- Well, hello, and welcome to the beautiful city
of Dakar here in Senegal in West Africa.
This is pretty much as far west
as you can get here in Africa, actually,
which means that to get anywhere else,
we've sort of got to head inland,
and that's what we're doing today.
I'm taking a flight today
to the country that has fascinated me
for the absolute longest time.
It's a mysterious landlocked country
in West Africa called Burkina Faso.
And they've got the coolest capital city name in the world,
Ouagadougou, and that's exactly where we're heading today,
on their national airline called Air Burkina.
So yeah, let's head across to the airport
and take a flight to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
Merci.
- All right, so on the long run out to Dakar Airport now
from the hotel in downtown Dakar.
It's about an hour in traffic to the airport from downtown.
It's a very, very long way down this motorway.
And obviously, traffic dependence as well,
which is a bit annoying.
They are getting a train line out here,
I've heard, they're doing an express train line
out to the airport from downtown Dakar,
which would be nice when they do that,
because that'll mean you can skip all the traffic,
but in the meantime, it's taxi all the way
as we head down to Dakar Airport.
Now I do have to be honest,
I am probably feeling a little bit more nervous
about this trip to Burkina Faso
than anywhere else I've ever been before.
As much as Ouagadougou sounds like a party capital
named after the famous eighties song,
I don't think it's quite as much like a party
as the name suggests, the website seemed
to have been updated recently,
and include loads of information about risk
of being kidnapped and risk of attacks and things like that.
And terrorist bombings and all sorts of stuff
going on there, which I'm a little bit nervous
about because I,
I didn't think it would be like that, if I'm honest,
and yeah, it doesn't look good.
And also, yeah, they had a slight issue
with the military coup that happened a couple of months ago
which seems to be stable now, apparently,
and the president's been overthrown and the military
are in charge, but I think the capital itself,
from what I've heard, isn't too bad, but we will see.
Doesn't stop me being incredibly nervous for this.
I have only got sort of one night there before I move on,
because that's sort of as much as I'm gonna be doing
on this one, but it still makes me a little bit nervous
of what it's gonna be like when I get to the other end.
Merci beaucoup, Monsieur. - Okay, thank you.
- [Noel] Thank you, have a good day, bye bye.
Merci.
- Very good.
- Air Burkina? - [Noel] Oui.
Merci.
- [Airport Worker] Checkin is 28, 29.
- [Noel] Ah, merci beaucoup.
Merci.
Bonjour.
- Bonjour.
- [Noel] Un café noir, s'il vous plaît?
- Oui.
There.
- Merci beaucoup.
All right, there, through security, got me coffee.
Much needed here this time in the morning.
I don't know what sort of aircraft we're on today.
Air Burkina operate Embraer 175s,
but they don't appear on flight radar.
And I don't know what's coming in.
It's about a two hour flight,
I think three hours or so across to Burkina Faso.
With Air Burkina, who sort of fly all around
this part of the world, really.
So it's gonna be interesting to see what it's like
on board, the airline of this country that is so mysterious.
I'm really looking forward to it,
although I'm very, like I said earlier,
I'm very nervous given the events
that's going on in Burkina at the moment,
but seems relatively normal so far, I have to say,
passengers all checking in as normal for the flight,
which seems, there's no red flags or anything,
certainly in terms of the flight.
So yeah, fingers crossed.
See what happens when we get there.
And I'm just gonna sit here and wait
and see what sort of plane it is
that we get when it comes in.
It's gonna be an exciting day, that is for sure.
All right, so I just found out that the plane
that I'm on, the seat that I'm in apparently
is an aisle seat,
which is not good from the prospect
of getting a decent view out the window.
However,
that doesn't reflect the seat map
on the plane that was booked on, I don't think.
It's a D, 8D is my seat.
So I'll try and get a window seat when we get on board.
But I'm curious as to what we're gonna get.
So whether we do end up on a Embraer 175
or whether we get something a little bit more exotic,
but even if we don't, I mean,
Air Burkina is pretty exotic anyway, isn't it, right?
So we'll see.
We'll see when the plane turns up any minute now, hopefully.
All right, so the plane is here,
and it seems it's an Embraer 175,
and Air Burkina's livery, so it should be pretty cool.
I'm not quite sure why she said D was an aisle seat,
'cause on my seat map it reckons it's a window,
but we'll see if we make it on board.
Just crossed, we're off to Ouagadougou.
- Bonjour.
- [Noel] Merci, bon.
Merci.
- [Hostess] Bonjour, Monsieur.
- All right, so on board, then, the Air Burkina Embraer 175
to Ouagadougou, and I got a window, yes!
My flight today then took us Southeast
from Dakar to cross Senegal, Gambia, and Senegal again
before flying across Guinea Bissau and Guinea.
From there, we skirted around the south of Mali,
avoiding their airspace, flying over Ivory Coast
and into Burkina Faso, where we landed at Ouagadougou
with a flight time of two hours and 34 minutes,
cruising at 33,000 feet.
All right, then, so we're airborne from Dakar
on board the Air Burkina Embraer 175, this is very cool.
Such a cool plane, I never,
No seatmate either, which is nice.
I can move about a little bit.
It's in quite a good nick actually, inside.
I do keep getting rained on by,
and the water drops are above.
But other than that, and the little tropical rain shower,
what we have isn't too bad.
Leg room's not too bad, really.
Standard Embraer two, two seating here.
Duty free magazine.
We'll go through that in a little while, but yeah,
so far so good.
All right, so I got me lunch service
on the Air Burkina flight over to Burkina Faso,
that's what it looks like, sort of ham and rice.
Bread aside.
Bit of cake, and a cob. Give it a go.
That's pretty good, it's only a two hour flight today,
so nice to get meal service on board.
That's quite nice.
Where are we at the minute?
We're just heading over the Southern tip
of, I don't know where, Senegal at the moment.
About to head into Guinea,
so we can fly around Mali, I presume.
Because we're not allowed to fly over Mali
because there's a bit of a war going on there.
So we're sort of skirting around the edge,
while I eat me nice salad.
Very good.
"Gde moye moloko", that means "where is my milk" in Russian.
And yeah, it's a question
that I wouldn't have been able to ask
were it not for this week's video sponsor, Babbel.
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The thing I love about it the most
is that I can download the lessons to learn them offline.
So when I'm on a plane
and I've forgotten to pick up any few words of the language
I want to go and learn,
which always ends up happening to me somehow,
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If you use my link down in the description,
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"mon aeroglisseur est plein d'anguilles".
Back to the video.
So, as I mentioned earlier, I'm little bit worried
about arriving into Burkina Faso,
not only just because everything I've read online
says it's too dangerous for Westerners to visit
at the moment, with increased risk of kidnapping
and all sorts of nasty stuff if you read it online,
although I have seen quite a few people
have been recently,
obviously since the military took power
back at the beginning of the year,
and of course all of this assumes
that I'm actually gonna get into Burkina Faso
in the first place, because like many countries,
Burkina Faso, you need a visa to enter it.
And that is a visa that I do not have.
Because you can only get that from the Burkina Faso embassy
of which there isn't one in the UK.
So yeah, I don't have a visa.
I have heard online on the grapevine
that you can get a visa on arrival
into Burkina by paying them a couple hundred quid,
and they should give you a visa on arrival.
But the last I heard about that
was before, obviously, the military took power.
So who knows whether that is still a thing,
whether you can still do that.
I don't know, so we'll find out when we get down
to Ouagadougou whether I can actually enter the country,
which will be the first hurdle, really,
before we even consider the safety outside
of the airports, we might not even get that far,
so we'll have to have a look when we land,
in about an hour's time.
It's time for the Noel Philips Loo Review.
All right, then, time for the Ouagadougou Loo Review,
on board the Air Burkina Embraer 175.
Just one bathroom down there at the back of the plane.
And we've got a, obviously a sink.
No smoking sign over the rest of it,
bit of toilet paper on the floor,
sign saying don't put bottles down the toilet.
It's a little bit worn, a little bit used.
Relatively clean though, it's quite nice.
Yeah, I'm quite impressed with that.
So far enjoying the flight,
the crew have been quite nice, actually, so far.
There's two female cabin crew onboard the flight.
They're both quite friendly,
which has been quite nice.
Meal service was quite good as well.
I'm just really sort of nervous about my arrival
down into Ouagadougou, what it's gonna be like,
whether I can even get into the country,
whether the visa on arrival thing is still working.
And if I do, how safe it's gonna be
once I actually get out of the airport.
So fingers crossed, we'll find out
in around about an hour's time when we land
down into Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
That was the Noel Philips Loo Review.
All right, they've started our descent
down into Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
Eek, here we go.
- [Noel] Merci beaucoup, au revoir.
- [Hostess] Merci à vous, Monsieur, à bientôt, au revoir.
- [Noel] Merci.
Merci beaucoup.
Ah, ah, ah, ah.
Ah, microphone. - Huh?
- [Noel] Microphone. - Microphone.
- [Noel] Oui.
- Thank you. - [Noel] All right, merci.
Bravia Hotel? - Bravia, of course.
- [Noel] Oui.
All right, merci.
Yay, we made it to Ouagadou, dou, dou,
push pineapple shake a tree, yay, we made it to Ouagadougou,
Burkina Faso, in me hotel.
The Bravia Hotel, great view out over Burkina Faso,
over Ouagadougou, outside my window.
Cool, cool, cool, how cool is this, finally made it.
I've been wanting to come to Ouagadougou
for pretty much as long as I can remember,
when I figured out it had the coolest city name
in the world, and finally I've made it.
And I have to say, based on my experience so far,
it seems like a pretty decent flipping place.
Everyone's so lovely,
even at the airport, all the staff at the airport
were so friendly.
Got my visa sorted in, like, less than 10 minutes,
for them to just issue a visa and give me my passport back,
that was good.
And then quick taxi over here
to the Bravia hotel, about a sort of five minute ride
from the airport here in Ouaga, and yeah,
I'm here now for the night, really pleased with our flight.
I really enjoyed Air Burkina.
They were pretty good, on the Embraer 175,
really enjoyed that, actually.
The cabin crew were delightful.
The service was pretty decent.
The aircraft was quite nice as well.
I can't really find anything to fault them with.
It was such a really nice, pleasant flight.
And the fact that they've brought me here to Burkina Faso
is just unreal, and actually I quite feel quite cool
to actually be here.
Finally, finally, bucket list item ticked
off to come to Burkina Faso.
Well, let me know what you thought to Air Burkina
down in those comments,
and yeah, I'd love to hear what you think
about them as well.
And I'm sort of here now just for the night, actually,
and then tomorrow taking on another flight
somewhere in Africa.
And if you think Burkina Faso is good,
then wait till you see some of the other places
that we've got coming up on this trip.
Make sure you hit that subscribe button, of course,
and don't forget, patrons get early access
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and all the ones I've done and all the full flight details
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You can view all of that if you become a patron.
So thank you so much to my patrons
for making these videos rather possible.
I'm off to get a beer from the minibar,
there's an actual working minibar.
First time I've seen one of those in, well,
when did COVID start, 2020?
In about two years.
First time I've seen an actual loaded minibar
in about two years.
So I should be going for that a little bit later on,
but thank you, in the meantime, so much for watching.
Take care, and I'll see you on the next one.
Bye for now.