Great night sleep, it was actually cool enough to use a blanket - it was wonderful. Woke up to a beautiful morning. The hotel we stayed at was built as a WWII hospital and is in a grove of huge trees near the top of the mountain. The views were almost as good as I anticipated (it's a little hazy) but still spectacular. The drive down the mountain was awesome with great views, little waterfalls, and sheer cliffs. We stopped at the Centre Artisanal which was hyped in all the guide books but was a little disappointing. Dean did buy a carved box - and spent an hour bargaining for it at the end of which he paid the guys price. The high point in Kpalimé was definitely the Fan Shop. An entire cafe type store that only sold Fan (ice cream, frozen yogurt, popsicles, slushy things, etc.) We each had three or four different varieties before returning to the real world.
Shortly after leaving Kpalimé on the road to Lomé we came around a bend and there was a brush fire on the side of the road - not unusual in West Africa. What was unusual was the fifteen or twenty giant birds sitting in the road waiting for the mice to be driven out by the fire. We got to drive through a cloud of these giant birds (~ four foot wing span) and somehow managed to avoid hitting any of them. They looked like hawks but they seemed too large - whatever, they were beautiful.
Lomé feels pretty good so far. It's especially clean for an West African city and it even has public trash cans! In town there was a woman selling the palm candies that were so good in Kumasi so I went to buy one thousand worth - unfortunately (fortunately?) I'd forgotten that we were no longer using Cedis so one thousand CFA bought about three pounds worth (~$2 instead of $.45)! When I realized what was going on I couldn't tell the woman I didn't want that many, but at the same time I was worried I was going to buy her out and the kids waiting on me were going to hate me. Luckily I only took about 3 /4 of her stock (she was very happy). Traded our remaining Cedis on the black market (they can't legally be exported from Ghana) at a fairly decent exchange - but we had to fight pretty hard with the money changers to get it. While on the street the venders are brutal - very persistent - could get annoying. We went into a grocery shop and bought supplies to make dinner at camp and then drove out of town to our camp site. Once again we're on the beach and to our surprise Truck Africa was there as well (Truck Africa was the overland company that we hung out with in Accra). They were supposed to have left here five days ago but they've been having lots of problems (one guy went insane and had to be sent home after trying to slaughter a baby goat, three cases of malaria, and two other people who decided to fly home for personal reasons). Cooked diner - hotdogs they called them sausages but they were just plain hotdogs), fried rice, and garlic bread - delicious. Early to bed.
