Raise a Calabas to Pinot Noir

Burkina Faso is a small landlocked country between Mali and Ghana that most people we know have never heard of.  When we told a friend that we were going to Burkina Faso, she said, what's the name of that country again, Pinot Noir? Burkina also has one of the best names of a capital city, and we've had fun saying that we're going to Ouagadougou (wah-ga-doo-goo). Notably, Ouaga is the first place in West Africa where Julienne has found chips and salsa, making it a very good place indeed. 

Dust makes our teeth look white.

We started our Burkina sojourn with a few days collecting ourselves in Bobo-Dialassou, home of the Bobos, and home of Sara's first travel sickness.  After some good meals (now that we're in a country that's only 50% Muslim, we're starting to see exotic menu items that had previously been verboten -- like pork and booze), we made our way east to the tiny town of Banfora.  Small but mighty, Banfora is richly appointed with some pretty awesome natural sites.  So we did what any good tourists would do: we rented mopeds and scooted around for a day on some dusty pock-marked roads in search of a good photo.  Julienne only fell off the bike once.  At 7 am, we were speeding through rice fields with donkeys and bicycles to the Sindou Peaks and Domes of Fabedougou, wild and pointed rock formations cut into the limestone as the ocean receded millions of years ago. We crawled over the black rocks and orange shards of pottery that remained after the village had been abandoned for a larger locale as the village grew.

After Sindou, our rasta guides -- not ones to miss a drink -- brought us by their fave family-run pub for a bowl of palm wine before making our way to the next hike. Palm wine is produced like fermented maple syrup, and a "tapper" shimmies up a palm tree to insert a drain into the tree to extract the sap.  A white sweet liquid is collected from the trunk, and then after being fermented in the sun, you have a wonderful milky white alcoholic brew that is consumed by the bowlful. Sara's only wanted to try palm wine since reading Things Fall Apart her freshman year of college. Bucket list, check.    

We then hiked along a dry plateau to a natural pool made from a waterfall.  After a quick scan for crocs, in we went. IT WAS AWESOME. Further to the Kerfiguela Falls we passed just a slightly scary wildfire, coursing through the dry grain.  Full of cotton, red onions, sugar cane, rice and millet, Burkina seems to be both incredibly lush and incredibly dry all at once.  And that sugar cane also comes in handy for another libation created here -- African rum, which almost blinded us at first swig.

The final stop of the day was Lake Tengrela, a 100-hectacre pond, home to 60 hippopotami. We rubbed the dust out of our eyes, plopped ourselves into a wood canoe, and watched the sunset on the lake with exactly one ginormous, submerged, chomping and very close hippo in the lily pads.

And now, waiting to say this for three months... we're here today and Ghana tomorrow!