This last entry is getting a little overdue as we have now been back in the UK a few weeks. Just in case there is still some interest out there here is a little about our journey back which saw us travel up through Senegal before leaving Africa after 8 months.
I suspect that people will remember our departure, though not for the best of reasons. For our last weekend in the Gambia we organised a picnic with friends at our favourite beach spot – a sheltered bay which allows the children to paddle out in shallow, calm water for a good few hundred metres and also boasts some phenomenal rock pools. The only snag is how to get there - it is sheltered and almost deserted for a reason! You can either approach it by driving along the beach, though we always avoided out of that option as we were never organised enough to know what the tides were doing. The alternative was to try and pick the right off road path (sign posts definitely not included) that wound down to the beach. After the rains this path was easy enough to navigate and was beautifully decorated with wild mint plants. However, as the dry season progressed the “road” got increasingly sandy and the sand increasingly soft and deep. At the end of February we towed out a friend, though thought nothing of it as he was driving a Gambian taxi which is not the best off road car. However, for this last trip we managed to stall in the sand with a queue of cars behind us. We recovered to get ourselves through the sand, but left two cars behind us well and truly stuck in the sand. Their rescue was again relatively straightforward, but worse was to come. Our wonderful friend, Tamara, braved the picnic on her own with her three children. She made it all but the last 100m when her car started to sink into the sand. It took two hours to pull her out which was only possible thanks to some local farmers who knew all the tricks of the bush (and were happy to help their British brothers so called as one had been an underground train driver on the Jubilee line). Aubs didn’t see the funny side of this for the initial two hours of hard labour, but eventually seemed happy to let the farmers persuade him that this kind of experience made you African at heart. The day was then put right by finding an octopus, puffer fish, blue crab and some unexplained crustacean-like fish in a hole in the rock pools. We left via the beach route!
To alleviate the depression I feared was set in upon our departure we planned a two week holiday to ease our way back to Europe. Even so the goodbyes were difficult, especially for our Gambian friends (and especially Perinne and Alex who worked for us) whom we know it will be difficult to keep in touch with.
The holiday started with an argument about the all important issue of what time to leave (and therefore what time to get up). I managed to force our departure time back from 4 am to 6am, but Aubs would budge no further. The need for an early departure stemmed from the first stage of the journey entailing the crossing of the Gambia River at the main Banjul/Barra crossing point. A week prior to our departure the crossing was relying on a single ferry (instead of the usual three) which caused enormous queues with tales of folks waiting over 24hrs to cross the river. The wait is always worse for cars as there are fewer spaces, whereas the ferry’s capacity for foot passengers is truly something to behold. Luckily for our journey only one ferry was down which meant a relatively short wait and though it took a lot of skill for the MRC driver to just about squeeze the Landrover onto the back of the ferry. It was ABSOLUTELY the right decision to have organised an MRC driver as the “organised” chaos of “queuing” and boarding the ferry was something we were very pleased not to have to negotiate ourselves.
Next up was the Gambian-Senegalese border which appeared to be a crowd of people selling nuts and bananas around the few small buildings that constituted the border. After fighting your way through the banana sellers (of hoards of children if you give them your last 5 Dalasi (~12p)) to have your papers stamped in the Gambian immigration building you then drive a few metres and then fight your way through more sellers (though on the Senegalese side cashew nut sellers suddenly appear) to have your papers stamped this time by the Senegalese. Then you are on your way and it did seem as simple as that. We expected that the customs guards would make us unpack the entire back of the Landrover that was our luggage, but even there we were waved on (they must have been in a good mood that day). After that we didn’t come across a single police check point throughout out time in Senegal – they must have a plentiful supply of attaya (local tea).
Although I was prepared for a stressful first leg, the drive was actually enjoyable. The north bank of river Gambia appeared much more rural and the villages on the Senegalese side of the border were immediately more traditional with the tin roofs replaced by straw roofs for the clusters of round huts. We only drove for about 20mins north of the border to our first stop on the Sine Saloum Delta. Toubacouta, specifically by the waterside, was a breathtaking spot. The protected waterways of the Delta provide a beautifully green landscape with an amazing array of birdlife. We spent the next day taking pirogue rides through the Mangroves, being the only people it seemed for miles. Aubs was also able to indulge on some fishing off the end of the hotel’s pier. It really is a beautiful spot and there is so much more to see, wildlife wise, if you can take the longer boat trips out towards the ocean waters.
We were much more confident about the ease of the second leg of our journey and so had let the MRC driver go. Unfortunately, this did not turn out to be the case. We were expecting bad roads, but the size of the pot holes on the road to Kaolack were really something to behold. The upside was the off-road driving that was necessitated and wound through lots of picturesque local villages. I was certainly struck by how dry the landscape was showing the impact the river Gambia has on its country’s name sake.
Our driver, hired through the hotel, seemed to know the good tracks and saw us safely to a popular café run by an old French couple in the middle of Kaolack. However, when we had finished lunch and stretched our legs and were just about to step outside to find the car, the café’s owner informed me that our driver wasn’t there. Just before the end of our lunch a lorry had sped down the road and knocked the car’s side mirror off. The lorry hadn’t stopped so our driver had commandeered a motorcycle and given chase. He had tracked the driver down and was now starting the police report procedure. This took 3 hrs in the sweltering sun (as the temperature was suddenly about 10 degrees hotter than on the Gambian coast) during which time our driver decided he didn’t need to tell us anything of what had happened and his progress. This was coupled with the frequent taking of the car containing all our baggage without any warning on various excursions to the police station or the garage. The silver lining was that in the end, with his car fixed up, the driver deposited us at a little auberge on the outskirts Saly, the main resort town on the Petite Cote, run by Christian, a very accommodating and well organised Swiss man.
If you ever end up in Saly we can highly, highly recommend “Le petit Jura”, a beautiful little auberge with only 6-7 rooms just set back from the quieter part of the beach. Christian arranged our life for us while we were there accommodating any request (except early meals for the children as in Senegal, as in France, nowhere opens for dinner before 7.30pm and that is an early stretch) in a truly tranquil atmosphere. We were not wowed by Saly: we had seen nicer beaches in the Gambia, though we loved the way we shared the beach with the locals at the weekend and in the evenings which we had rarely seen in the Gambia. Saly also afforded a trip to a local Safari park with lots of imported big African animals, such as giraffes and rhinos, which the girls were thrilled to see. I was slightly less thrilled at the monkey who barred its teeth and me and ran off with my pizza. After a few days relaxation we then headed up to Dakar for a bit of a culture shock.
Dakar is a huge sprawling African city boasting probably twice as many people as there are to be found in the whole of the Gambia. It therefore meant a slightly more frantic pace of life compared to what we were used to. The first thing you notice is the traffic and the car speeds. There are lots more people going a lot faster than in the Gambia, though the roads and certainly the states of the cars are not much better. I also felt that poverty was sharply accentuated especially in some of the districts on the outskirts where rubbish is piled by the roads with sewage spilling over it. This was in stark contrast to one of the nicer residential suburbs of Dakar which we stayed in – very peaceful with only the usual sand and dust to contend with when you stepped outside. I fear the highlight of the Dakar stay for the girls was the fact that our lovely little hotel had a wide screen TV in the reception and that the staff loved to indulge them with episodes of Peppa Pig and Teletubbies while we waited for the chef to arrive in the evening. After 8 months without TV the girls were completely gobsmacked at seeing anything in widescreen – no matter what or what the language (which certainly wasn’t English). The local patisserie we found probably ran a close second, but it would too long to describe our various excitements over the food and drink in Senegal (one thing to thank the French for).
From Dakar we did a day trip out to Lac Rose which isn’t really that pink, but does produce an awful lot of salt. Unfortunately, Elise had scratched Amelie that morning, so Amelie wouldn’t stay in the water to enjoy the salt water floating experience due to a nasty stinging sensation. Lac Rose stands in front of some beautiful sand dunes and we managed to fulfil one of Elise’s wishes of the last 12 months to ride a horse. The lack of health and safety regulations allowed a lovely ride for a 3 year old over the dunes to meet the Atlantic ocean on the beach behind. Overall we thought it was definitely worth the long journey in a battered taxi, though we could have done without the driver using our petrol money to complete his errands leaving us for at least 30 mins outside the Senegalese parachute regiment barracks while he went off who knows where.
Although we had been told that the Senegalese pride themselves on being able to sell anything and everything to you, we hadn’t found the “bumsters” to be much of a problem (must have been hardened over 8 months in the Gambia). However, a brief altercation with them at Lac Rose meant we decided against the tourist destination of Ile Goree and instead headed to the smaller Ile N’Gor. This is a five minute pirogue ride from a fishing port near the airport. The more secluded beach on the island was perfect: warm shallow water and rock pools and NO crowds - great place for the girls to say goodbye to the tropics.
On April 6th we got up ridiculously early again (3.30am is definitely ridiculous) and headed to the airport to finally leave the African continent. Unfortunately, all European flights leave Dakar between midnight and 6am. Fortunately, we had managed to get a 6am flight which seemed one of the better options. My overall feeling at leaving Africa was one of sadness. I think the wrench comes from my interactions with people over our time there. Despite the difficult nature of day to day living (for the locals as opposed to ex-pats) my interactions were also filled with such warmth that seemed to add a real vibrancy to life. If there was ever a place to work out what is important in life I think Africa is certainly a place to give some ideas.
We didn’t quite stop there. The girls were then treated to a few days in Paris to see the Mona Lisa and the Eiffel Tower and to eat lots and lots of cakes – but a description of all that indulgence would just take too long!
