The AC definitely worked in the room, as we had to pull up the top blanket in the middle of the night to stay warm.  When we got up just before 06:00, we were happy to see that everything was charged as well.  We had a good amount of time prior to breakfast, and Justin checked out our photos from the day before - it was one of the better photo days we’ve ever had.  Go figure.  We almost forgot we had started the day with breakfast with elephants.

Breakfast today was a bit of a shitshow, as the staff didn’t speak much English, and our French wasn’t up to snuff.  Some people were just speaking English louder, or repeating themselves in English, or talking over others with different English phrases, and we really felt for the waiter.  Google Translate should be the default in situations like this, but not everyone has caught on to that as of yet.  As all of this was going on, one of the staff turned on the TV to loud music videos, and Taryn echoed our sentiments when she asked someone to just unplug it from the wall before she had a sensory overload and broke something.  Justin muted the TV, and thereafter we slowly but surely communicated with the staff in broken Frenglish, and everything eventually worked out fine.  Then Sena showed up, and hammered out whatever hadn’t already been made clear.  Seeing this transpire, we felt a bit better about our travel skills, and how we (generally) could roll with whatever.

We left Sokodé at 08:00.  Sena told us the drive was going to be quite long, and moreover the main highway was under construction.  Because of this he had changed the schedule to do the cavalry event yesterday in the afternoon rather than this morning.  He told us we’d just see how things went.  On the highway there were trucks everywhere, going between the port in Lomé and the landlocked countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.  Sena told us that Togo is a sort of intermediary between France and those three countries, who have attempted to cut out France, French currency, etc., which is more difficult than one would think.

It was only about 30 minutes before we were stopped at a spot where the road was one way only because of construction.  We had to wait just over half an hour before we got through.  The road was much better past that area, though.  Around 11:30 we stopped at an elementary school in Babadé.  We met Limta, the head mistress of the school.  We were amazed at how well-behaved all of the children were.  Everyone greeted us with a rehearsed greeting, and then we learned about what their lessons for the day were.  They asked that we not use any photos for the web or social media, so we didn’t take any.

We continued south on the highway until Atakpame, a fairly sizable city.  We briefly got out of the vehicle to shop for bread, bananas, and avocados at Market Fruit Agbonou, a very large market.  Atakpame is also where we turned off of N1 to head southwest towards the border with Ghana.  We got lunch not far away at Roc Hotel Atakpamé.  In the parking lot we saw perhaps the most amazing Plumeria we’ve ever seen, completely leafless and covered in pink flowers.  The food was a buffet, and everything was very good with very good service.

After lunch we continued southwest towards Kpalime, and we stopped briefly at Kpele Goudeve, where one of Jane’s friends stayed years ago when she was in the Peace Corps.  In that same town, we randomly ran into Abass’s brother on a motorbike.  Eventually we got to Kpalime, the fourth largest city in Togo.  We went past our hotel and up a nearby hill, behind a slow truck, to the Kouma Konda area.  This was theoretically the “coolest” place in Togo.  The Germans preferred this cooler weather and built a base there.  It was also closer to the border, so they could keep better tabs on what the Brits were doing in Ghana.

In Kouma Konda we went on a short hike through the rainforest.  In the lower part of the area people do agroforestry, combining native forest trees with cash crops.  Our local guide showed us Cola Nuts, which do have caffeine in them.  They tasted kind of like chalk or dirt, though.  The local guide caught a butterfly, but it seemed like he might have inadvertently harmed it by showing it to us - we hope it recovered okay.  At the top of the hike there was an old Castle, apparently built by the Germans.  It’s definitely seen better days.  The castle was fine, but we were fascinated by the cool cloud formations to the west.

Once back in the vehicle, it was only a 15 minute drive back to the hotel (Hotel Parc Résidence).  It was really nice, at least from the outside.  Our room was huge, but that meant more AC was needed to cool it down.  And there was no shampoo again (more of an issue for Crystal than Justin).  The power kept going out, albeit for fairly short time periods.  We couldn’t understand why they spent so much money making these fancy rooms without an infrastructure to actually support it.  After being out for 15 minutes, the power came back on just as we were arriving for dinner at 19:30.

At dinner, other people were frustrated as well.  Stephenie had been in the middle of a work call when the power went out.  We all thought things would be better with rooms half the size and generators twice the size.  The food was good, and while the power went out several more times, it was for exceedingly brief time periods each time.  During dinner Sena told us about how he and his family are raising chickens - he has 180 now, and wants to get up to 300.  We also found out that his 11 year old son is playing futbol, and he helped teach him.  

We had no idea he was as big a futbol aficionado, and Justin asked a bunch of questions.  Apparently Sena used to play a lot himself (as a striker), until he was hurt pretty badly by some reckless defending and called it a career.  He remembers exactly where he was in 2010 during Ghana’s quarterfinal match with Uruguay, and also hates Luis Saurez.  And, sadly, he also knows people who were on the bus in Cabinda when the Togolese team bus was shot up, also in 2010.

Taryn thankfully changed the subject to something happier - Shazam - but then we found a song that didn’t really show up, and it was because it was one of the AI “bands” similar to what we heard in Budapest a few months ago.  After dinner, back in our room, it still wasn’t cold, because every time the power shut off, the AC mode reset, and it didn’t cool as quickly.  For good measure, the power went out again about 5 minutes after we got back, so the AC and the wi-fi reset for about the 10th time of the night.  We again wondered about smaller rooms and bigger generators.  Eventually we got to sleep around 22:30.