Well, the next bus made me realise how lucky we'd been with the buses up until this one. It was sort of a small minibus with hard wooden seats crammed in. I counted seating for 14 people including the driver. This was already impressive as it certainly wasn't a big bus. However, at the peak of our journey we had 26 people onboard. I got Mike to take the above photo when all the seats were filled up and I thought things were as bad as they were going to get. Once things really got bad though I couldn't reach my camera as I couldn't move! We ended up with 7 people standing in the space where there is one guy standing in the photo. For a while the door didn't even close.

However, once again we got to our destination in one piece and only a little disgruntled that it turns out you can do the same journey in an air conditioned coach in half the time and for the same price. You travel and learn. Anyway, we had made it to Banfora which is a real gem of a town hiding in the southwest of Burkina Faso. Tourism is definitely not a big thing in Burkina Faso but, if one were a tourist, there is plenty to entertain around Banfora. We visited a lovely waterfall, a hippo lake and a place called The Domes of Fabedougou which has interesting 1.8 billion year old rock formations. We stayed in a lovely camp place just outside the town and enjoyed a lovely week of interviews, tourism, swimming and eating at the cheapest Japanese restaurant in the world with a group of American Peace Corps volunteers.

You may have seen the video of the waterfall jacuzzi that we enjoyed at the Karfigula Cascades. I will add another in a minute but I can't describe how good it was! It is possibly one of the biggest tourist attractions in Burkina Faso but there were very few other people there and those that did visit seemed to only stay about 15 minutes, take a picture of the strange boys swimming and then get in their cars again. I don't know if it was because we'd cycled miles to get there but any time we visited we swam for hours. Even Sana was excited and on our first visit jumped straight in... and quickly reminded himself that he really couldn't swim!

So, if anyone is planning a trip to Burkina Faso I can definitely reccommend Banfora and Campement Siakadougou (where we stayed). The only disadvantage we found of our location was the cotton factory lorries that drive along the dirt road outside the campement at ungodly hours of the night during the dry season and make it sound like the world is ending. Oh, and the yoghurt is so good in Banfora!