DEE TOURS || TRAVELING FROM LAGOS, NIGERIA TO LOME,TOGO VIA ROAD

I have felt immensely lazy about doing this; penning down all my thoughts from yet another Africa road trip. The sudden silence from my fellow travelers is probably the motivation I needed to do this.

***The Genesis***

We fell in love with Togo on our road trip to Ghana, the beaches and palm trees were so picturesque, we wanted a taste and feel of it. we imagined how fresh the air would be from seeing how blue the waters were and we knew we wanted to visit there and experience it first hand. Exactly, One year after that, we planned a trip and headed out.

Ghana was more fun; I don't know why but it was. Thinking back now maybe it was the willingness to do that made Ghana fun, the willingness to explore, to do more and possible the “first timer” vibe as well.

Togo even though faster than Ghana in terms of its people felt more relaxing than Ghana, well until every time we stepped out of the hotel, which we didn’t do much of because of our experiences.

***The Journey***
The trip to Togo started at about 6.30 / 7am from Mile 2 where we took off around past 8/9 in the slowest possible space bus with an even slower driver. I wish I could say we were emotionally prepared for this but we weren't.

The check points that double as illegal toll gates are a major characteristic of the Nigeria-Togo border and somehow our driver who was meant to be a frequenting transporter on this path wasn't prepared with their tip!

The passengers we boarded alongside swore it was the driver’s first time along the road and they were probably right, we got held a couple of times for lack of a certain sticker whose process for procuring was so much easier in comparison to what he ended up paying and all the delays we ended up experiencing.

And then the car won't move fast, it was practically crawling!

We had spent about 4 hours on the road and the car just won't move any faster! 
It was about a quarter past 2pm, At this point we had managed to pass the seme border and were in cotonou.

I swore the fuel injector of the car was dirty hence it was not supplying fuel freely to the car. The car couldn't move fast enough and I was right because another unnecessary stop by our driver to attend to the Cotonou police, that just won’t let Nigerian cars be great, somewhere in Cotonou, the car finally refused to move again.

We were furious, we were stuck on an express way surrounded by bushes in a country we don’t know, with indigenes who spoke other languages, we were foreigners!!!

we tried to help but our driver was stubborn, we tried to communicate on getting our balance for the trip as we were about 2 hours from where we were going and just half way through but the driver wouldn’t cave.

Somehow the other four passengers, three of whom are men got a refund from the driver and flagged down cars and left, but we just couldn't get him to give us a refund.

After a lot of screams mixed with confusion and drama, one of the Nigerian cars that we were initially to board in Mile 2 passed and helped in tolling our car to 'Ilakodji" Togo's border but thankfully we got a refund of 5000cfa which was good news because of the next challenges we faced.

After we had crossed the border, we didn’t have enough money to board a cab into town, so we changed some money, 7000 naira equals 10,000cfa at the “Lomé” border but 6,700 in town/mile 2 and ‘Semé’ border.

T was real confident that she had the town figured out and kept talking about how the hotel was parallel to the other options we had chosen, but thank God we were feeling “Touristy” and looking round because we ended up spotting the sign board along the way and stopping the driver that took us to town.

It was at this point we experienced our second wahala on this trip; Before boarding the cab, we had negotiated 800cfa per person instead of the 1000cfa which the driver had agreed to but when we paid him he removed 3000cfa and though we tried to accuse him of being shady, he played the language barrier card. We were mad but we shook it off.

The Hotel was on the other side, so we crossed and luckily for us we saw the hotel car that helped drive us there though the distance from the hotel to the junction is a throw stone.

At this point we were so hungry so we checked in, ordered some food, explored the hotel and ate and then took our showers and slept off.

I and I woke up in time to see the sunrise and take a few pictures and walk down the beach.

We planned to go to town to stock up on snacks, food and wine as well as use the ATM and withdrew to pay for the hotel as well as to get spending money.

I had previously tried to pay with both my diamond and Gtb cards and both didn’t work on their POS machine.

We went to the Grande Marche (market) in town changed some naira and tried to use our cards to withdraw but it didn’t work, we snacked, went through the art market, fabric market, visited Vlisco and Woodin and we just didn’t see anything interesting or something that we didn’t have in Lagos so we just shopped food and snacks and decided to leave.

While crossing the Market to the other side of the road to get a cab, the tourists in us decided to take a few pictures of ourselves and the beach and that led to our third wahala and guess what? It involved the police station.

Check out more pictures on my instagram page @dee_mako and by following the hashtag #DITvsLM