Figured my first Lomé, Togo blog was long enough so will finish that day and cover the next one here.

At three o’clock, ten of us got picked up for our cooking class with famed Togo chef Olivia de Souza. Unfortunately, she was in France for a meeting so we didn’t get to meet her, but we had her talented staff to teach us. We started with an appetizer of bean flour, parsley (that we chopped), garlic, ginger, onion, cheese and some other stuff I didn’t catch. Small dollops were dropped into hot oil and served with a pesto sauce made with garlic, basil, cashew nuts and olive oil.

The kitchen was small and very hot so after a session of chopping vegetables for the salad, we retreated to the air-conditioned dining room. Then more vegetable chopping for the side dish and the yams for something that looked like French fries but were much drier and less flavorful.

Then back to the air-conditioned dining room. The staff cooked all the rest. While we waited a guy who is involved with the cocoa bean industry came and gave a lesson on how it is grown and processed. It is an up and coming industry that can be done by individual farmers.

Finally our meal was ready – salad, fried chicken, fried yams, cooked plantain, and a delicious mixture of cooked onions, tomatoes and bell peppers. Dessert was either a mango crumble or banana flambe. I can’t eat bananas so was thankful for the option of the mango crumble that was delicious. We finally made it back to the ship at 8:30 pm. Just in time for the Togolese entertainers.

They were going to do around 10 dances. After 6 I had enough drumming and needed to get to bed because my tour the next morning was leaving at 6:15 am – for us crazy birders.

04-19-2025 – Still in Lomé, Togo

This morning’s excursion was “Bird Watching at Lake Togo”. I have named it the Bataan Death March. For me it was brutal. I was prepared for the hot and humid weather but walking for well over an hour over uneven ground and only seeing a couple of birds, mostly very far away, was disappointing. Part of the problem was they had over 46 people. Half started at one end and the other started at the other end. But 25 people was still too large for birding. And, of course, because I am so slow by the time I would catch up to the group, whatever they had seen was long gone. A few times I totally lost the group and didn’t know which way they had gone. Luckily it was on fairly open ground so I could eventually find them. We did learn about the little crabs that lived in burrows. We met some guys with their home-made traps to catch them.

Eventually one of the ladies had a bad fall and injured her arm so instead of continuing on, they were going to take her directly out to the road and the bus, so I and a few others joined them. So, my sum total of sightings was an agama lizard

a bee eater on a wire very far away

And a sunbird flying off a bush

A fisherman

And a crab.

I got back to the ship and got a shower before heading to lunch. So disappointed.

Afternoon was spent downloading photos, writing and going to Easter themed Trivia. Our team tied for 1^st and we got double points – you collect points to turn in for SilverSea swag and will be able to collect during the next cruise and combine all my points.

Sailing overnight to Ghana.