Same as the taxi driver the day before in Bobo, Oumar had picked himself a companion to join us to Karfiguéla waterfalls. By the time Annette and I had finished our lunch and got to the car, they were both there, waiting for us. I suppose when you’re stranded out of town with a couple of tourists who have inflicted themselves on you and then usually take their own sweet time along the way - after all, they pay for it, don’t they? - then that same time can hang pretty heavy on your hands. And not everyone seemed to have cottoned up yet to the wisdom of their being in the best company when on their own. So it made sense that our drivers always looked for someone to come along.
Banfora is in a sense a one-road town. In terms of paved roads, at least. Rue de la Poste it is in Banfora. It is a central artery and it runs down the town’s length. With an exception of the road to Bobo-Dioulasso, once you get off the Rue de la Poste, whichever way you go, you descend on a dirt road, more or less bumpy, depending on where you’re headed. So that’s how it was on our way to Karfiguéla waterfalls, as well.
Those waterfalls are allegedly one of the most famous natural tourist attractions in Burkina Faso. In reality, they are a series of relatively tiny cascades known collectively as Karfiguéla Falls. Certainly nothing on the scale of what I have back home. I’m not even mentioning those really big things famous world over. But in a hot and quite dry country like Burkina Faso, they are easily justified in being seen as a tourist attraction.
In fact, they got their name after the village of Karfiguéla which is located hardly ten kilometres away from Banfora. I assume that with a pretty regular influx of foreign tourists the village nowadays strives to retain its traditional looks. Somewhere along the lines of what Koumi seeks to be. You even pay the entrance ticket as you arrive. There are those very African rotund mud huts there with straw roofs in the shape of pointed cones, which we were welcome to visit. Conveniently enough, they were empty and I had no way of knowing if they just happened to be temporarily deserted, and all of them at that, or now just no one really lived in them any more, opting rather for something more modern around the corner. The clearing in the middle of the village had been very neatly swept clean. And almost every hut in the village had its own small tree, or an oversize bush, depending on the perspective, to provide its own private shadow. Nice indeed. But with no people in sight, there was not much to hold us for long there. So off to the waterfalls we went.
And then we first passed through what was obviously a large orchard. Almost a tiny plantation. Full of relatively thin trees with sizable fruits on them. Like I’d never seen them before.
„What kind of tree are these?“ I asked.
„Mango trees,“ Annette educated me.
A narrow path cut through the orchard and led into a real forest with some thick, tall and broad trees. And through that forest ran a wide path which eventually got us to a small lake at the bottom of what makes up the Karfiguéla waterfalls. The site was pretty. I had to admit it. The lake itself was evidently created by water tumbling over and through rocks and boulders from not higher than ten metres or so. Nothing spectacular in size, for sure. And as an isolated spot, it would be nothing too spectacular in appearance, either. But it was not isolated, and as such, it was like the last bead in a string that had its spring some distance away and up from there. And it possessed some modest and unspoiled beauty that kept you by the water for a while.
Annette was clearly enjoying herself by now. Fully at ease around Oumar and his companion at last, and excited by the lake and its green surroundings, she was having both a good time and her pictures taken in all conceivable poses. Her being the only lady among us, true gentlemen as ever, we obliged her until she declared she was ready to move on. Then we all moved on. Oumar led the way and we all followed in his footsteps.
The trail he led us up would have been pretty difficult to locate without him. For in places it was no trail at all, but just a stretch that we could cover only by clambering over some rocks. Then in other places it became a trodden path again. And then, after some solitary hike at first, all of a sudden it was rather crowded. Quite a number of foreigners seemed to be headed in the same direction and we basically just hitched on to their column at its rear. Judging by their language, most of them seemed to be French. English was spoken only in our small company.
First we arrived at a small plateau with a view over the valley we had just come from, where the water started tumbling down, filling the small lake we had visited earlier. Then it was on upwards until we reached a point where there was a brook to cross. There we all took our shoes off, making our best effort not to take a tumble in the process on the slippery bottom, and eventually successfully made it to the other side. And that finally brought us to the highlight of the Karfiguéla waterfalls. We found ourselves at the rocky edge of another lake, this one larger than the previous one, where a low, but rather broad waterfall was falling into the lake over two cascades.
The rocks on our side of the lake were smooth and flat almost like a freshly ironed towel. Surrounded by lush forest, this seemed to be a perfect spot to stop and take our time. Oumar suggested as much. It also looked like quite a few of the French people ahead of us shared the same idea. And not only that. In short order, almost all of them started undressing and soon they were in their swimsuits. Annette and I followed suit.
Oumar and his friend made themselves comfortable on those flat rocks. To kill his time more effectively, Oumar grabbed my camera and started fiddling with it. And while he was at it, Annette and I followed the rest of those people into the water. It didn’t mean outright swimming, though. I already indicated once that Annette couldn’t swim. Even if I suppose that most of the French guys could. Same as me, of course. But somehow, I reckon that nobody really trusted the lake fully. So what our dip really consisted of was a walk up and down the flat and slippery top of the lower rocky cascade, the one immediately above the lake itself, on which the churning water was pouring in curtains over the edge of the upper cascade. That looked harmless enough, so that Annette didn’t have to be afraid of anything serious even if she happened to slip and her feet gave way from beneath her. And yet at the same time, that cascading water would give you a full bath, no matter what. So this thing would certainly do. Besides, for some reason, it seemed to be infinitely more fun for anyone to linger around and right beneath the upper cascade, feeling the splash of falling water directly on our skins than a conventional swim in a relatively placid lake.
When we felt we’d had enough of that water massage, we got out and waited for a while in the sun until we got dry. All along, Oumar and his friend were as patient as those rocks beneath us, never giving out any sign of being in a hurry. It was entirely up to Annette and me as to when we’d get up and head back down to the car. And that made the whole stay even more pleasant.
The French guys stayed on when we left. Back down the same trail we’d come up, it was now time for the second station on our excursion in Banfora surroundings this afternoon.
Domes de Fabedougou, a natural rocky formation of all the strange shapes and forms, is hardly two kilometres away from Karfiguéla waterfalls. At the entrance to the site there is a small, shabby concrete shack where some guy was selling tickets, drinks to the thirsty and even paintings with local motives, probably by local artists. Right behind the shack there were two large, parallel pipelines and I assumed they were chiefly meant for irrigation of those sugar cane plantations down there around Banfora.
Vegetation here was much sparser than around Karfiguéla waterfalls, even if they were really close. Not nearly a botanist, I could only recognise it as distinctly African, having no idea which species what really belonged to. But for someone like me, rocks were of more interests here anyway.
And they were interesting indeed. Brown in colour, they were unlike anything I’d seen before. In shape even more so. They came in all conceivable forms and sizes, but the overall impression they gave out was as if a huge hand had once upon a time simply taken a myriad of different objects, in shape of domes, cones, skittles and so on, and in places first planted them neatly next to each other, and then in other places when it might have lost patience, simply jumbled them all on one heap. They were easy to clamber, not sharp on touch and every new corner opened a different view. Sometimes they were crammed tightly, and sometimes there would be little valleys among them. Oumar evidently knew the place. We weren’t exactly the first visitors he’d led there. So after a while on our own, he took us up to a spot on the rocks from where he knew we could have a nice view of the valley in what by now was an already advanced afternoon. Again he let us take all the time we wanted, never indicating he’d like us to hurry on.
And only when we really felt we had taken all the pictures we’d wanted and enjoyed the climbing and views like there was no tomorrow, we decided to return to Banfora.
