27 th April: Menorca – planning the following day to Agadir over a good dinner

After a long flight we've settled into our rooms at the Hotel TAFOUKT in Agadir. We gather our strength for the next few hours over a cool beer.

Inside our 4-Star Hotel TAFOUKT

On the way to the local fruit and vegetable market in Agadir.

The barrows are loaded well over the permitted limit.

From 3 o'clock on haggling and bartering is the order of the day. Most of the products come from the North. The irrigation system greatly assists agriculture there.

All sorts of spices like saffron and ginger are being bought here.

Timbuktu Airport: A modern airport has been built with the money from overseas development aid.

During the European Middle Ages what is now Mali was the heart of the richest empire in the world.

Descent into Timbuktu – nothing but desert in sight.

The mosque in the background. No proper streets in Timbuktu, just sand, sand and more sand.

The mosque is dominated by the main tower, flanked by two lower towers. Rows of balconies jut out from the smooth windowless façade, which changes its appearance as the light varies. At the same time these serve as permanent scaffolding for repair works.

Handmade bricks laid out to dry in the sun.

The Berbers are provided with special places inside the city of Timbuktu. After two days they have to leave the town.

It was the German geographer and explorer Heinrich Barth who around the middle of the 19 th Century reawakened the history, culture and language of this region in the minds of Europeans. The former German Federal President, Heinrich Lübke also stayed in Timbuktu. It was here that Lübke held his famous speech which was wrongly translated by the interpreter.

The University of Timbuktu. Timbuktu owes its legendary reputation to Mali's heyday. Originally an insignificant settlement of the nomadic Tuareg, it was later West Africa's most flourishing trading metropolis, a centre of Islamic study, research and religion.

Today Timbuktu is a provincial town, having lost its economic significance.

Word has got around that there are strangers in the town again. Our President was surrounded by hundreds of happy children. Not only were we the first visitors for two months, we had also brought the longed-for rain with us. It wasn't easy to free Willi from the madding crowd.

View from the hotel over the tents and huts of the Tuaregs.

We had to stop over in Mopti as there wasn't any Avgas in Timbuktu. The tanks were filled out of barrels fitted with hand pumps.

We took off for Accra in 43°C.

Flying through turbulence, Mopti – Accra.

In 1957 Ghana was the first British Colony in black Africa to become independent. President Kwame Nkrumah tried to build up his state through a balance between East and West. But even today it is one of the poorest countries in the world. This market is a melting pot, a meeting place for absurdities and eccentrics. Here the people buy and sell, barter, haggle and argue.

People barter with anything.

After a somewhat stressful and troublesome drive (wrong hotel), we reach our hotel compound in Bamako.

The streets outside the capital Bamako to the west were over-filled with markets. Rubbish dumps where people sought final bits were interspaced with red deserts.

Mountain tour to Kamadjan. Here the Elders of the six Mali tribes met in the 12 th Century to elect their King.

The women carry heavy burdens on their heads but don't seem to mind.

Deep impressions. Go-Go, the girl from the slave island.

An avenue of monkey-bread trees. The fruit of this tree is similar to our medicine Imodium.

Dakar: Just off the green cape is the island of Goree which gained notoriety as the collection point for West African Slave export. It was here that shiploads of human freight were put together for the New World.

The countryside is wide and beautiful and wild, but was it made for people? In the heat of the day the throbbing oasis town of Quarzazante seems to lose itself in an endless mirage. Like warning fingers to transitoriness on the horizon the mountain peeks of Jebel Sarhro and Jbel Bani point to the skies.

At first sight the fortified villages, the KASBAHS, aligned like pearls on a string, and the men armed with curved daggers and dressed in wide gowns create the impression that only Berbers live here in the valley. But the you notice the numerous dark-skinned people with Negroid features. These Haratin are the descendants of the slaves who, in previous centuries, were carted from central Africa to southern Morocco.

Briefing before the departure to Alicante.

Concluding an adventurous tour and enjoying a civilised world.