Visit the Unique Village of Ganvie in Benin

Built on the Lake Nokoue, Ganvie is a unique village which is about an hour north to Cotonou, the capital and the largest city of Benin. Ganvie is home to about 20,000 people and there is a common belief about it that Tofinu people got settled here about 400 years ago. They built the lake village in order to escape the slavers coming from the Fon tribe and were also not allowed to fight for their traditional reasons in the water. That made it safe for the Tofinos to build their homes safely on the water.

The city is also known as Africa’s Venice due to the similarities with Venice in building their homes on the water. You can have an affordable cheap flights to Cotonou in advance as a first step towards getting there. What attracts the visitors to Ganvie is that the entire city is not located near any land, in fact, it’s built in a lagoon’s middle entirely on stilts including its shops, houses and restaurants which are built on the wooden stilts at a several feet height from the water. You can watch them all day long while the local people go to school, shop and trade all on the boats.

It’s a good idea to plan your trip in the morning starting as from early afternoon, it starts getting humid and hot out in on the lagoon. It’s as well a good idea to ask the people first before taking any pictures of them as they may consider it an offence if you intrude into their privacy. For their livings, most of the local people rely on tourism and fishing. Underwater fences are made from bamboos and nets by the fisherman to trap as well as breed fish. To your surprise, there also exist a couple of restaurants where you can take a break and eat some of the delicious freshwater rice and fish. You may also find a few shops scattered here and there trading trinkets with tourists.

While your visit to the place, most of your time will be spent relaxing while floating around, capturing memories as nice photographs and watching the locals spending their day. If you are wondering how can I get to Ganvie then there is nothing to worry about as its’ not that difficult to get there. You can take a taxi to the lagoon’s western side in Abomey-Calavi towards the pirogue [canoe] moorings. You can choose the motorized-boat as well which takes about one and a half hour (round trip) from the official counter. The pirogue however takes a bit longer about an hour more but is comparatively more serene and causes less interference with the sound if you are capturing your memories in form of videos.

You may find some very basic hotels here and there in Ganvie but normally the tourists choose for a day-trip from Cotonou where they stay after returning.