Senegal to Morocco

We had some time before our flight out of Dakar but I was done. We had lunch at the hotel and ran out the clock while soaking up their sweet sweet internets.

Léopold Sédar Senghor was the first president of Senegal and he seems to still be highly regarded because there are lots of things named after him around here, including the airport.

Dakar sported lots of these little coffee wagon things that looked like they were made out of oil barrels.

On urban taxi rides I like to try to decipher the graffiti.

Our taxi driver.

I thought it was cool that the giant African Renaissance Monument we visited a few days ago was visible from the airport departure waiting area.

We landed in Casablanca, Morocco with no problems. I've never been so happy to see a McDonald's in my life.

The Sheraton Casablanca Hotel & Towers was pretty darn cool inside and out I'd say.

There was a bird cage with birds inside that looked like the friggin' Taj Mahal. Some birds get all the luck.

We popped over to the nearby Restaurant des Fleurs for a late bite to eat. It had sort of an Arabian Denny's interior style going on.

I'm a little bit embarrassed that I didn't realize "Casablanca" means "white house" in Spanish until I read it in my guidebook. It rolls so nicely off the tongue I didn't think it meant anything.

I went straight for the legit stuff and ordered a pastilla. What a treat it was. It's sweet on the top with powdered sugar, cinnamon, and almonds, then on the inside it's savory with a chicken filling. It's all wrapped up in a nice multi-layered flaky sort of crust. It was amazing.

What an exciting new adventure in a new part of Africa!

A Hippo's Nose

We got an early start in Janjanbureh for what has apparently been our goal this whole time: seeing dem hippos. We got to the dock and our guy hadn't arrived yet so we wandered a bit. This was our first time seeing the town in the daylight, mind you.

Boatman picked us up and we headed towards Basse to do some hippopotamus watching. I don't know how far we actually made it to Basse but that's what was marked as Hippotown on the map. After the day I've been through they better have taught these damn hippos to square dance.

The boat was pretty awesome. It was like someone just welded together a bunch of pieces of metal they found lying around.

The little awning thing about our heads looked to be constructed out of cut up rice sacks.

We saw several hippos's heads poking out of the water. It was funny because we could see their wakes and their bubbles even when they were trying to hide underwater. We would zoom over to one and then cut off the engine, and then the hippo would poke its head up to see where we went. They would whip their ears around and make loud, deep grunts and blow water. It was pretty cool.

Our last action as official Gambia tourists was a visit to the Wassu Stone Circles. I'm not really sure what they are because when I was in the little one room museum with yet another "guide" I took a picture of a sign and the "guide" told me that pictures were an extra dollar. So Evan and I both stormed out to see the damn stones with our "guide" chasing after us. I was pretty proud of us at that moment. With every bogus guide wanting a tip, and every taxi scam weighing on his soul, I can feel Optimistic Evan leaning toward the dark side. If he could be turned, he would become a powerful ally. He will join us or die.

Evan was kind enough to loan me this long sleeve hoodie shirt thing which pretty much saved my life because I was getting owned by sunburn.

"The stone man", as Mustapha called the guide, had a lot of interesting theories about the stones.

The stone man gave us this sheet about his theories. It's sort of like if Glenn Beck wrote the Da Vinci Code. I mean, "Spiderman" has nine letters and this ancient stone has nine holes in it. Coincidence? I think not. He also claims to be pictured on the 10 dalasi note. Sounds legit.

So as I mentioned since we were leaving from a different city to return to Dakar, the trip was completely different.

Every single time we rent a taxi there's some unspoken agreement that they won't pick up anyone else along the way. Well now we've upgraded to a van, which means about 15 more people could physically squish in here. People on the street can see this and relentlessly try to hail our car to no avail. Even the police and military have asked us for a ride but are declined. I'm kind of surprised how well they take it. I think the driver just blames it on us which I am fine with.

On the way back across the river we had our private boat, again which could fit a ton more people. We passed one that was packed full of humanity and the driver was having trouble getting it started. Many of them were just staring blankly at us. I wonder what they are thinking.

Mustapha did his taxi bargaining magic but he decided the price was too high to Dakar, so he had us travel by these Peugeot station wagon taxis called a "sept place". I believe the way this works is everyone just sits and waits until the driver has 7 passengers who want to go to similar places. Mustapha did quite a bit of battling for us, making sure our bags were safe in the trunk, and not tied on top. There was also a lot of arguing about who would sit where. I, surely the largest dude in the car, drew short straw and had to sit in the middle of the middle row. Evan drew an even shorter straw and had to sit in the back row next to a fat lady. I won't even comment on my comfort level. When I got out of the car both of my feet were asleep.

We drove and we drove and we drove. When we stopped in a fairly urban area I was like, thank the stars! Unfortunately we were not at our destination, and we were stopping for repairs.

I do not know what the deal was but I do know that a dude crawled under our car with a blow torch. It was so hard to get out of the car that two passengers stayed inside... while the car full of flammable liquid was being burned from beneath with a blow torch. I stood an explosion or two distance away until they were finished.

It was another bumpy day long journey but we made it all the way back to Dakar, Senegal.

The Long Road to Gambia

Our taxi man buddy Cheikhou Ndiaye was waiting to drive us to Gambia as agreed upon. Well we got to the edge of town and he wanted us to pay the full fare upfront. Shockingly we let that happen.

Well we continued driving a bit further and then stopped again. Our guy got out of the car and a new guy got in, with some mumbling from Cheikhou about him being his “friend”. Great. Let’s all be friends.

The drive was pretty cool. We saw lots of life happening, I’ll tell you that. One of the things we liked about Cheikhou was he could speak a little English. New guy=no English, which meant we didn’t get a lot of background info on what we were seeing. Oh well, it was cool.

One advantage of being in the car was I was much more comfortable with taking a lot of pictures of everyday life.

Renting a taxi cross country was the king's way to travel around here. Many people rode these colorful bus things around. They really pack them in, then a few more will hang off the back.

Kids would just walk around with these plastic buckets and beg money from cars whenever traffic slowed enough for them to approach.

The road was really brutal. We were in the car like 7 hours, and I'd say less than an hour of the trip was on properly paved roads. We were constantly dodging potholes and taking detours. The guy refused to turn the vents on in the car or anything. Finally I turned them on and he mumbled something. When we got back in the car after a stop for gas, the air was turned back off. Message received. It really got interesting when the dust started to get kicked up. The driver would roll up the window just long enough for the dust to dissipate then back down they went.

When we drove through towns traffic came to a grind, but at least there was a lot of people watching to be done.

When we reached the Gambia border in the little town of Karang our silent driver handed us our baggage and drove off, leaving us with the small crowd of hustlers that had already gathered. It’s a wonder my wallet hasn’t been stolen yet. If you wanted to, you could just run from Senegal into Gambia. I don’t think I saw any signage letting you know you were crossing a border. We saw a guy waving at us from what turned out to be Senegal immigration, but we easily could have just kept walking if we hadn’t seen each other. Leaving Senegal involved a guy writing our passport information into a guestbook looking binder thing. When he asked me my occupation I said bookseller, and he thought I was saying boxer, which I thought was pretty hilarious. He had to mime a couple shadow boxing moves before I could even tell he had things wrong.

Entering Gambia involved another official scribbling into a book. This office was notable because right smack dab in the center of the small building was like fenced in and resembled a holding cell. There were two rough looking dudes in there in the process of being held. Bummer.

The Gambia. Annoyingly the T in The Gambia is always supposed to be capitalized, grammar be dammed. I'm not going to do that here because I don't want to, but it's a Thing. Contrary to Frenchie Senegal, Gambia is a former British colony so sweet sweet English flows like honey. Although when you've heard "give me some money!" about 300 times you sometimes wish for the days when there was a language barrier. The River Gambia goes pretty deep into the continent, and Gambia was a prominent site in the slave trade as a result. In the miniseries Roots the main character Kunta Kinte is captured in Gambia. It is the smallest country on the African continent, and also sort of rhymes with "wham bam thank you Mambia".

We had to deal with yet another taxi man on the Gambia side, and I encountered another amusing little hustle. A really polite boy came to the window and asked if his brother could ride with us. He looked fine so we said ok. When he tried to get in the driver said he had to pay, and then they both looked at me as if I was going to be paying more for the privilege of riding with this stranger. Nope. I have to assume that this was a hustle to increase our cab fare.

When we reached the town of Barra we had to take a ferry to cross the river. Gambia pretty much is a river, and so doing any substantial traveling in the country involves a boat eventually. The ferry people were super nice, and let us in the gate while most people had to wait for the ferry outside. We chatted with several of the workers, most notable being Mustapha Fatty. He really went out of his way to help us, even arranging a cheap cab with his friend for us on the other side of the river.

Us with Sheikh the port security guy. They invariably ask if we're married and often express shock when we say no. One also expressed an uncomfortable level of admiration for Evan's shoes.

Watching the loading process was entertainment in itself.

One moment I was wondering how common the last name "Fatty" is around here, and the next I saw it painted on the side of fishing boat.

There were lots of ladies selling refreshments on the journey. Evan bought a coconut to drink.

The money here can be really gross. Someone handed me this thing and it was like being handed a used handkerchief.

We made it to the Kombo Beach Hotel and were pretty surprised to see that 95% of the guests were older European people.

The clientele combined with the buffet and horrid entertainment brought to mind a cruise ship.

It's funny how Africa can tire you out without you really having done anything.