Day 37: Iwol and Dindefelo

Despite the fact that it was raining at 7am when we woke up, we decided to risk climbing the mountain on top of which was a village that we were to visit. The rain stopped a couple of hours after that, and we were already on our way to the mountain. We drove for about an hour, parked, and started up the mountain. Even at 10am, it was already starting to get hot. The clouds from the earlier morning had been burned off, and we were pretty exposed climbing the mountain. After a mid-difficulty hour-long hike, we reached the top where the Iwol people live.

The village there was similar to Medina Kouta in terms of the housing construction. The huts were made of cement or mud and had thatched roofs. However, the huts weren’t organized into fenced compounds like those in Medina Kouta. Other differences from MK were the people, who tried to sell us crafts that they had made (and were successful.) We met a 115 year-old woman, who made us pay her if we wanted to take pictures of her. Some of the women had ears with 15-20 earrings in them. We gave them medical supplies and asked them about tourism in their village, which we learned was relatively frequent. In and around the village were incredibly large Baobab trees, which were awesome to look at. The mountain also provided some nice vistas of the valley below.

It took us a while to get down, but we made it eventually. Not many people in the group are in very good shape. At the bottom, I bought a Coke from a refrigerator, and it was the best Coke I’ve had in my entire life. You could have been there with a camera and filmed a Coke commercial. We ate lunch at a campement down the road, but a lot of people didn’t eat because they are trying to fast for Ramadan, which started yesterday.

After finished lunch and hanging around for a while, we got back in our 4x4 vehicles and set off for Dindefelo. Basically, the roads to get to Dindefelo aren’t really roads at all. We spent 2 hours driving on these “roads” and after a long, uncomfortable ride we reached a campement at Dindefelo where we sat through an awesome thunderstorm and rested. Tomorrow, we’re going to visit waterfalls that are close by.