People started surfacing just before eight and we breakfasted and cleaned up the site at a leisurely pace.
Then we headed into Mopti for the fourth time, where things had changed dramatically. Soldiers armed with AK-47s blocked the road - Wilbur Smith style, Bob declared. Kel waited half an hour at the gendarmerie, getting through only to be told that we can’t go across the border and we can't have our visa photos back!
We all scattered once more to shop. I went fabric shopping with Adri; it took me half an hour to choose and buy material for a pair of shorts and get a price to have them sewn and the man pedalling an old Singer sewing machine sewed them in five minutes.
Back to the truck with my new apparel, and all aboard for the Malian city of Bamako to the southwest. Multiple police checks and no diesel without a permit. We shared the road with many army vehicles, loaded with rocket launchers heading towards Mopti and empty heading in our direction. Kel stopped a couple of times to talk to gendarmes but we can't get a border permit, so Bamako it is. Only hoping the Burkina Faso-Cote D'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) border remains open.
Camped just off the road and watched a seemingly endless stream of armoured cars and trucks laden with ammunition heading towards the trouble zone. Birds and bats and the loud rumbling of wheels made camp a noisy place.
From the BBC World Service radio news we learned that the war was escalating (reports coming only from the Mali Side with denials from Burkino Faso), with a death toll now of 20. The airport at Burkina Faso's wonderfully named capital, Ouagadougou, is closed to all traffic. It's way too close for comfort and I realised that going by my itinerary, Mum and Dad will think I am well clear of this area.
Sat up late writing this and then reliving our Christmas concert, laughing about different parts of the days. "And then there was", people kept saying. Us late owls sat around the fire laughing, bats overhead and vehicles still rumbling along the road. Pigged out on leftover pineapple till all hours.
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