Parc Pendjari is a wildlife parc located in the Northwest corner of Benin near the Burkina Faso border. There are few wildlife parcs left in West Africa and Benin is the home of two of them. Parc Pendjari is usually considered the poor man’s safari. Places like Kenya and Tanzania have amazing safaris where you can see numerous elephants, lions, cheetahs, zebras, wildebeest, giraffes, hyenas, buffaloes, hippos, monkeys, and many many other animals with beautiful unrealistic landscapes. In Parc Pendjari you can see elephants, monkeys, hippos, crocodiles, antelopes, hyenas, warthogs, and lions. There are apparently 2 cheetahs in the Parc but no one ever sees them! I have to see that my visit to the Parc was really awesome! I visited the Parc December 26-28 with my mother, and 5 other volunteers (It was a girls trip!!)
My postmate Jonny had given me the name of his guide that he used and highly recommended him! I called Bio about 5 times in November and he kept saying he was in Cotonou or Grand Popo or some other village and would call me back when he was free. We finally talked and agreed on a price for the 3 days. I got approval from everyone that the price was fine and they couldn’t wait to see the animals! The morning of December 26th at 5:30am we met our driver and guide who was an extra $60 for the 3 days that Bio did not mention, oh and Bio was not there! He had sent someone “from his team” to take us because he was occupied! I was extremely upset because I had “verified” the price; granted it was over the phone but here in Benin everything goes on your word and I knew that we verbally agreed to the prices. I was also a bit more pissed that he wasn’t there in person to discuss. Fortunately my mother helped me clearly communicate with the driver and guide about the prices. We loaded up our bags, food, water, and spare mattress we were going to sit on top of the van with.
The Parc entrance is about 2 hours from Natitingou, 1 hour is on a paved road and the other hour is on a dirt/gravel road. For some strange reason I was massively car sick. Once we got into the parc and continued on more dirt/gravel/sand roads I tried to close my eyes and breath through the sickness….fortunately I fell asleep. When I awoke we had arrived at a small watering hole with hippos in it! All I could see were 3 large hippo’s heads barely sticking out of the water. Our guide pointed out the 20 crocodiles sun bathing on the opposite side of the pond. There were also antelopes grazing just behind the crocodiles. After that moment I was awake and ready to see more animals. After 10 minutes we decided to head through the parc to our hotel. We climbed up on the roof to gain a better view of the parc’s surroundings. I lost count of how many antelopes we saw….there were big ones with big horns, baby ones running, females jumping, lame ones sitting, stupid ones hiding…
We went out each morning at 6:30am to see the sunrise and see the animals before it got too hot. Then we napped and rested and went back out at 4pm. The first afternoon we saw Elephants out in the distance and some birds. The next morning we saw warthogs, monkeys, and elephants. It wasn’t until the second afternoon in the parc that we saw elephants up close. By up close I mean about 30 yards away. There was a small group of 5 elephants, 2 mamas and 3 babies eating right near the path of the vehicles. There is something surreal about being so close to a wild animal especially a freaking elephant. At first it was awesome taking a million pictures of the pack, then the mama decided to step things up a bit and stomp her feet and flap her ears like she was going to charge us. You never know what animals are capable of and I sure didn’t want to test fate that afternoon. When the mama actually turned and started moving closer to us I got really scared and wanted to go (I mean we had already been there for 8 minutes and taken 100 pictures LETS GO BEFORE WE DIE!!) I said to the driver ok ok lets GO NOW and he assured me it was safer to wait until she turned around and started to leave because if we move the elephant might think that we are coming at her so she will charge us. Apparently elephants have bad depth perception and when they see any movement they can mistake it for movement coming towards them (yeah right but WHATEVER). After another 2 frightening minutes the mama turned around and took a few steps toward her baby, while she did this the driver pushed on the gas to get us out of there. The mama immediately heard this and whipped around and took a few steps in our direction, fortunately we were heading out of sight before she could actually come after us.
After the close encounter with the elephants all I wanted to see was a lion and I would be a happy camper! Later that afternoon we saw……more antelopes our driver tried to tell us one was called antelope cheval meaning horse antelope, pretty sure he made that up! I started thinking how fun it would be to be a guide and totally make up EVERYTHING!! I think that’s something my dad would have done just for kicks! Now that I think about it, I don’t think our guide ever pointed out any animals first. We all notified the group when we saw something and he would be like “oh where? Oh that is a blah blah”.
Our last morning in the parc we wanted so badly to see a lion we told our guide to make it happen! We went out back towards the watering hole we visited the first day. Secretly we were all a little over the hippos and crocodiles but we enthusiastically took more pictures. Out of no where we hear a roar. We all get quite and stare at each other. There were about 4 other groups there and all the guides got together and talked about their next steps. They decided to load in one vehicle (ours by chance) and go look for the lion. The guides returned not even 2 minutes later shouting at us to hurry and get in the van because there was a lion very close by!! As we were running to the van we heard another louder roar!!
A caravan of 5 vehicles went on a lion hunt! After a brief minute of driving the first vehicle stopped and started reversing, we were all searching the bushes to see the lion when all of a sudden a lioness appeared 10 yards away. She was alone and just walking around. Some how in the excitement of going on a lion hunt the settings in my camera has changed and my photos were coming out all white. I scrambled to change the settings in time but she had already moved another 10 yards away. A few times she stopped and looked over at us but eventually continued to a tree where she sat and rested for a while. By this time 2 more vehicles had pulled up and a few had already left. The owners of the new vehicles decided to get out and walk around their car. Our guide was furious and told them they must get back in because there was a lion close by and her husband could be close and headed this way. At first we though “aww what a cute story her husband could be close by but yeah right we won’t get to see him” then we heard a deeper roar coming from the brush behind where the lion was resting. The stupid tourists were slamming car doors and talking loudly. We tried to get them to shut up but unfortunately they carried on long enough to force the lioness to retreat back into the brush. Needless to say our group was thoroughly pissed at the group that made the lioness leave. After the contact with the lion we were all satisfied with our trip to the parc! Our guide took us back to the watering hole then back over where the lion had been just to make sure she didn’t return. A few minutes later we made our way out of the parc.
There are waterfalls near and around Parc Pendjari, we stopped at the falls in Tanagou. A few of the other girls decided to jump….I was not in that group. So we change into our bathing suits in the van trying to hold up panyas (2 meters of fabric that most women wear here as skirts) for coverage. Let me just say its very weird to show anything above my knee in public, I definitely felt so exposed and uncomfortable. It’s going to be interesting going back home, I probably won’t be able to wear and short skirts/dresses/or shorts for a while! Anyways we climbed over a bunch of rocks and through a few smaller falls and got to the big waterfall. It was so beautiful! Of course Annie Swank was the first one in! Everyone got in shortly there after and the girls made their way to the wall to start climbing. I stayed back to take pictures. So four girls and one local guide attempt to climb. It takes them about 10 minutes to climb 9 feet out of the water. Then another 10 minutes for one of them to go a little higher up. Our driver from the safari comes over to me and is repeating very quickly and over and over “it’s not good, they shouldn’t climb, make them stop!!” and when I say over and over I mean at least 7 times he told me this. So I tell my mom to swim over to them and make them stop. Long story short after about 10 minutes discussing what they should do they finally decided to stop and just jump from where they were. After they jumped the guide climbed the rest of the way in under 2 minutes. I have a strong feeling it would have taken the girls at least 1hr to climb the waterfall!!
Overall it was an awesome trip and I am so glad that I got to experience it with my mom and my friends here! We truly had a great time laughing, singing, and eating. I am omitting my experience with the staff at the hotel because I don’t want to be a Debbie downer. Let’s just say they weren’t the friendliest to us (I think because we didn’t order much food because we brought our own food in because the hotel is really expensive) but we joked about most of it anyways. I hope you all enjoy my photos!
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