Almost a weekend away for our anniversary...

So we decided a while back that we would go away to a town further down the coast called Grand Popo to celebrate our anniversary. Tommy had already visited there with the High School students for their retreat and Sarah's mum is around to babysit with the boys.

We booked the hotel and booked a rental car for the weekend. The fun and games started when we turned up to pick up the rental car. They didn't have the model of car we had booked so began by suggesting that we should pay twice as much to get the next car up. After discussing that we had already booked and payed for the car we had reserved they agreed to upgrade us to the next model. However, the next model wasn't actually there but at a different office in the city so it would take 1/2 an hour for them to drive it over. So far we had been there for half an hour and felt like it was going pretty well.

We sat down to wait for the car to come. After half an hour a peugeot 406 drove into the carpark but the people in it were just sitting there so we continued to wait. Half an hour later the two men got out of the 406 and walked in to the office and it turned out this was our car. They then told us the car was here and so was our driver...

...our driver? The booking had not mentioned a driver and we were not keen on having a driver take us to the hotel and then take us on to a restaurant and drive around randomly exploring the area, as we had planned. Also we were concerned that he would need somewhere to sleep and food to eat for the three days we had hired the car. We asked for the car without the driver but they insisted that we had to have the driver - they did offer that we could have him free of charge (but the thought of him sleeping in the car at the hotel was not too appealing!)

Since we couldn't get the car without the driver and didn't feel like we could have the weekend we had planned with the driver in tow we decided to cancel our weekend away. It then took us another 45 minutes to explain why we were cancelling and get a confirmation from the Paris office of EuropCar that we would get a refund. All in all we spent two and half hours not renting a car and feel like we have had a true West African experience now. I think it will be a talking point for us on our future anniversaries and we will laugh about it some day soon I'm sure...

Tommy.