dirt road , yet less likely to experience a landslide or to be trapped by a suddenly flooded waterway .
As we took shelter under a large bush and waited for the rain to abate , I checked the weather on my phone to discover that a storm of this size hadn ’ t been seen for years . It covered an area the size of Guinea and Liberia , reaching into Mauritania whilst moving west from Mali and Burkina Faso . It looked to have generated in the desert and was moving towards the sea . Who knows if it reached Cape Verde ?
Travelling with a change in climate is wonderful . The sky was thousands of colours and the air had a scent of fresh grass and water ; it was so inviting , especially driving through the landscape . At first bloody hot , then very cold , before warming again as the rain stopped and the sun reemerged .
With the rain and rough road , we reached Kedougou after night fall . Unable to secure a room in the better hotels we took a refuge in a hotel dedicated to The Great Patriot Burkinabe , Martyr of Pan Africanism , Thomas Sankara 2 . The hotel was much better on the outside compared with its inside , yet still good enough for sleep .
The breakfast room was situated in a paillotte ( grass hut ) where birds hid at night and sang in the morning , it was very nice . The staff were slow but nice , nonetheless .
The downpour complicated things a little , the roads became rougher and our schedule could no longer be respected . The roadside was strewn with cars , carts and tuc tucs abandoned and in tatters . Bicycles could no longer be ridden , pushing was the mode of movement . The roads had utterly changed .
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