Mark and I do a lot of independent travel. We enjoy the freedom and flexibility that goes with ‘doing our own thing’. However, this type of travel can be exhausting! When we completed our two-month trip around southern India, we felt like we needed a holiday! Sometimes, we prefer to join a tour. It’s great not to have to worry about where we’re staying each night or how to get there. We can just enjoy the experience.
What follows is a review of an incredible West Africa tour we’ve just completed.
In this article
Essentials
- Name of Tour – Voodoo and Vibes of West Africa (Code ZAA)
- Operator – Dragoman
- Countries Visited – Ghana, Benin and Togo
- Crew – 2 Dragoman crew (tour leader and driver) plus local guides
- Number of Passengers – maximum 22
- Duration – 21 days
- Itinerary – Day 1 Accra, Day 2/3 Lake Volta, Akosomba, Day 4/5 Mount Klouto, Day 6 Central Togo, Day 7/8 – Tata Somba Region, Day 9/10 Pendjari National Park, Day 11 Central Benin, Day 12/13 Abomey, Day 14 Ganvié, Day 15 Ouidah, Day 16/17 Grand Popo, Day 18 Agbodrafo, Day 19 Keta, Day 20/21 Accra
- Cost – $1,845 + €570 kitty
What Happened Before our West Africa Tour
We booked our trip directly with Dragoman on this occasion because they were offering us a discount as returning customers, but we could just as easily have booked through TourRadar, a platform which offers tours from many operators and which often has better offers than booking direct.
Our pre-departure information from Dragoman was as good as ever. They provide detailed trip notes, visa assistance, and suggestions on what to take with you. Their customer service team are very good if you have any queries before you go.
We wanted to add on a few days in Accra before the start of our tour. We enquired with Dragoman as to the cost of extra nights in the joining hotel. They were very quick with their response. After looking at hotel reviews online, we opted for an alternative hotel and booked it through Booking.com. The sales team at Dragoman were very understanding about our decision.
If you are considering this tour, make sure you factor in the cost of all the visas you will need. We had to organise our Ghana and Benin visas before departure. Our Togo visa was sorted out by the crew when we arrived in Accra. The total cost for the three visas was almost £300 each. Add to this the antimalarials you need to take and you have quite a lot extra to find on top of your holiday.
What Happened During our West Africa Tour
Meet and Greet
We took a taxi to the joining hotel and were overjoyed to see our truck parked outside, even though she (Sura) was looking a bit worse for wear, having just arrived from a four-week trip from Freetown. After a wash later in the day, she was looking good!! We have such amazing memories of the last time we were on a Dragoman truck and we were sure this trip would be just as memorable!
We went inside and met our crew and fellow travellers. They turned out to be a mixed group, ranging in age from 18 to 80! Some passengers had been on one or both of the previous legs of this West Africa tour and others, like us, were joining the trip here in Accra.
Our tour leader, Katie, led the welcome meeting whilst our driver, Adam, went off to the Togolese embassy to sort out our visas.
Katie was friendly and informative. She got everyone to introduce themselves before giving us a trip plan which, helpfully, included when we would get wi-fi (hardly ever!), laundry services, and ATMs. Despite this being her first time doing this route, the notes she had from previous group leaders meant that Katie was able to advise us on where to change money, how much to get for the countries we would travel through, where to find shops to stock up on snacks and drinks for the truck and any missing or forgotten toiletries, plus lots of other valuable information. She closed the meeting by giving us joining instructions for our evening dinner (it was New Year’s Eve, after all!!) and our departure time for the following day (not too early to allow for the night before!!).
Transport
Our transport on the tour was, mainly, our overlanding truck, Sura, though we did have other means of getting around at different times, including motorised pirogues, sailboats, moto-taxis, and dugout canoes.
It felt very familiar to be on board a Dragoman truck again. It’s always a truck, never a bus! Woe betide any passenger who forgets and uses the ‘B’ word!!
As we set off on our West Africa tour, with Adam driving, Katie gave us the rundown on where everything is located on the truck and how it all works. She also organised the cook groups and allocated us all our truck jobs. On an overlanding trip, it’s everyone’s responsibility to keep the truck clean, set up the camp kitchen, organise luggage, etc.
Dragoman trucks are built to cater for 22 paying passengers. On our trip, there were only 16 of us, so we had plenty of space to move around in. It is common practice on these journeys to change seats every day for the sake of fairness. There are also the roof seats which can be used when driving off public highways. On this trip, they came into their own during the game drives in Pendjari National Park.
Sura proved to be reliable and (largely) comfortable during our 21-day trip through Ghana, Benin and Togo. She never let us down – except when we got stuck in the sand in Grand Popo, but that was hardly her fault!
Accommodation
Our West Africa tour was advertised as being 70% camping and 30% hotels, which we accepted as the only way to see these little-visited countries. In reality, there were far more opportunities to upgrade than we’d thought, often for just a few euros a night.
Campsites
The campsites we used were generally very good.
Our first site was on the banks of Lake Volta at Akosombo in the grounds of a lodge and restaurant. The washroom facilities were adequate and the bar/restaurant served tasty food and cold beer. The best thing, though, was the location. The lake, particularly in the early morning, was beautiful. There was plenty of birdlife to marvel at.
The campsite on Mount Klouto, our first in Togo, was in a lovely rural location. We were the only visitors so had plenty of space for our tents. About half of the group chose to upgrade, though. For us, the extra cost was €6 for the two of us for two nights so it was a no-brainer. The rooms were spacious. Many of them had ceiling fans. The fact that the water was off for most of our stay was not really a problem. Bucket showers work just as well!
In Ouidah and Grand Popo in Benin, our campsites were on the beach. It was lovely to go to sleep and wake up to the sounds of the sea and the ocean breezes. At both sites, it was a bit of a trek to the toilets and showers. In Ouidah, we had the use of an enormous pool with a series of diving boards which was very welcome after a hot, dusty day on the road. You could upgrade at both places, but for quite a price! We didn’t bother in Ouidah, but, by the time we got to Grand Popo, the thought of a proper bed and, more importantly, air-conditioning, was too much to resist! It was the best hotel we stayed in on the entire trip.
Our final campsite was at Agbodrafo on the banks of Lake Togo. It was a great location with good facilities. Again, the promise of aircon led us to upgrade to an individual cottage in the grounds.
Bush camps
We bush camped for four nights on this West Africa tour – one night as we drove up through Togo, two nights in the Pendjari National Park, and one night in central Benin. Bush camping is never my favourite thing – I do miss a shower and a toilet! However, if you’re doing a trip like this, you have to embrace it!
We had good fun at the bush camp in Togo, swapping stories around the campfire. In the national park, we camped right next to a watering hole, so slept to the sound of hippos splashing around! In Benin, I think we were camping in someone’s plantation so we kept the noise down and made an early getaway!!
Hotels
The joining hotel in Accra was not good! Passengers who’d been on the trip since the beginning in Dakar said it was the worst they’d stayed in. It was dirty and dilapidated. Nothing worked properly. Breakfast took an age to be served and was cold when it did arrive. We were glad we were there for just the one night and had booked alternative accommodation for our first nights in Accra. Katie agreed with our assessment and had reported back to Dragoman. She was tasked with finding an alternative for future trips.
In the Tata Somba region of northern Benin, we stayed in an eco-lodge for a couple of nights. The location was beautiful. The buildings were traditional, round in design with thatched roofs. Each room had its own bucket shower. The only downside was the composting toilet. There was just one for each floor, meaning that each had to cope with the waste from 10 people. I don’t think they were designed to handle so much so quickly!
The hotel in Abomey was very nice. We should have been camping in the grounds, but the price to upgrade was so low that all of us, except Yuko (who had brought her own tent on the trip with her), chose to get a room. For the next trip through, the hotel cost will be included in the kitty.
In the stilt village of Ganvie, we stayed in an amazing hotel. It was a bit basic, but the opportunity to be in the heart of the village and experience local life up close was worth it!
Our final hotel of the trip, before we returned to Accra, was in Keta. It was a concrete monstrosity, but it had a pool and the rooms were enormous. The chicken we ate there was the best on the trip!
Food
For much of this trip, we were catering for ourselves using the camp kitchen on the truck. Even though shopping for ingredients in some of the rural towns was a bit of a challenge, we ate very well!! The cook groups all came up with interesting and imaginative menus and we were able to supplement the stuff we’d bought with a very well-stocked bulk store. At the start of the tour, knowing that shopping would be difficult, Katie and Adam had bought plenty of cheese, cooked meat, cereals, tinned fish and vegetables, etc. to keep us going. We certainly didn’t go hungry!
Where we did eat in restaurants, the food was generally good even if the choices were somewhat limited. For a couple of people in our group who couldn’t eat fish, the option was generally chicken or chicken!
Itinerary
There were a lot of long drives on our West Africa tour, but that’s inevitable when you consider the distances we had to cover. The itinerary was organised well to make the most of the time we had available and to give us some down time, too.
The only criticism I would have is that the majority of the time is spent in Benin, clearly because this is where most of the places of interest are. It would be nice, though, to spend a bit longer in Togo and Ghana, especially when you consider that you’re spending a lot on the visas for each country. Perhaps it should be a 4-week trip??
Highlights
In a trip packed with interesting experiences, it’s hard to pick the best. However, for me, there were two highlights:
Ganvié
Ganvié is an incredible stilt village constructed in the middle of Lake Noukoue and dubbed the ‘Venice of Africa’ was a revelation! I didn’t expect it to be on such a huge scale and so colourful, so full of life! We thoroughly enjoyed being in the thick of it. It’s a photographer’s dream location so I was in my element!
Pendjari National Park
Although West Africa isn’t known for its wildlife in the same way as East Africa is, we loved our game drives on Sura through Pendjari National Park. Mark especially enjoyed being up on the roof seats. We were lucky enough to see hippos, crocodiles, countless antelope, warthogs, an amazing herd of 15 or so elephants with several youngsters, loads of different birds, baboons, and, best of all, a pair of rare maneless West African lions!
Lowlights
There really wasn’t anything we didn’t like. Of least interest to us was the Voodoo, but that was only a small part of the tour. In fact, when we booked the trip it was called the ‘Accra Loop’. Had it been under its current name of ‘Voodoo and Vibes of West Africa’, we might not have booked it!
What did we Think of the Tour?
We loved it!!
We love overlanding as a method of travel anyway, and can’t think of a better way to see these West African countries.
Dragoman delivered as they did on our last trip. We will definitely book with them again.
As for cost, we felt the trip was a little expensive, but it is in a less-travelled area and we did get €70 each back from the kitty at the end so we could afford a good dinner or two!
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I just finished overlanding west africa from Morocco to Nigeria and it was great! Ghana was one of my favourite countries. It looks like you had a great trip and I have heard that Dragoman does a great job.
Hi Nicole – that sounds like an amazing trip! We had a month in Morocco in October and absolutely loved it! Yes, this was our second Dragoman trip and they’ve both been good – I’d definitely recommend them.
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