And so the COS trip begins!

Well....I guess it started a few days ago really...Tony, Michelle, Jen, and I did a mini Dogon country trip...Dogon country is for the most part, pretty awesome...the scenery is spectacular, and the villages built into the cliffs are def worth having my out of shape self nearly dying walking through the hot as hell desert (ok, so we walked mostly in the early morning and late afternoon, but when you have a huge pack on your back, it feels like hell!).

I had almost forgotten though what it was like to be in a place with tourists - it really makes things be much more of a hassle, as dogon guides jump on you like vultures and little kids run around begging for anything...."Donne moi l'argent! Ca va le Bic? Ca va le bidon?" Give me money! How's the Pen? How's the bottle? (this second one doesn't make any grammatical sense, but Malian kids love saying it.)

It was pretty interesting to find out that tourism, rather than aiding in the development of the villages and giving the residents a better standard of living, is sometimes even having a backward effect, as kids drop out of school so that they can beg for money from the tourists.

Anyway, besides the hounding by guides and begging children, the start of our COS trip was a full of excitement, good and bad, as we hiked up huge cliffs and spent nights on roofs with sand whipping our faces.

On sunday though, we finally leave Mali - sweet!! It was a good time, but I'm way ready to head on out. I had mentioned COS trip plans, but they're a little more fleshed out now...

On sunday, we leave for Mauritania, where we'll spend a couple weeks traveling through the northern part of the country, hopefully riding some coal trains and sleeping in a oasis or two.

Then we'll overland through the Western Sahara, avoiding land mines, till we get to Morocco, where we'll spend a good couple weeks traveling northward through the country, through Marrakech, Casablanca, Fes, and a few other places. Then we'll take the ferry to Spain, where we'll spend a couple days in Seville, before heading to Portugal and then back to Spain to finish out the trip....and then it's home to the states! Oh, I can't wait to order out some Chinese food and play some video games and then eat some fried chicken and then go to a "vrai" (real) movie theatre and ahhh...I'll stop...

Anyway, keep checking back to see how the trip is going! For now, oo'o!