Picture version of our vacation....
Starting off the day right with coffee.
Our ghetto closet room. Guide books are very generous in regards to their standards.
First of many nights sleeping on the rooftop of a hotel.
Andrew's first of many rides in the back of a packed vehicle.
Is that Kyle or a Tuareg? Oh, it's Kyle.
Standing on the side of the road to Djenne.
The courtyard of our hotel in Djenne.
Taking a nap in the middle of the hot hot day on the rooftop.
Any power source was an excuse to overload their generosity. Good thing I brought my power strip.
Tea is a very special thing in Mali. Apparently you are supposed to do three rounds, but we only got up to two. Sad. This is our guide in Djenne pouring it the traditional way.
Andrew and the guide's daughter.
Breakfast: fried rice balls, fried rice cakes, and fish soup. Yum!
The streets of Djenne.
Andrew stealing a child!
This is one of the many traditional buildings in Djenne. The triangles in the middle of the rooftop is supposed to signify the number of kids in the family living in the house. The two posts on the corners are supposed to signify if the head of the family is the man or evenly between husband and wife... now it is just decorative.
Andrew didn't realize that during all his questions he was actually standing in doo-doo. I showed him this picture after the fact.
Djenne apparently has had indoor ''plumbling" for many years now. The area left of the hole in the wall is the 'latrine' and the pipe on the right is the drain for shower water. Pretty impressive.
Looking out to the 'New Djenne'.
The largest sand castle, I mean, mud mosque, in the world. This is partly why Djenne became a World Heritage site.
Sweet! They wouldn't let us go in though.
Translation - 'Tomb of the young girl - Sacrificed to protect the village against bad spirits' I sure hope it worked.
Horse drawn cart tour!
Massive gold earrings. The sad part about this was that she was mad that our guide didn't give her more money. We didn't even realize that we were gonna be paying her (we didn't care too much to do this part of the trip).
Due to Djenne being part of the Timbuktu trade route back in the day, there is some pretty impressive jewelry. We ended up looking through his stuff for like an hour and a half.
Us and our guide, Yousouf.
Our captain who was supposed to take us to Timbuktu on a ghetto boat.
The Niger River being used to clean cars, people, and drinking water.
Andrew loving his mango.
Andrew and Kyle reclining on top of huge sacks of rice and other products.
Stopping on the side of the river in the middle of nowhere due to lack of water in the river.
Getting ready to eat and then sleep on the side of the river.
Ugly fish. We had to get off the boat once we found out the trip would take over a week to get to Timbuktu.
Good thing we got off or else we wouldn't have witnessed Andrew getting stuck in the back of this truck (where the red arrow is) for over three hours and surrounded by people and buckets of fish.
A beer after our tough trip back to Mopti.
Translation: AIDS kills - Together we stop AIDS (by throwing a wall on it)
The Vietnamese guy we found in Mopti. I tried to convince him to go to Cotonou. I don't know if it worked. We spoke to each other in Korean. It was weird.
Laundry party in Sevare!
Back in Tanguieta! Never been happier to be in Benin!
Peace out - Mali '10!
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