Mali

Hills 2 may 13-14
Leaving the wonderful family we set off on the hilly terrain. At least the road flattened out a little more than it had the previous day. It wasn't a very exciting day but the scenery was breathtaking. Distant views of the ocean amongst rich green forest and grassy rollig hills doted with livestock. It resembled scenes from Hobbiton in the Lord of the Rings but without hobbit holes and instead wooden plank houses built on stilts some painted pretty colours.

We recognized a greenhouse like structure in many families yards from the family we stayed with the night before as being chocolate fermenting and drying houses. So many communities are able to make their own chocolate.
For lunch we stopped at a store off the road and made sandwiches as there were no restaurants in sight. About 45 minutes of riding later as we came closer to civilization restaurants and grocery stores started popping up everywhere. We ate some sweet roadside guaba fruit as a snack. We turned onto the road that leads through the mountains and rode for a while longer before looking for a place to set up camp. Around 5 we crossed a river and asked a family if we could stay in their yard. They didn't look like they had another building so I didn't think it was going to work and then we would have to climb the hill in front of us BUT as it turned out the family had an extra house they didn't live in anymore that still had water running in it. Tracy walked us back across the river and showed us their empty house. It was huge! It had two levels, the bottom being concrete and the top wood with a wrap-around balcony. Tracy said we could sleep there if we wanted, but said it was a bit dirty. We didn't mind so we gratefully thanked her and set up camp.

Rigel made some dinner and we ate while it rained then he opened one of the chocolate pods. Surprisingly the fruit around each bean is fuzzy and tastes lemony. But the bean is a little bitter. As we were getting ready for bed we noticed an abundance of flashing lights in the dark; fireflies!

Cocao pods cut open