Mali
A country plagued by violence that is pretty tame
Coming into Bamako (the capital of Mali), we had already been bush camping pretty much without a shower (except a waterfall shower and bucket shower in Guinea) for about 18 days.
No one knew what to expect going in there as we had heard reports about violence (In the northern part of the country) in the month leading up to us entering there.
I guess when the news reports something of an isolated incident, everyone gets scared. I can tell you that this country was friendly as any place could be. The people were dressed very colorful and welcomed us with open arms.
We stayed four days at a campsite called (insert Sleeping Camel), which is the longest time we had stayed at any one place since our trip began. It was nice to just relax for a few days and see what the city had to offer.
A great tour guide to show you around this city of Bamako that is still expanding their tourism is Seck Bolo: His contact information is the following:
Fluent in both English and French. Email Address is Seckbolo@yahoo.fr. Website is Trek.dogom.free.com. Cell is 75309507 or international (00223)75309507
The country is predominately Muslim; however it seems that most of the people are very liberal as most of them drink alcohol and party pretty hard as seen by their nightlife. A good amount of the population is rather poor with more than 90 percent of the country living in the southern fertile part vs. the arid desert like northern part (which coincidentally where Timbuktu is which we were unable to visit because of constant fights among extremists.
Leaving Mali we headed East toward some more bush camps and into the great wide open of the Ivory Coast……
