A chance meeting With Some Friends in Timbuktu
Whilst in Mali I had the pleasure meet up my good friends Chas & Julie from Rhodes at the Hotel la Colombe , Rue Askia Mohammed, Timbuktu, Mali. They had both taken a year out from their high powered jobs in Hotel Marketing to travel around the world stopping off at various ports of call before the “grew up”. The hotel was better than I had hoped for, it had friendly staff and a nice garden. The room was fine for the price, clean with an ensuite bathroom, air-con and a small balcony. There’s a swimming pool too to my surprise and the food was more than adequate. It had been a few years since I was last in Greece ad it was nice to catch up with them and get all the news and gossip from Rhodes. They like me like to travel and we spent all afternoon and most of the evening chatting about old times and swapping stories on our adventures overseas. They had come to Mali to see the Festival in The Desert in Timbuktu (as had I) but had travelled overland through Central Africa after landing in the Congo some weeks before. They worked in some schools on a volunteer programme teaching English to the kinds in Cameroon, Nigeria and Togo. They had lived in Paris for two years and both spoke fluent French As their gap year was coming to a close they planned to go back to the Ivory Coast for a couple of weeks to hook up with some other friends and from there fly to the UK and onto the Caribbean to tie the knot at their very own St Lucia wedding at the beautiful Inn On the Bay Hotel in Marigot Bay, St. Lucia