...but I preferred reading the American landscape as we went along. Every bump, rise, and stretch in it mystified my longing. - Jack Kerouac

25 September 2019, Lomé to Agbélouvé, 57.27km
Auberge Montecristo 6,000XOF (R150)  

We awoke this morning to discover we had somehow managed to lose our purse somewhere between buying softdrinks after dinner and the hotel. Luckily, it had a little over one day’s budget in it and did not include the cash drawn just before dinner and intended to last a week.
We breakfasted at a popular place around the corner from the hotel on omelets, baguettes and condensed-milk coffee served in enormous and heavy cups. Then collected our passports from Visa Services and hit the road.
The first 20km or so were on a double-carriage highway with a generous shoulder, making the belching traffic tolerable. Then the road narrowed to single-lane, with a stingy shoulder offset from the road and largely uncycleable. There was too much traffic for comfort, but drivers, as usual in Africa, were conscious of us and patient.
We had some cloud cover, but not enough; it was hot and humid. And the scenery, though green, was nothing to write home about. Just haphazard, small-scale farming of cassava and coconuts and corn and cream cattle with elegant horns.
We have seen fewer basic huts and more brick-n-mortar buildings than in central Africa. And here, people manage to pile goods on the top of buses and mini-buses and kombi taxis to extraordinary heights, securing it there with tarpaulins or nets and rope. One bus, headed for Timbuktu (how romantic is that?), was so mal-aligned, all four tyres travelled their own route north. We saw miserable chickens either tied to roof racks for transporting fresh to market, or slightly more comfortably secured in home-made cages on the backs of autocycles.
We seem to create less of a stir, though are still greeted with “yovu”, “bonjour”, “salute”, “bon voyage”, “ca va”, or a thumb’s up.
It is hot and humid!
Yay for Google Maps that had an entry for the Montecristo; at least we knew there was accommodation in town. I have also added the auberge to iOverlander.

For today's route see below photos
For overview route, click on ROUTE tab above…