Benin: Cotonou

Saturday, March 25, 2023, Cotonou, Benin

We woke early to the sound of drums. There were drummers and dancers on the pier. Our welcome committee made for an effective alarm clock with banging, clanging and chanting. Not our favorite African musical ensemble. We’ve found that we like it best when the group includes note-playing instruments along with rhythm and vocals.

We managed to catch the 10 am shuttle to an artisan craft market. The shuttle buses were large vans with 8 rows of seats, 5 seats across. They run every half hour from the dock, then back to the ship. 

The market did not have a great vibe. The vendors seemed unhappy, even when you bought something. It wasn’t a fun place to shop. Although we arrived with friends from the ship, we were feeling the need to get outside this compound and see a few other places in Cotonou. A resident wearing an Oceania name tag was arranging taxis for tourists. There was a lot of negotiating, however, and it was taking a long time. Charlie managed to snag a taxi driving in, and the Oceania representative helped communicate with the taxi driver. We wanted to see a museum, the Amazon statue, and the graffiti wall, in particular.

It was apparent driving through the city that Benin had a better handle on garbage pickup than some of our recent destinations, despite being one of the poorest countries in the world. The craft market consisted of small huts in a compound. We were discouraged from leaving this area—it was not considered safe. Public transportation is also considered dangerous.

We were taken to the museum first; the Foundation Zinsou. It was an art museum and the main exhibit was photos of women depicting female warriors. There were also the same kind of statues outside. Our next destination was a large Amazon statue. I was curious about the theme, so I googled it. Apparently in the 1800s so many of the men were taken as slaves, the Benin area (then part of the Dahomey Empire) had an elite female fighting force that the Brits called Amazons because they were so fierce.

We had been hearing about the graffiti wall in Cotonou, so that was next. You could hardly call the art on this wall graffiti, but that’s what we were told it was. It went for a half mile and included many beautiful portraits.

Our taxi driver got a call and asked if it was OK to pick up another couple who were in “the big market.” We were ok with that. The taxi drove into the most gigantic market we’ve ever seen (the largest in West Africa we were told) and snaked our way with other cars, vans, and motorcycles through narrow driving corridors packed with vendors, customers and suppliers. It went for miles, and it would be easy to get lost there. We heard that the further toward the middle you got, the better the deals. Still not enough to get us to leave the taxi! Here are some photos from the big market.

We were dropped back at the compound and decided to have lunch at Loving Hut—a chain restaurant we’ve frequented in California. It looked like it was only a half mile away. One of the locals with an Oceania name tag approached us when he saw us looking at google maps on our phone and showed us a shortcut through the craft market. On our way, we looked into the restaurant in the compound and saw the ship’s head chef, Fahrid, having a cold beer inside ($2 per bottle).

We escaped the compound and were out on the streets of Cotonou. Lots of motorbikes and vendors on the street. We walked by an odd compound on the way to the restaurant with a armed guard at the door. On the way back we realized it was the penitentiary.

We found our restaurant. The waitress spoke no English, but managed to inform us they didn’t take Visa or US dollars. Charlie asked to talk to her boss. He spoke English very well, but was leery about taking US currency. Charlie negotiated, and he agreed to take our cash to a bank while we ate our lunch. However, we didn’t get our last course until he came back happy. Good food, beautiful garden setting, but a bit of a challenge with the language and currency barriers.

We walked back to the craft market, I bought a dress, we were in time for the shuttle. Took naps, dinner, and then two Brits belting out show tunes in the Insignia Lounge.

Unusual time change - got an hour back that we had lost the previous day! A day later they snatched it back from us.