Almost Benin

We ALMOST made it to Cotonou, Benin today. Just when we signaled "Hi We are Here!", we learned another ship was settled comfortably in our berth. 'The ship is having engine problems.  It will be just a minute.', turned into a five hour wait. From 'The ship is heading out now' to 'The (offending) ship just dropped an engine' to 'We are awaiting a Pilot', to 'Pilot will be here soon!', to 'The boat is being towed from the berth.  We will dock within an hour.' .... When they ran out of excuses, a huge storm with winds of 50 knots enveloped us and dumped, and just dumped again,  a ton of rain. Maybe this port just wasn't meant to be. The next excuse was 'We can only dock if the winds are under 20 knots'. We bobbed and waited till the cows came home today. The storm was beautiful. Benin was so close, just unreachable for us.  At  1:30 PM the Captain finally picked up his toys and called it a day. What was nice to see was how the ship handled 500 anxious people with nothing to do. They set up some group games, started a BINGO game, arranged a 'pre-lunch-early-bird' show with a head singer and the band, extended breakfast, and started lunch early. Food seems to comfort the masses here. All tours were cancelled. The weather somewhat cleared but with unpaved roads touring may have been a nightmare. We turned our ship and headed North for our next adventure Lome, Togo. We missed seeing a village on stilts and some pretty big mosquitoes. But, tomorrow is another day, another adventure.

Happy Birthday M!