18-Aug-2007 -- The story starts from 11N 1W.
This contribution is more of a visitor information than an actual documentation about an attempt to visit the Confluence. Although it is located in the vicinity of Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou, it has remained unvisited up to the day of writing. This fact certainly raises extra motivation to attempt a visit.
Actually, we had been passing by 12N 1W on 2 August (at Kombissiri we came as close as 30 km to the point), but we were with the bicycle and its location in the Nakambe forest would have meant to invest at least an extra day to reach the point. So we skipped that Confluence.
Three weeks later – on our last day in Burkina Faso, we planned to visit the Confluence with starting point Ouagadougou (60 km beeline from CP). In order to do the trip on a single day, we had to hire a car and drive 40 km on asphalt to Kombissiri, then continue on a dirt road for another 20 km to Gaongo. From there, it is another 20 km through unknown terrain. In order to find out more details we went to the Institut Géographique du Burkina. The institute is equipped with topographical maps in the scale of 1:200,000. 12N 1W is exactly in the south-east corner of the Ouagadougou map. A footpath is shown on that map that takes one from Gaongo further east. Its nearest approach to the Confluence is reached when the path misses the Confluence point 2 km in the North.
Our investigations resulted in the following: a car hire including driver would cost 50,000 CFA (76 €/104 US-$) per day for a 4x4 drive. A one day trip could be possible, depending on the progress on these last two kilometres. We finally decided not to attempt it due to sickness and time issues (our flight back to Europe was scheduled that night).