Its difficult to know where to start (and to use these french keyboads !). We have travelled so far already, lots of sweating in mini buses, big buses, trains and even an ox cart some of the way. It is boring if I list all of our activities so im just going to try and put some moments of the trip down. After a couple of days of solid travelling we reached the Malian border, it was getting late and we didn’t quite have all the papers but with the sense it would all work out we went a head anyway! The travel agent had assured us that if we had a problem there then they could easily fax the additional information to the border officials for us, as we walked up to the wee police station the thought of it having a fax machine was somehow amusing! They didn’t want to let us in at first or they wanted us to pay for another visa (after already paying 50dollars we weren’t up for that!). Using all the French skills I had we eventually persuaded them are papers were fine and would be finalised in Bamako; So too late to travel on and following our success with the police we spent a good half hour bargining down the price of a hotel room – as it seemed the rooms were more often rented by the hour the full night rate was negotiable! A few days later we spent 18 hours on a train, travelling 600kms – and I didn’t use the toilets on it once, I feel like that’s some kind of record although such levels of dehydration are probably not recommended! The train was great fun, went first class for the first time ever. But don’t get any fancy ideas, that meant I had a whole seat to myself, woohoo! After two weeks on the road we made it to Ouagadougou (guess where that is!). We have tried our level best to find ‘the thing to do’ in Burinka but it turns out there isn’t too much – it’s probably not the highest priority for a country rated the third poorest in the world. To sort out visas we have ended up staying a few days longer than required and have spent the time chilling in Ouagadougou, hiring bicycles and joing the huge numbers of mopeds, scooters, motorbikes and cyclists on the road. Everyone here is on some sort of bike – including all the women, which you certainly don’t see in the Gambia. And with another reference to The Gambia I’m enjoying the big city feeling you have here, the Gambia really is quite small! The city vibes here are good, chilled out people, chilled out feeling. I’ll leave it there for now as we soak up the ougadougou life, preparing for Ghana I’ve achieved missing out all the highlitghts of Mali, which were immense, including dogon country, boat trip on the Niger … I’ll put the pictures on facebook!