Goodbye Dakar! Back to the desert! We got our share of the city, and actually had a little fun today
haggling for t-shirts and stuff in the market area. We also used our down time
in the city to complete our much-needed laundry. For this the bathtub came in
very useful, as did the electric blow dryer, which Paul used for over 8 hours
continuously by directing it into a closet full of wet clothes.
All and all, Dakar can be described as a very bustling
metropolis. It has touches of a European city, yet its’ own African charm. It is not for the weak though. You will find
plenty of touts, beggars and guides. It was a relief from the horrible air
pollution in Nouakchott, not without the usual smell of diesel and sewage
though.
It wasn’t an especially cheap city either and the two
traffic violations that we incurred didn’t help. Check the photo section for the guys hanging out in Dakar and a
few shots of our beachfront hotel. The
hotel was an interesting place too. It kind of reminded us of a James Bond/
60’s retro hotel. It was designed as a replica ocean liner- complete with cabin
doors and windows.
Paul and I experienced the worst pistachio ice cream I have
ever had. Horrible….. really, really bad. Al stayed at the hotel most of the weekend.
Lucky for him, he missed the ice cream.
He mumbled something about hating cities.
We now move into the second leg of the trip and head East
toward Bamako, Mali. From there we will head North to Timbuktu. We expect that
over the coming two weeks internet updates may become limited by the extremely
rugged conditions we will be entering into.
Our plan is to reach Timbuktu on Saturday the third of March. Of course
we will be updating this site by satellite on a regular basis.
-Michael Ladden