A few weeks ago fellow volunteers Sarah and Hannah, her friend Michael and I went on a safari to Parc Pendjari up in northwest Benin, on the border of Burkina Faso. This was my first time visiting the Atakora region of Benin and it was so beautiful. The landscape is so much different than the south and the topography is much hillier. We spent the night in the Natitingou workstation for volunteers then continued on with our guide Aziz and his Toyota 4Runner. The park in Benin is known for its very diverse wildlife and is considered the second best spot in West Africa to see wildlife (the first being Cameroon). We definitely saw lots of antelope, elephants, hippos, and a few lions. It was so crazy to be in the wild with these animals. Our guide knew some good spots and we got close to lots of elephants and really close to a big lion.
After a day and a half of riding around the roof of the car, we went to the waterfalls near the park and they were incredible. The guide there said we could jump off so Sarah and I climbed up this rock about 2 meters high to jump. After we jumped he was like, "No you need to jump off of the top." Needless to say Sarah and I almost killed ourselves climbing up vines and rocks to the top. She jumped first and landed weird and I was left up there alone thinking about how much this was going to hurt. I finally mustered up the courage to jump and it hurt so bad but was quite exhilarating. The jump was about 55 feet but from up there it looked so much higher.
Anyway it was an epic trip and I crossed another thing off of my bucket list so I am pretty happy. Will update everyone soon.
