The most authentic Africa I've ever seen

We're concluding another adventure with Panic Frame & Travel - 11 of us managed to explore Togo and Benin over the last ten days.

I've visited the continent before, but this here is the most authentic Africa I've ever seen. We started in Togo and moved from south to north, reaching almost to the border with Burkina Faso, but we couldn't continue as it was a military zone further up. In many places, there were checkpoints guarded by locals with automatics 😀

Sometimes they let us pass freely, sometimes we had to "offer" some local currency, equivalent to $1 😀

We met a local king who rules over 50,000 people. We saw local "castles" on two floors - the elders and animals live on the first floor, while the children live on the second tower as seen in one of the photos.

We attended voodoo festivals, which gathered different tribes. At one of them, they fought among themselves 😀

We watched locals eat charcoal, and then met voodoo healers in a village who smoked tobacco all day long 😀

In Benin, we reached the border with Nigeria, where Lake Nokoué is located - an incredibly fascinating place. In the middle, entire villages are built - literally within the lake, about 30,000 people live there.

This started during the times of slavery - according to voodoo, if a person is in the water, they cannot be touched. And since slaves were being sold to Europeans by a local ruler who also believed in voodoo, they began to hide in the water. That's how the villages originated.

At the places where we slept, we were the only tourists, and some "hotels" were opened just for us. These are the most non-touristy places I've ever seen.

We also collected some caps for next month's campaign.

So, onwards we go 🙂