became apparent (well, Chuks explained right away), that these were not exactly valid. It was real military personnel, and they had tire spikes so you had to stop. The first few asked for my passport and where we were going (ummm... to the border... since that is where this road goes?). The guys (always guys) at checkpoints 6-13ish asked for my passport, but also started adding some ambiguous but fairly innocuous requests, like, "Oh, from the U.S.? Did you bring me anything?". At around the 14th checkpoint, the requests for bribes were a little more overt. The military guy leaned in the window and said "I want water." This is, as Chuks explained, the polite way to ask for a bribe. But Chuks encouraged me not to give in because it would only encourage them, and they couldn't really detain you for long since there was only one lane going to the border. I played dumb and offered him one of the water bottles I had purchased, which he refused but then thought better of it (95 degrees will do that to you when you "work" outside). But by the last few checkpoints (I had lost count... maybe 19th? 20th?), the military personnel abandoned all pretense. One motioned for Chuks to roll down the window, and I extended my passport to him. He rolled his eyes and said loudly, "I don't want that! I want money!" 

In the actual customs building, I got the classic bureaucracy treatment: Go to this window, now wait for them to call you, go to that window, oh yours is special we need to speak to you upstairs, wait here. Eventually Chuks was told to wait outside and I was lead into a room with a fancy decorated, clearly high-ranking officer lounging on a couch. He reminded me of Jabba the hut. He asked how I was, I said good, and he lecherously said "Yes, I can see that" (barf). He eventually told me to tell Chuks to come in while I waited outside. When Chuks came out 10 minutes later, I asked what they talked about and, surprise! The guy had tried to extort him. Poor Chuks was so bummed that as a guide he got subjected to this overt corruption so constantly. Beyond the border crossing, we saw policemen openly taking bribes at traffic stops and intersections. Apparently most of them smooth the process of smuggling (see above picture). I feel so bad for every honest Nigerian. The corruption in that country runs very deep.

Bénin: 

It’s time to bust out your French and come to Bénin. It's a former French colony, so most people speak French with lots of local languages mixed in.

Bénin was the hardest destination to find accommodations in because of the annual Voodoo Festival, attended by people from all over the region. Literally every hotel in Ouidah that Confidence suggested was booked solid. Through some ridiculous luck that I can describe to you separately if you’re curious, I was able to book this Airbnb. 

The town of Ouidah is not equipped for crowds. We waited for hours in traffic with only one lane getting to the festival. There are very few signs, which combined with our lack of navigation (see guide section below) made for some pretty rough arrivals. Eric and I eventually got out of the car and walked, leaving poor Chuks to deal with the traffic. 

The multi-day festival is held in the town center by day and on some huge grounds with a stadium and separate stage by night (that location had lots of restaurant tents and indigenous performers too). The daytime performances in town and the night performance in the stadium both featured the Egun and Zangbeto performances. There is a ton of well researched documentation of the history and religion involved in these performance and I strongly recommend you have a look! 

Eric, Chuks, the elusive Confidence, and me at the Voodoo festival.

I do have to explain here, though, a bit more about Voodoo (Vodun or Vodoun in Béninois). Going in, all I knew about voodoo was that voodoo dolls are a form of black magic (wrong) and the whole vibe was creepy black magic (also wrong). I can be forgiven for thinking that, because when the word ‘voodoo’ shows up in U.S. pop culture, whether in the 1960s, 2000s, or today, that narrative has taken precedence. But “voodoo” simply means “spirit” in Fon. In West Africa, people built a religion around the idea of worshipping spirits, just as other mainstream religions did. People who believe in voodoo associate spirits with inanimate and animate objects (again, like all mainstream religions do). They believe that amulets can protect you from bad spirits (sound familiar, Catholics?) and that the divinities will punish sinful behavior (sound familiar, every religion ever?). So why did this particular religion get the creepy, black magic reputation? Surprising no one, it had a lot to do with racism. Enslaved people from West Africa clung to their religion in the face of torture and death, so yeah, if you stumbled on to a ceremony in the 1700s it probably seemed pretty dark. As for the dolls, it’s not about making your enemy feel pain, even though this is pretty much all I saw before going to West Africa (in American and Colombian music videos, to name a few). The dolls protect your home by absorbing bad energy from others for you. Of course, some white colonizer saw this one small aspect of a religion and freaked out, telling everyone back home how creepy and superstitious West Africans were.

From the Wikipedia page: In 2020, Louisiana Voodoo High Priest Robi Gilmore stated, "It blows my mind that people still believe [Voodoo dolls are relevant to Voodoo religion]. Hollywood really did us a number. We do not stab pins in dolls to hurt people; we don't take your hair and make a doll, and worship the devil with it, and ask the devil to give us black magic to get our revenge on you. It is not done, it won't be done, and it never will exist for us."

At the festival, locals peddled tickets to a Python temple and other experiences, but there were no artifacts for sale. For that, I would need to go one country over. 

Togo

After a few days in Bénin, it was time to go the neighboring francophone country, Togo. Togo also has a strong Vodun presence, as about 30% of the population practice it (sometimes in conjunction with other religions like Christianity). In the capital of Lomé stands the “Fetish Market,” which was a stop on our tour. Alex, the guide, said unironically “And I’m sure you can guess what they sell there!” I was a little horrified, since I didn’t know how you could commodify sexual fetishes in an open air market without violating substantial ethics and health codes, and didn’t particularly feel like finding out. But a “fetiche” is just an object believed to have supernatural powers (as the Wikipedia page says, not to be confused with sexual fetishism, like I did). So here is where you could find medicinal bones, plants, and symbols used in Vodoun ceremonies… yes, including the dolls. I was here to support local business, so I bought a few things, and a Vodoun priest blessed the objects so that they would be most effective at their purpose. I bought the ones for general protection, good luck, and safe travels for friends.

Outside of Lomé is a compound of multiple Dahomey palaces and royal residences, and a Chameleon temple. Sadly when we got there the museum was closed, but a few guides were hanging around out front. After haggling out a price (always haggling! Never a stated price tag on anything!) we hired a guide, who promptly got in our car and told us where to go, since the compound was spread out over several miles. 

The chameleon temple was awesome. 

Walk into the chameleon's mouth to get to church. 

A few steps from the chameleon temple was a mini palace/temple that had a very distinctive opening: the open jaws of a leopard. Only initiated vodoun practitioners can go inside. 

Finally, it was time to cross my last land border, into Ghana. Here I said bye to Chuks and Alex in Togo, and was picked up by Cassie in Ghana. We were now back to English, but we relied heavily on Cassie’s Twi fluency. 

Ghana

The roads in Ghana are far worse than any other location we visited. Even on highways, pavement would suddenly give way to rocky dirt. But the rocky dirt wasn't divided into lanes, and people were in a hurry. The result was pure chaos. 18 wheelers would cut across 2 "lanes" worth of cars to avoid a huge pot hole, cars would go up onto hillsides to avoid a line of traffic and then swerve back in. Cassie told me that the Chinese are heavily invested in Ghana, but for at least one major highway project they started flattening the roadway (with dynamite) before checking in with any locals. In October of 2024, there was an explosion that killed 4 people and injured dozens more in a local market directly adjacent to the roadway. Grieving locals physically attacked Chinese workers and ran them out of town. Now the work is half done with no plan or end in sight. You can sort of see the state of the highway in that video. 

I was looking forward to the Cape Coast castle and Elmina castle visits, but also dreading them. I had recently read Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, which is an incredible novel that details, in part, the experiences of Africans sold by enemy tribes to Europeans as slaves. There is no way I can do justice to that horrific chapter of human history, so please read that book. But I was able to see the exact dungeons used to hold the enslaved people. Archeology students from universities in Ghana have excavated parts of the dungeons and confirmed that the floors are still paved with decades of compressed blood and human waste. Just like in the Guyanas, there was palpable energy of evil and suffering in the air. 

The guide at the Door of No Return

There is a plaque on the wall at Cape Coast castle, duplicated at the Elmina castle, from the council of African chiefs, acknowledging their role in the slave trade. 

In less depressing news, a gorgeous young woman outside the castle was selling sugar cane, and I finally got to try it. After seeing her machete the raw canes into little snacks for us in the hot sun, I gave her a humongous tip, and she instantly became my best friend. She even asked for a pic (I wouldn’t have dared but I’m so glad to have it!).

Sugar cane besties.

Specific comments on the tour and guides

No one tells you to bring big bills. You could save a lot of money knowing that in advance; see Money section above.

You should know that despite the tour title and all communication leading up to the trip, you might only see Confidence himself for a few minutes. I was surprised that he wasn’t my guide. Instead, there is a set of separate, sometimes overlapping guides for different countries. Confidence sent me a message on WhatsApp of a picture of another guide who would be picking me up at the Lagos airport, and then that guide introduced me to other guides, some of which joined us (Bénin, Togo) and another who took over completely in a different car (Ghana). The guides I did have were generally good, but that does seem like something you would mention before someone shows up on a new continent. I think everyone would be ok with it, especially given the importance of language fluency and car license plates. Officials treated us very differently depending on the car we were in. 

When it comes to food, you will not get three meals a day unless you insist. I was fine with that, as I wanted to maximize time exploring, and you’re never far from a vendor selling snacks. But be advised that none of the guides suggested eating, even after 6-7 hours of touring. I eventually asked about this, and multiple guides said they preferred eating at home after work where they could relax. Also be aware that sometimes you can't even count on the hotel breakfast. For example in Ghana, they started serving breakfast at 8:30am but Cassie (rightfully) said traffic would be atrocious if we left any later than 7am. I had tons of roadside fruit and have no complaints. 

Chuks was with me for the first three countries, and that was a good call by the tour company. He was the most friendly, never more than a few minutes late, and knew plenty about Nigeria, so I learned a lot. He was definitely the most professional guide, explaining things unprompted and making suggestions. He was also an ace at the artisan markets, helping me not get too taken advantage of, price-gouging-wise. My skin color did not do me any favors here either. Here’s a typical conversation he would have with the seller in pidgin once I expressed interest in an item:

Chuks: How much?

Seller: [something insane like $50 for a keychain]

Chuks: How much less?

I stayed at the Class Suites hotel in Lagos, which did the job but was also the site of lights-going-off-during-shower-gate. 

Then when we crossed into Bénin, we picked up another guide, which made sense since Chuks didn’t speak French. Eric is a native Beninese guy who speaks a local indigenous language (Fon), French, and English. He has a great, warm demeanor and was super helpful. The professionalism as a guide, however, is still a work in progress. When we got to one of the major tourism sites, he tried to pass me off to another group of tourists being led by a different guide. I resisted, since this group had clearly paid this person and you don’t just join in. Eric tried to insist, saying that that guide knew more than he did (yikes) but eventually shrugged it off and gave me a few pointers. Bénin was also a little messy because Chuks had a Nigerian sim card and Eric didn’t have any phone credit. When he did get some, he insisted that he couldn’t provide a hotspot to Chuks, but also didn’t have any navigation app on his phone. We ended up using my phone for navigation. This is the kind of thing I can easily laugh off and it didn’t ruin the trip or anything, but for most Americans I could see it being a source of great annoyance. 

After a few days in Bénin, Chuks dropped off Eric and picked up Alex to show us around Togo. Alex was great. There was a bit of a hiccup with a few administrative things, but he did a great job of navigating me through the complicated border crossing between Togo and Ghana. 

In Ghana, I said bye to Chuks and Alex, and got picked up by Cassie in a different car. I was thrilled to have a female guide, and she was awesome. She did get lost quite a few times in Accra and Elmina, and for her as well as Eric, the phone seemed to malfunction more often than not, but it didn’t have too much of an adverse effect on the trip. I was especially grateful to her as on the last night, we had to kill some time before my flight, and she didn’t hesitate to invite me to her personal home where I got to spend a few hours with her lovely children. This is the kind of truly authentic experience that’s pretty rare when you travel, so props to Cassie!

Cassie the fashion icon (she makes all her own clothes!)

The airport in Accra was much more developed than the one in Lagos, and I was really gross from a sweaty, active day. Facing the 11+ hour flight home, I got some lounge access so I could take a shower for an extra fee. But when I paid the fee and the attendant showed me the shower room, I noticed the light was off. I called him back and asked how to turn it on, to which he replied, "It is on. It just..." and then he scurried off. Luckily I had packed a flashlight. So the next time you take a fully lit shower, just know how lucky you are!

All in all, I strongly recommend this tour. You can tweak it to be more hiking oriented or to spend longer in certain destinations. And you definitely need help navigating the visa processes and corruption. So book it! If you want a discount for booking through Viator like I did, this one might work. Let me know how it goes!

Alllllll the canopy walks.

[Review of Experience Lagos Nigeria, Ghana,Togo and Benin with confidence]

The Guyanas and Brazil

After a couple days back in Boston, it was time to see British Guyana, Suriname, French Guyana, and Brazil.

This trip would require an intrepid travel buddy. The infrastructure in the region (Brazil excluded) was quite undeveloped, the flights would be in the middle of the night, the heat would be daunting... not everyone gravitates to this type of "vacation." So I did what anyone would do. I reached out to my childhood pediatrician to see if she wanted to join, and she said yes!

Seriously though, my former pediatrician (Hi Dr. Karine!) is still good friends with my family. You may remember her bad-to-the-bone daughter Sophie from my posts about New Zealand. Like any true Australian, she travels extensively and adventurously. Not many people could take multiple weeks off work to travel, but she could... plus, I feel extra safe traveling with doctors, so bingo! Or as they say in Australia, "Dingo."

I booked us a trip exploring the "three Guianas" and tacked a bit of Brazil time on at the end, since as you'll see, the airline schedules in the Guianas are veeeeery sparse, and getting back to the states would require flying out of Brasilia anyway. The first thing to know is about nomenclature: "Guiana" or "Guyana" is an indigenous (Arawak) word that means "land of many waters." Due to classic colonial violence and greed, the once-singular Guiana was conquered by the Dutch and split into multiple territories. Through various wars, consolidations, and empire shifts, we ended up with the following:

 

The current setup. This area is sometimes referred to as "the forgotten corner" of South America. My travel doctor had no idea where Suriname was.

If you're American, British, or Guyanese, you probably refer to the country in pink as "Guyana," but everyone else in the region calls it "British Guyana." The official language there is English.

Suriname used to be called Dutch Guyana, but the indigenous name won out. "Surinen" is the name of the local indigenous tribe in Arawak. The official language is Dutch. 

What I always called "French Guyana" is, once you're in the country, simply referred to as "la Guyane," which of course is just French for Guyana. So two different countries call themselves Guyana, and save the adjective "French" or "British" for the one that they aren't. Got it? Ok.

First things first, British Guyana has the best air access for Americans. You pretty much need to fly into Georgetown if you're coming from the states. Suriname has essentially no air access at all unless you are coming from the Netherlands or another small Caribbean nation like Curaçao. We accessed Suriname by land and by boat. 

These are all 18th century colonial outpost countries right on the Caribbean, which makes for some very interesting vibe shifts. On one hand, you have Caribbean beaches, amazing weather, friendly people, and tropical drinks. On the other, pretty much every historical or cultural activity harkens back to atrocious cruelty - sometimes European on native, sometimes European on European. It was very popular in the late 1700s for the "owner" (blegh) European countries, Britain, Netherlands, and France, to use these territories as game pieces. A new treaty requires that you give national territory to another country? Fine, take some of this faraway land that none of our high society cares about. Jails filling up with undesirables? Fine, let's ship them overseas. We're legally obligated to accept refugees? We know just where to put them... (see French Guyana section below). 

British Guyana (what we used to just call "Guyana") was our arrival point and first impression of the region. They won independence from Britain in 1966 and have done very well on their own, recently monetizing huge oil reserves. Their tourism jewel is Kaieteur falls, which requires a dodgy 10-seater plane ride to visit. 

Once you arrive, you spill gratefully out of the plane, have a barely edible snack that probably should have been better refrigerated, and start a hike to the falls themselves. Even though they did look huge from the air, there's nothing like seeing them up close. L'appel du vide will be very strong so don't get too close. 

Naturally this is where I decided to do something I'm only marginally good at that requires going upside down and balancing. 

We explored Georgetown a bit and some more of the nature reserves. We learned about a type of sculpture made by locals using sap from the rubber trees: Balata. I snatched up some figurines because I am here for the locally made, non-plastic souvenirs. 

See that red bird in the second row? That's the one I got.

At the bustling and anxiety-inducing street market, we saw some somewhat dubious cures for everything from the common cold to cancer. Step right up:

While some tours allow for more inland adventures, ours sent us eastward to Suriname via a short plane ride to Paramaribo and then almost immediately further east to French Guyana in a long, narrow covered boat called a pirogue. We kept Suriname for the end of the trip, but French Guyana was not accessible directly from British Guyana, so we had to go through Suriname anyway. 

Pirogue views as seen from the covered part.

First, administratively, French Guyana is exactly like France in almost every way. The street signs are made from the same material and same font as they are in France. People use euros (and things are very expensive). Guyanese people’s passports are French passports – they literally say “France” on the front. It is one of the DOM-TOM regions. It’s a somewhat popular destination for mainland French vacationers, but the ocean isn’t as pristine as other DOM-TOM regions, so the place wasn’t crawling with tourists. French is the official and pretty much only spoken language. 

To get to some pretty water, we took a boat tour to several islands. These were your classic turquoise water, palm trees, awesome islands, with a horror twist – each island served as a jail. Jailhouse security was quite strong, but not really necessary, as the water off the coast was (at least hundreds of years ago, pre-overfishing eras) infested with sharks and piranhas.

Even the “not-so-bad” jail island was awful. We toured the ruins of the jail with a pleasant, joking local guide who took particular delight in mimicking the sound of a guillotine at work. In unbearable heat, we toured cell block after cell block; tiny cells faced a courtyard so that no prisoner could escape the sounds and drama of the executions that would take place there. There were long concrete slabs with what looked like rebar welded to it – hundreds of prisoners would be chained there to sleep. The close quarters, heat, forced labor, and rampant sickness ensured that very, very few prisoners ever left. Our guide told us that about 75% of prisoners died there. Now the walls are crumbling and the doors are all unlocked, but the misery was still palpable. After about 15 minutes I stopped going into the cells, although our cheerful tour guide tried to insist. You could still see the carvings and drawings on the cells from the prisoners over 100 years ago. The movie “papillon” is based on these islands. You can read more about them here.

Awful entrance.

Awful cell block.

Awful cell.

On some islands, nature is trying to cleanse the place.

From the boat, we could also see Devil’s island – another penitentiary designed for a single convict. This is where Alfred Dreyfus was imprisoned from 1895-1899. From Wikipedia: 

    On 12 March 1895, after a difficult voyage of fifteen days, the ship anchored off the Îles du Salut. Dreyfus stayed one month in prison on Île Royale and was transferred to Devil's Island on 14 April 1895. Apart from his guards, he was the only inhabitant of the island and he stayed in a stone hut 4 by 4 metres (13 ft × 13 ft). Haunted by the risk of escape, the commandant of the prison sentenced him to a hellish life, even though living conditions were already very painful. Dreyfus became sick and shaken by fevers that got worse every year.

    Dreyfus was allowed to write on paper numbered and signed. He underwent censorship by the commandant even when he received mail from his wife Lucie, whereby they encouraged each other. On 6 September 1896, the conditions of life for Dreyfus worsened again; he was chained double looped, forcing him to stay in bed motionless with his ankles shackled. This measure was the result of false information of his escape revealed by a British newspaper. For two long months, Dreyfus was plunged into deep despair, convinced that his life would end on this remote island.

The single prisoner’s hut on Devil’s island as seen from the boat; we didn’t go onto the island itself. 

Can you imagine being treated so horribly in what we would normally see as an island paradise? So disturbing. 

French Guyana’s other main tourist attraction is the Space Center. It’s huge – in fact, it’s so large that it doubles as an animal reserve (strict controls on human access = no hunting = animals flock to it. There is a family of pumas living there, but of course we didn’t see them firsthand). The size requires you to take a bus – you don’t get to meander much on this part of the tour. You just sit, either in an auditorium or a bus. Still, you can see where the European Union launches its space missions from, including getting up close on the launch pads, and sometimes they let you out of the bus near the launchpads. While I don’t have an outsized interest in space exploration, I will say these launchpads are quite remarkable. You can see the vents where all the rocket fire goes out. As you can tell from the previous sentence, I am not the ideal guide for rocket science situations.

Launch pad.

The Orange Phone, where some important person gives the ok to launch.

Also on mainland French Guyana... remember when I said EU countries that might be pressured to take in refugees but don't want to deal with them in Europe might use their overseas territories for the purpose? That's what France is doing. There is a tent city of middle eastern, mostly Syrian, refugees awaiting processing for French asylum claims... in French Guyana. 

I obviously didn't want to make them uncomfortable by taking pictures so this one is from far away. 

You can read more about this phenomenon here.

Suriname was saved for last (well, and then Brazil, but that was just part of the going-home tour, not the Guyanas tour). As you’ll recall, this is the Dutch Guyana, and hence the only Guyana in which I relied heavily on English translators who could have possibly used a little more practice. It turns out, though, that lots of French Guyanese families vacation in Suriname due to the proximity and cheaper prices, so I heard quite a bit of French.

Live for stuff like this. 

The colonial Dutch houses could be charming...

... or straight out of a horror movie, depending on level of upkeep.

We were booked in one of the nicer downtown Paramaribo hotels (Ramada princess), which was highly rated but still not wonderful. It was on the crazy busy main street with a tiny scrap of a sidewalk separating you unloading your suitcase from huge industrial trucks zooming by. The interior was under construction (pretty much every building seemed to be under construction) and there were quite a few tarps where walls should have been. Still, the room was comfortable and countries have to grow, so no worries. 

It was here that the tour took a very unfortunate administrative turn. Up to this point our tour organizer had been super helpful and communicative. She also gave us a new itinerary when we arrived that had some updates on it due to changing tour guide availability, etc. Once we even had a misunderstanding about the day’s activities, and she assured me that I needed to follow the new itinerary, not the one I printed out and brought with me. So I dutifully folded up the original itinerary and put it into my ‘not using anymore’ wallet sleeve and everything was fine… BUT THEN:

The hotel staff in Paramaribo told us that we needed to pay for another night since our flight was super late (like 3am) and we wouldn’t be leaving until around 10pm on our checkout day. Totally fine and reasonable, should have been in the planning document, but ok. So we stay another night, then pack, and head to the airport (over 2 hour drive very late at night). The airport was… deserted. No travelers, no airline employees, not even a security guard. There was a screen that had a few flights on it… the next one was in three days. Keeping our driver close so as not to be abandoned in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, I frantically pulled out the new itinerary. Yes, we were definitely supposed to be here now… Slowly, painfully, I retrieved the original itinerary and saw the issue. The tour organizer had made the classic blunder of telling us to show up for a flight at 3am on, say, August 18, “early” at 11pm… on August 18. Which is, of course, almost a full day after the flight left. I was speechless. The only thing to do was to go back to the hotel (a loooong 2 hours), feverishly book new tickets and hotel nights, and wait for the soonest flight, which was 3 days away. I got a partial refund from the company, but it wasn’t even close to what needed to be paid in new flights and hotel fees. I also realized that the woman was telling her employees that it was my mistake. After he got off the phone with her, our driver said to us, “Wow! Too bad you got the dates wrong, huh?” I was livid, but hey, what am I gonna do, keep fighting until everyone knows their coworker effed up? I let it go.

We made the best of our miserable forced layover, and even managed to have a magical moment in a Surinamese park. Dr. Karine and I were frolicking, with some dignified reserve, on the seesaws and merry-go-round in the park. This is one of the places I heard a lot of French, and deduced that a lot of the families here were from French Guyana, and happily I could understand them. 

Anyway, I had been pushing Dr. K. on the merry-go-round for a bit when the energy in the park changed. The children who had been playing on their own shifted from playing to silently surveilling: someone with slightly larger muscles and substantial momentum-inducing body mass was pushing the merry-go-round and it had not escaped their notice. They wanted in. It started with an adorable duo of 6 year olds who, in the most polite French you’ve ever heard, asked, “Madame, will you push us too?” Once they got a yes, the rest of the kids came running over and picked out their spots. 

Again, dignified reserve reigns supreme.

Me: "Are we ready?"

Them, adorably: "Yes!"

Me: "Ok, here we go!"

We also saw a very, very hot but very pleasant butterfly tour. Did you know Suriname exports butterflies? Weird, right?

So we finally made it out of Suriname. Luckily we had planned to be in Brazil for 5 days, so the 3 day pushback still enabled us to get a little bit of Brazil time and still take our original flights from Brazil to the states. We were in Brasilia, which is apparently kind of the equivalent of visiting Ohio and saying you’ve been to the U.S., but I still found it awesome. We walked several kilometers a day (shout out to Dr. K., exceeding my cardio health with a 40 year age gap). One day, out of our hotel and near a monument, we stumbled upon some incredibly talented Capoeira athletes. They weren’t buskers; it was a group of people from local gyms who happened to be performing. It. Was. Awesome.

Brasilia presented a drastic difference from the Guyanas. 6 and 7 lane highways, long stretches of fields between huge monuments… we definitely weren’t in crumbling dirt road territory anymore. Here we mostly relaxed and tried to recover from our stressful time in Suriname. We even hunted down the best acai bowl in Brasilia, which is very deserving of the accolade. 

Even with the airport snafu, we had an amazing time and would still do this tour again – just make sure sure sure any changed itineraries still accurately reflect your flight details. 

Here is the company we used, with mixed results as you know. Let me know if you go!

How to visit the Uyuni Salt Flats in Bolivia

As mentioned here, salt flats are "dried-up desert lakes. They form in closed hollows where rainfall can’t drain away. In a wet climate, a lake would form but, in a desert, the water is heated and evaporates into vapour faster than it is replenished by rain. The salt and minerals dissolved in the water are left behind as a solid layer." Even with that explanation, they still blow your mind in person.  

If anyone you know has visited the Salt Flats, you've probably seen the epic pictures that result. The, well, flatness of the areas make them a mecca for those who want to take proportion-bending photographs and those who want to have automobile races. There are salt flats in the United States in Utah and New Mexico, but the biggest one in the world is just outside of Uyuni, in rural Bolivia. 

By rural, I mean RURAL. From the US, you'll need a plane ride (or multiple), a taxi, an overnight bus, and then a multi-hour car ride to get there. But it's worth it! Tour groups offer multiple trip durations from a day trip to over a week. We went with the 3 day, two night option from Trans Andino and were generally quite happy. We elected to share a car instead of doing the private tour, which was of course cheaper, and had other pros and cons that I'll mention.

Bolivia requires a visa for Americans, and it costs $160 and they prefer US cash. It's good for 10 years once you have it, but getting it is a pain. Bolivian consulates are few and far between, so I did visa on arrival, which is not too bad if you brought all the paperwork you're supposed to have. I had everything, but for my 2x2 photograph I had brought a copy, and they wanted an original. That mistake set me back about 3 hours in the airport as I waited in a line with other Americans to get my photo taken and a slapdash visa printed. Make sure you also have copies of everything; I had to give them one of my two itinerary copies and if I hadn't printed another one things could have been ugly. I have looked online for the eVisa option and only come across third parties selling you the service for a higher fee, and I can't speak for any of them. The usual rules apply: leave yourself plenty of time for all flights, with several hours of cushion on both sides, for this kind of thing.

You start by flying into La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. At least in August, I found that all the flight options I had were in the middle of the night for some reason. This trend continued throughout all my South America travels. Sadly the late hour didn't translate to sparsely populated flights - each one was chock full. I often had to book hotels for the night before my arrival so that I could check in at 6am or some other crazy hour.

Don't forget that La Paz is the highest capital city in the world at over 11,000 feet. You may want to acclimate nearby for a few days (Bogotá, Colombia at 8,661 feet isn't too far away). I did not acclimate and boy did I feel it - especially because the salt flats are much higher than La Paz. 

La Paz is a great place to stock up on some altitude sickness remedies, especially if that is all you are able to focus on due to a crushing headache and sucking wind (🙋🏻‍♀️). The thing you want is coca leaves. You can buy them as tea or candy, but the real heavy hitters are the pure leaves sold in a home-tied bag with no label. We got a bag that easily supplied two people for 5 days and two different types of candy for $2. Some candy has a little added sugar, and I would go with just that one. I also bought one that was marked as candy but it was just melted and hardened leaves, and it was quite bitter. 

Slurping coca leaves tea and doing the physical work I could muster upon arrival in La Paz, which was lying in bed.

Walking around La Paz. Up this charming alley we found our coca store.

This was sold in that very official store. Don't let the garage sale packaging deter you.

Never enough. I was chewing, drinking, and sucking coca leaves all day every day. If they had sold it in vapor form I would definitely have bought that too.

To get the benefits from your coca leaves, take 3-5 leaves and fold them in half, then maybe in half again, and tuck them in between your cheek and back teeth on one side. Then just forget about it and live life. You can even drink water with them still there. The coca juice slowly dissolves and you absorb it when you swallow your saliva. In about 20 minutes the headache goes away!

I was sorely tempted to make jokes about being a coke addict, because I was on these leaves like white on rice due to my lack of acclimatization and possibly general frailty. "Haha, need my fix!" or "Is 7am too early to do my coke?" But that is a huge no-no in this region. It's not funny to joke about a drug that is responsible for widespread murder, corruption, and terrorism; every local you speak to knows someone who has died in the drug trade (said my guide in Colombia). Plus, you need 18 other chemical components and processing to turn coca leaves into cocaine, so it's not accurate OR funny. So resist the urge.

From La Paz, you take an overnight bus to Uyuni. We stayed at a hostel that was a couple minute walk from the bus terminal since this is not the time or place we wanted to be at the mercy of traffic or directional mishaps. 

There are several bus companies that make the La Paz - Uyuni trek, and all of them are overnight. You should go with one called Todo Turismo. It's the "luxury" one that's reviewed as far safer than the cheaper alternatives. It's more than double the price of companies that a local would choose, but even so, in USD it was around $80 for a round trip ticket (about 20 hours of travel!). The comfort is decent - the seats lay almost flat, but not close enough, and if someone is seated right next to you you'll still feel cramped. You're paying for the direct route. Reviewers for other companies complained that their drivers kept stopping to pick up more passengers, and when they were asleep there was no way to look out for who is taking what bag from the storage hold. Some tourists had their stuff taken in the night. I did a little overkill: even with my fancy company I still brought my pack with me onto the bus instead of putting it in the hold. I very politely asked* if I could switch my assigned spot to one next to an empty seat, and luckily they accommodated me both times. I went way overboard and locked my bag to the arm rest with a little travel lock that I usually use for skiing. I'm glad I did, because even the Todo Turismo bus made some unannounced and unexplained stops (they announce one for a driver switch, but they stopped at least 6 times). It seemed to go fine for everyone even if their luggage was in the hold, but if you really want to sleep peacefully, it's nice to have the extra security.

*You should learn Spanish if you haven't already. English was technically a possibility but I wouldn't count on it in the rural areas.

The company gives you a water bottle, blanket, and travel pillow for the ride.  If you don't get those things in the office make sure to ask for them before the bus leaves. There is a restroom on board, but the sign says in all caps ONLY FOR PEEING, so don't get any ideas about #2. There are TONS of speed bumps on the ~10 hour drive, and they always seemed to catch our driver off guard. After a bump he would floor the accelerator, then slamp on the brake about a minute later for the next bump. Not the best environment for sleeping - in hindsight I would probably advise popping a valerian or melatonin. 

I brought my inflatable travel pillow and used it a lot.

So after a night full of driving and hopefully full of sleep, you'll arrive at a plateau right at sunrise for a break (not a pee break and DEFINITELY NO #2 DON'T FORGET). It's a break for the employees and the driver, but it's a lovely sunrise view of the Bolivian desert for the travelers too. 

A frozen sunrise. Don't forget August is the dead of winter, and the altitude in the highlands means extra cold.

When we got to Uyuni, which is actually a town several hours from the flats themselves (no bus could drive close up to the flats), we had some awkward maneuvers: a random person would come and ask our names, and if we were on their list, we would go somewhere with them. The first stop was a breakfast restaurant (0 Michelin stars and not on the way to one anytime soon), then to the Tours Andino office "downtown" to go over the itinerary, meet our guide and co-travelers, and load up the car.

Our awesome guide Luis loading the SUV

Lucky us! We happened to be there during Bolivian independence day (wait, I mean, we totally knew exactly when that was and planned it intentionally...). As a result we saw some lovely parades and rallies. The visuals were amazing, but the audio was very strange. There were tons of little children and some of them had special roles reciting speeches, blaring through a microphone turned up way too high. These children had clearly been selected for their ability to sob uncontrollably while still annunciating their speeches clearly. The content focused on how they would gladly die for their country and that willingness moved them to tears. It was... uncomfortable. Propaganda and patriotism take some weird forms in this world.

Bolivia won independence from Spain in 1825.

It was a multi-hour drive to the flats, which aren't really in Uyuni but in a vast expanse outside the town. 

The first stop is to the abandoned train yard where you can climb on some rusty old trains. I was mostly here for the flats and my attitude toward the trains was "... ok, sure."

🤷🏻‍♀️

Then our guide led us through a salt manufacturing plant. They export and keep the salt local, and even add iodine to it right there off the flats. 

It was time to go out to the flats. I was ready.

It was incredibly cool. The cold winter weather was exacerbated by the altitude, but the relentless sun reflecting off the salt resulted in me sporting short sleeves for most of the visit.

Something about the underwater pools evaporating through the salt results in these hexagon shapes of salt ridges along the flat plains.

Oh hey didn't see you there!

Pensively considering the flats.

We stayed for about 45 minutes taking pictures. It was harder than it looked because the altitude was even higher than La Paz, so if I jumped for a photo I had to keel over and recover for several minutes. I put all the jumping ones on Instagram.

Since we were on the multi-day tour instead of going straight to the flats and back, we had quite a few extra sights to see. I'm gonna be brutally honest with you: while I would do the same tour selection again, the other sights are nowhere near the level of the flats. Other stops include the abandoned train yard, a flamingo lake, some hot springs... definitely interesting and worth doing, but not life changing. Still, you're gonna want to break up all the driving time involved, especially if you are in a group. We shared a guide with 3 Danes and an Englishman who, in line with global trends, were quite tall. The passenger seat in our SUV was highly sought after, followed by the middle row. Two unfortunate souls, though, had to sit crunched in the back seat with knees almost up to chests for several hours over sometimes bumpy terrain. We also ended up driving at least 3 extra hours because the others in our group were continuing on to Chile instead of retracing our steps like our itinerary called for, so there were inconveniences going in the non-private group. But it also meant we got to meet new people and get some really cool group pictures:

I had constantly been ridiculing the people who take the goofy perspective pictures with props. I've seen them with people coming out of pringles cans, being chased by a T-rex... corny, cringe stuff. I'm pretty sure I said to my friend Juliana, "Shoot me if I do any pictures like that." But then Luis whipped out a toy Godzilla. I'm glad Juliana wasn't armed.

This is tied for the stupidest travel picture I've ever taken with the mummy picture in Egypt.

No comment.

The whole car marveled at how realistic my foot looked on this guy's hand. 

In the middle of the salt flats is an island which is, obviously, filled with cacti. It's called Incahuasi. 

This place was pretty surreal. Here's a little more information, but not much: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isla_Incahuasi

One of the few moments I was not leaning heavily on rocks.

As the afternoon was drawing to a close, Luis pulled out some wine glasses and a lovely local bottle for us to sip while watching the sunset on the flats. 

Luis breaks out the wine.

The Danes, Brazilian, American, and Englishman drink to an awesome day.

We prepare in case we release a music album together.

Evolution of Bolivian tourists.

Me just absolutely stoked to be out of the country and learning new things. 

That night we stayed in a hotel made entirely of salt. The walls were salt. The tables and chairs were salt. The beds were salt. You could lick it - don't ask me how I know. 

A window looking out of our hotel room at dusk; note the salt bricks.

Having a bed made of salt is awesome. But they should be careful because someone might be really sleepy and cold and mildly hypoxic from altitude and in the dark that person might think that the block of solid salt at the head of the bed is a stack of soft pillows, and she might excitedly jump in bed and slam her head against it so hard she could concuss herself. I'm not an expert I'm just pointing out hypothetical risks.

This hotel had hot water, but not a lot of it. Since multiple tour groups stayed there the same night, Juliana and I selfishly rushed to shower first and still both of us got some healthy ice bath therapy. We were somewhat expecting it though. As our tour planner told us for both nights on the flats, "Hot water... maybe yes, maybe no." Electricity was guaranteed only 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours at night, so you had to plan your charging and light needs in advance. In case you haven't picked up on it yet, this is not the relax-and-read-a-book-on-the-beach type of vacation. But it's so cool!

The payoff for no electricity.

Quinoa still on the plant looks like this.

There was LOTS of quinoa. As the vegetarian in the group I had meals consisting of quinoa fritters, quinoa bread, and quinoa on the side. There was also quinoa dessert. No complaints!



Wild llamas above a semi-frozen stream. That is what we are.


The Bolivian deserts are home to the rare Vizcacha; a long tailed rabbit-type creature with hooded eyes that came in handy when the sand blew relentlessly.

An active volcano, called Ollagüe, being very subtle about it.

Still climbing... 

Flamingo time!

Stopping by the Polques hot springs. From long underwear to bikini is a transition I seldom make, but what am I gonna do, NOT do it?

We also visited some geysers which, I was rather dismayed to note, were located at the highest point in the entire itinerary: about 16,000 feet. I. Was. Dying.

Driving back to Uyuni took about 7 hours. Then we reversed the overnight bus process and headed back to La Paz for me to continue on to Paraguay and for Juliana to come home to Boston. 

Summary of the route we took.

While waiting for the bus back to La Paz, we stopped into this restaurant, which was AWESOME. Not to be confused with the restaurant near Ollagüe, which served llama meat: 

😳

Made it back to La Paz! There is no mass ground transit, but you don't have to ensare yourself in the notoriously bad traffic if you have $3 or so: just take the cable cars. Locals take them for commutes, it's not purely a tourist thing, but we did love it. 

La Paz from a cable car station.

The cable cars in La Paz feel pretty safe. The backyards on this mountaintop... not so much. 

Also, randomly, my phone worked with no day pass or new sim card. So don't bother getting advanced plans if you have AT&T!

From Bolivia, I went to Paraguay, then eventually Guyana, Suriname, French Guyana, and Brazil. It was an awesome August :) Hopefully I can write about those destinations soon!