Cotonou

So I promised to do a detail update on all my activities since I've been to Abj. So after succesfully obtaining my passport and visa my sister, decided to take me on a 24hr mission she had to take to Cotonou (Benin). We left on tuesday nite and travelled with my sister my other sister and brother -it's an african thing (long story short they are friends of my sister that my mom "adopted" so I have another brother and sister) and a colleague of my sister's from her company. 

We travelled via Air Ivoire and honestly I was stocked to take the national airline having never flown in it before. To my amazement the crew and the captain were from south africa. So i could have just have been in south african airlines I wouldn't know the difference. Either way after a short flight we arrived in Cotonou. No disrespect to my homies from Benin but when I got to the airport I was like Damn! I mean if when I got to Abidjan it didnt feel like I came back to Africa, cotonou certainly did the trick. Anyways I'm gonna leave at that otherwise I'm gonna get some hate from my boys. Anyway we stayed at the Novotel which was really nice. Even though my sister was working, my siblings and I went around town to get a feel of the city (the gbekui -the local dish, a stew of collard greens and meat- and the Beninoise, the local beer). We were leaving on thusday and we scheduled a shopping trip in the local market. 

I had seen markets in Abidjan but you haven't seen a market until you visit "Atokpo." You can find just about anything you are looking for over there. Of course if you want to get around in Cotonou you have to do it on the "zenedjan" or commonly known as "zen" for about a buck you can get around town on the back of a  bike or a moped and since just about everybody has a bike in cotonou on top of the million of zen around the city you can bet that the air is at its freshest ;-) After a full day of shopping through the Cotonou market, riding on the zen, we had to catch our flight back home. So all in all for my first trip with my new passport I say to Cotonou nice. It was just the type of wonderful mess that I've been searching for a long time.