Some Benin and Togo Time

I am right now sitting in an internet cafe in Lome, the capitol of Togo... I don't know which makes me more excited- the amount of water they have, or the amount of green-ness... Or maybe the food... Anyway, so far its been a pretty sweeet vacation. So I'll give the play-by-play.. We left on the 4th of July from Niamey and got on what was suposed to be only a 16 hour bus ride, but there was a bit of an accedent along the way and our bus swerved off the road to avoid an oncomming semi truck who was passing another semi truck. We were fine, the guy doing the passing was fine, but the semi truck that he passed was forced off the road and flipped. So the bus stopped for a good three hours to get the guy out.. Guess it just goes to show that Benin roads and drivers are about the same as Niger's... (I think Benin has better roads though)
Moving on. So after an increadably long bus trip we finally arrived in Cotonou, Benin, stayed the night, and then headed first to a spot called the 'point of no return', where African slaves were walked down this path to the beach and put on their boat... never to return. It made that whole portion of history that much more real- especially to see the land they were taken out of (BEUTIFUL) only to be shoved on a boat where half would die before reaching a daunting final destination. So that was a really good experience and I'll try to get the pictures up when I get back to niamey.
After that, we went to a fishing village called Grand Popo (I'd live there just for the name) and stayed at this Regge/Rasta place on the beach called Le Lion Bar. It was so awesome and chill of a place, we're still wishing we'd just stayed another night! Basically we just lounged around on the beach listening to Bob Marley and sipping from coconuts.. oh good fish too.
Ok.. Moving on, the next morning we took a boat cruise (the hollowed out tree trunk kind) on this river (cant remember the name) and whent to a VooDoo village and got to walk around with our guide. It was REALLY interesting and made me realize there's a lot more to VooDooism than flying white flags and little pin-cushion dolls- Its really fascinating- I really want to do a little more research.
After the Village, we continued up river to a coconut grove and drank coconut milk and ate coconut.. Kinda amazing how that little kid could just shimmi right up the coconut tree..
Anyway, not to cut the story short, it just gets a little dull- we traveled to Lome, this morning we applied for the Gahnian visa, which should be ready tomorrow, and we've spent the day at the peace corps bureau here and down at the market doing a little (or a lot) of shopping.. Tomorrow, off to some hiking and waterfalls!
I'll try to write again in Ghana!