Cotonou

Cotonou runs on two hundred fifty thousand yellow-shirted zemidjan moto-taxis and one market the size of a district: Dantokpa, twenty hectares where everything in Benin eventually changes hands. But the city's wonder floats north on Lake Nokoué — Ganvié, where the Tofinu people built a town on stilts four centuries ago because the slave raiders' code forbade fighting on water: the lake was sanctuary, and the refuge became a way of life that thirty thousand people still live, commuting by pirogue.

The sensible traveller gives Dantokpa a morning and their full attention; visits the red-and-white striped cathedral and the artisan center for bronze; takes the pirogue through Ganvié's watery streets with a local boatman, buying from the floating market rather than photographing it like an exhibit; and makes the hour's pilgrimage to Ouidah, where the Door of No Return faces the ocean and the python temple faces the basilica — Benin's history, sacred and terrible, kept honestly in one town.

The Guide's honesty: the zems are the city's bloodstream and your helmet is your own business — short rides or a car —; Dantokpa deserves the same pocket-discipline as any great market; Vodun Day in January is the real festival — Ouidah fills with ceremony and the Guide recommends planning around it, respectfully; the e-visa is mercifully simple; and Ganvié's economy is tourism now too — pay the boatman well and buy something. Sanctuaries keep their dignity when visitors carry theirs.