This was an excellent, well paced tour of 2 really interesting countries with and amazing culture.
The tour had to be amended at the last minute due to a change in the UK Government travel advice meaning that we were no longer able to visit one of the areas on the itinerary. In addition with the government in Benin deciding to end the voodoo festival at midday on the 10th due to the general election taking place on the 11th, the itinerary had to have another change. However Explore and the local agent were able to make a number of amendments that meant we still saw everything else and had a couple of extra items, including a stilt dance, added.
I was disappointed to miss the voodoo procession, but we saw a lot of dances, both at the festival and in the villages, which were fantastic.
I enjoyed the free time that we had in several locations as it gave me an opportunity to wander around exploring and chatting to local people and I even watched Kara FC, who I was told are a premiership team in Togo, play a friendly.
There wasn't much variety in the food, but as a vegetarian I was well catered for and the quality was good, although it sometimes lacked a bit of protein.
Overall I thought that the accommodation was good for this area of Africa and I enjoyed being in the stilt village (with very basic facilities), watching life go by and hiring our own boat for an afternoon trip.
Whilst we didn't spend long there, I was pleasantly surprised by Cotonou, where I loved the large statue of an Amazon warrior and the long graffiti wall.
Royal Air Maroc did manage to lose the luggage of everyone on the London flight via Casablanca, due to the short transit time at Casablanca. Our guide said that this can often happen and worked well to get all but one of our bags delivered to us after lunch on day 3 (one person didn't get their bag until the penultimate day of the trip so we had to lend him clothes etc). We had to pay for a taxi to get the bags to us, but Explore refunded this. So, I would recommend that you check the flight timings and ensure that any transit times are sufficient.
Our guide wasn't particularly forthcoming with information on occasions and could have communicated better with us about what was going on, especially given all of the changes. However he did deal with a number of issues well, including the lost bags and late changes to the itinerary.
So in summary, I really enjoyed the tour, the dances were fantastic, the cities, towns and villages were very interesting, most people were friendly and, given all of the challenges, I thought that Explore and their local agents did an excellent job in ensuring that we still saw and experienced so much.
