After a whole two weeks away from the coast I took a few taxis, bikes and buses to the coastal town of Grand Popo. Its a nice area, pretty popular with French expats, so finding a Eurocamp style resort on the beach was pretty easy. Inside it was almost like being in the South of France, including the food and drink prices!
I treated myself to one tasty meal, but felt a bit out of place sitting by myself. Its pretty rare in Africa to be anywhere on your own, being lonely isnt an option. There were allot of people staying there but I felt a bit self conscious trying my pidgin French on real French people.
The next day I strolled down to the small town and got chatting to a chef (Matthieu) who spoke pretty good english. He offered to make me a tasty meal for a reasonable price, which he did and it was. We had a couple of drinks afterwards and then his friends turned up with a bottle of local gin (palm wine). One of his friends was a magician and the other a fisherman, the magician only new one trick which he used to different effects throughout the night, I tried to look impressed each time to keep him happy. I planned to leave the next night but they invited me to a party they were planning for the nearby Finnish Cultural centre.
I agreed to stay and was woken up pretty early by Mattheiu, who is quite an intense crazy sort of character but harmless enough - or so his friends kept telling me. We went to the Saturday market, where he raced around a bit like a cross between Jamie Oliver and Baron Samedi, squeezing avacados and throwing tomatoes about, arguing vocally with the market owners.
Back at the cultural centre we got down to some serious cooking, and eating, I think the plan was always to buy a bit extra for us to eat throughout the day - so Thankyou to the Fins. The party was good, we even had entertainment from the local theatre group. Although they found the punch well before they found the stage and so were pretty wasted during the ’show’.
The food was good too, and I had a bit of a lesson in African cooking, it was a long day and so everyone faded out pretty early. I hung around for one more day of relaxing beach life and then got back on the coastal highway.
