Author: Elizabeth

And for our last official stop of the tour — how did 10 days go by so fast? — a game reserve at Bandia.  It’s a very large park managed by the Senegalese government, containing local birds and animals for sure, but they have also brought in animals like zebras and giraffes that are not native to West Africa at all, but are animals tourists apparently want to see when travelling in Africa. They do very well here, they just are not native to the area. Couldn’t quite decide how I felt about that!

To wind up the blog for this trip, a couple of pictures of the happy tourists.  Don’t we look relaxed ?  The second pic includes our driver Waly on the left, and tour guide Abou on the right. We had a great trip with them, and would encourage anyone interested in going to Senegal to talk to us about this tour.  But for now, off to pack for the homeward voyage.  Thanks for following along as we have traveled — I have appreciated the comments!

We have been out seeing wildlife but now the wildlife is coming to see us. We were greeted outside our hotel room this morning by an African Red-billed Hornbill — Zazu in The Lion King, by the way — then a hundred yards further on by a monkey.

Our guide warned us The Gambia, for some reason, is incredibly bureaucratic, with rules and regulations around everything. That turned out to be true. We probably drove a grand total of 120 km within the country, and were stopped about 12-15 times at checkpoints, usually to verify that the car’s papers were in order, but also to make sure we had seatbelts on, that we weren’t speeding, that we didn’t have too many people in the car, God knows exactly what but anyway we were stopped really a LOT.  We also had to fill in several forms at the Gambian hotel, and were warned we had to carry these with us at all times on the premises, but nobody ever asked to see them, not even once, it was all quite strange.  On our last morning there, we realized the swimming pool signs in two hotels perfectly illustrated the difference between the two countries. The one on the left is in The Gambia, the one on the right is in Senegal.

We took the ferry back across river to re-enter Senegal, and by the way a couple of readers asked if we had been worried about overcrowding on the ferry, as one hears of ferry disasters periodically, but the big ferry we took felt safe, not overcrowded at all, and had strict regulations about numbers of people, cars, buses, and trucks, plus it had safety equipment including flotation devices. That said, there was an alternative ferry available that gave us the heeby-jeebies, a taxi boat that was clearly overloaded.  And of course no lifejackets or floating cushions or anything.  Pretty scary stuff!

Back in Senegal, we visited Fadiouth-Joal, a mainland town plus two islands created originally from big piles of discarded mollusc shells built up over hundreds of years. Earth has settled around and into it, but what you see is mostly shells, and it is really sizeable. The first island is residential, and the second one is an unusual mixed graveyard of Christian, Muslim, and Animist burials.

Our base for the next couple of days is Banjul, and we began our day in the mangroves, where they gather oysters. It was all very interesting to me, I learned a lot. The mangroves only grow in saltwater, and they don’t grow on the ground, they literally grow in the water. They put down long thick roots, oysters attach themselves to the roots, and when the tide goes out the oysters are exposed, and women harvest them by chipping them off the roots, leaving the roots there for more oysters to attach themselves. The oysters are eaten and they process the shells for paint. They smoke them for some hours over a slow wood fire, to create very high-calcium white ash, that is used for the paint, and can also be mixed into the feed of domestic chickens to make their eggshells stronger.

We went for a leisurely paddle through the mangroves, then got out of the boat and went to see a 500-year-old kapok tree, they call it the elephant tree here because there is quite a resemblance to an elephant’s skin texture and features. These trees as they age often develop substantial openings, I didn’t like the idea of crawling in myself, but will attach a video of My Lovely Assistant Geoff magically emerging from the tree, to show you the size of the thing. I am sorry, I think the screen is enormous but it is the first time I ever tried to insert a video. Fingers crossed you can see it.

Next stop a beach where fishing catches are brought ashore. Some fish is immediately sold onward fresh, but a fair quantity is either salted or smoked on-site.  It is difficult work, the crews can be out in their quite small for boats up to 14 days, and the work on the beach to haul, sell, clean, salt and smoke the fish is non-stop and feels rather chaotic.

Final visit for today was a crocodile pool, to be honest I wasn’t keen on visiting as I expected it to be depressing, but it was spacious and clean. The crocodiles have spiritual significance for the local people, and in particular childless women will visit for a sort of ritual bathing ceremony beside the crocodile pool in the hope this will help them conceive. The guide said it often seems to work, perhaps in part because the participants really believe that it is going to work. We were permitted to visit only immediately after the crocs had been fed, as they are sleepy and lazy then, and not looking for an appetizer of Tourist Tartare!

Well, I must’ve been distracted last night when I posted the Touba & Toubakouta blog, because I totally forgot to actually tell you anything at all about Toubakouta! Not TOO much to relate, but a pretty hotel, with a relaxed bar, nice pool, good restaurant, and outstanding staff. Quite a bit fancier than where we had been staying the last few days, although we have absolutely no complaints anywhere, really comfortable accommodations and always friendly people.

Moving on and trying to keep things in sequence, the next stage in our adventure is that we crossed the border from Senegal into The Gambia, where we will stay for the next couple of days. The ferry was pretty chaotic — so many people, so many cars, so many trucks, so many vendors, and so little space on the boat! But all went well.

Senegal was French-speaking, The Gambia is English-speaking, and the feeling in the two countries is quite different. First stop here was Juffureh, thought to be the ancestral village of Alex Haley who wrote “Roots”; the Kinteh/Kinte family are still prominent in the area. From there, we took a boat across to the former James Island, which was rechristened Kunta Kinteh Island by the Gambian government in 2011. Sadly, this was originally a transit stop for enslaved people, who would be gathered here and then sent on to Goree Island before the transatlantic crossing. A place for reflection on man’s inhumanity to man.