Slave Road Tour To Ouidah

Slave Road

Negro port and city of repentance, the city of Ouidah is known for its main role in the slave trade in the eighteenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries when nearly a million blacks were deported to the New World. Center of the slave trade, Ouidah is also a religious city where traditional religions and Catholicism coexist.

We offer you a unique tourist experience that will lead you to the discovery of the Slave Road to the gate of no return.

Arrive at the tourist office of Ouidah around 10 am, after a brief explanation on the fresco, the cap is put on the visit of the basilica and the temple of pythons. A detour through the auction place takes us on the slave route to the gate of no return. Recollection and departure for the island of paradise where lunch will be served. The tour of the island will be done by motorized boat and return to Cotonou.

The Slave Route is a trail situated in Ouidah (Benin) that covers the last 4 kilometers that more than one million people kidnapped in Africa to be enslaved had to take before boarding the ships that would take them to America.

It consists of six main stages: Plaza Chacha, where enslaved people who arrived were auctioned; the “Tree of Oblivion”, replanted in 1992, that commemorates the tree where men went around nine times and women seven so that, in accordance with the voodoo tradition, they would forget their origin; the “Zomai House”, where slaves waited for the arrival of the so-called slave ships; the “Memorial of Zoungbodji”, the mass grave where dead slaves were thrown; the “Tree of Return” that would allow their souls to return to their land of origin after their death.

The route ends where the ships used to arrive, today symbolized with the artistic work “The Door of No Return”. The different stages of the route are symbolized by artistic works strongly inspired in the voodoo cult.