passenger

Dakar traffic

Waiting for lunch

4 january. st. louis to thies.

After 10 days at Zebrabar, it’s time to move on. Time to return to Africa. Also, having spent the last 5 weeks travelling with Mike and Julia, we feel it’s time to head off on our own again for a bit. We say goodbye to them and to Jean and Anne-Marie, Baz and Craig and Werner. We know we’ll see them again at some stage, so it’s not really goodbye but “later”. We start Tshukudu up. He’s a bit smokey after 10 days rest.

We’ve got to head down to Dakar for our visa for Mali. It’s not really a trip we want to make after all we’ve heard about Dakar, from Europeans and Senegalese alike. But heh ho. It’s off to the south we go. First stop - St. Louis. Empty case of Gazelle exchanged for a full case of Flag. And a good exchange it is too. Flag’s a good beer. It’s a day of firsts for us. Little firsts. On the road south, we see our first vultures (busy eating some roadkill), our first Baobabs and our first bunches of coconuts. Lovely.

We find a campsite just south of Thies on the road to Dakar - Auberge Gilbert - which comes complete with swimming pool and a nice lounge/restaurant area.

Overlander info:

Auberge Glibert is just after Thies on the right on the way towards Dakar. It’s signposted from 13 km away. It’s run by Gilbert and his wife Lena. It is just off the railway line however. 3,000 CFA per person. GPS : N 14°47.059 W016°57.758. We didn’t get much sleep, as there seemed to be a lot of night time activity from the bungalow clientele; we were under the impression people weren’t there to spend the night, but only a few hours...

5 january. thies to les mamelles, dakar

The train woke us early, blarring it’s way past the outside wall of the auberge. Great. We’re the first up as the rest of the place is silent. By 9, when we’re ready to leave, we have to get Lena out of bed to settle up. Hey, it’s a stop before Dakar. And getting to Yoff, our target for the day takes us a good 3 hours, even if it’s only 60 km away. The road becomes busier and busier as we get closer to Dakar. From Rufisque onwards, it’s dead slow. We have plenty of time to watch the world go by. And the world has plenty of time to watch us back. We buy some clementines, tomatoes, popcorn and the daily sports paper to keep us going; but pass on the watermelon, tissues, car chargers, steering wheel covers, q-tips and soap. Vultures sit on the street lights or coast lazily overhead in case one of the many goats on the side of the road decides to keel over from boredom...

We eventually find the campement we’d been looking for as suggested in the Lonely Planet. Campement le Poulagou. How the hell did they find it? And why bother? Sitting in the Landy deciding what to do, one of the window huggers tells us of a camp site in Les Mamelles, the posh suburb on the west coast of the peninsula on the way into Dakar. We’ve not heard of their being one, but head off to have a look anyway. In quick succession we get twice pulled over by the Police, but our latest ploy of pretending to only speak English and for Mark to smile and speak quickly, monopolising the “conversation”, never really giving the Policeman time to ask for anything (papers, cadeaux, etc.) seems to work. We get waved on.

We never manage to find the Auberge we were looking for (they’ve moved and gone on holiday we gather), but end up at the Hotel Les Mamelles. Nice, clean, cool and only 15 minutes away from the Mali embassy, our goal for tomorrow.

Overlander info:

Hotel Les Mamelles is signposted from the Corniche road in Les Mamelles. 15,000 CFA for a double is 3,000 CFA more than the Campement le Poulagou but well worth the extra! Patrice, the owner is a friendly guy and mentions he’s hoping to buy land and set up a campsite nearby for next year (2007). By the way, he had a Land Rover dealership for many years and is passionate about Land Rover. He also said he still had loads of spare parts in case you need them !

GPS : N 14°43.807 W017°30.087.