Let's Begin in Benin

At 8am we docked in Cotonou, the main port, administrative capital, and largest city in Benin (the actual capital, Porto Novo, is 40km east)

Our tour today took us to Ganvie, a village built on Lake Nokoué, an hour north of Cotonou.

The entire village is built on stilts over the lake. With a population of 40,000 people, it is the largest lake village in the world, and sometimes called The Venice of Africa.
The Tofinu people settled here in the sixteenth century and built their lake village to escape slavers who came from the Fon tribe and were not allowed to enter water for religious reasons. This made the lagoon a safe territory for other tribes. All of Ganvie's houses, shops and restaurants are built on wooden stilts, and it also has a floating market. The town has one complete patch of land, which is the site of the village school, and many houses have a small patch of land beside them, where villagers can rear a few domesticated animals . All the soil was imported by the people of Ganvie in their boats, including enough to create a proper cemetery.

It rained most of the day, so our scheduled photo opportunity on the way was limited to peering through torrential rain at the Monument Amazone, a 30m bronze statue honoring the Dahomey Amazons, an all-female military group from the Kingdom of Dahomey.

We arrived back at ship after 3 pm, so didn't have the opportunity to catch the shuttle to town to do any shopping, so, after changing out of our wet clothes, we headed to the pool grill for a late lunch... as did many others.

We set sail at 4pm, heading west towards Ghana.Read more