Here to There

Note: Hey Everyone, I am actually home now. I got back last weekend, but I wrote this one before leaving and I have enough material for another blog or two before wrapping it up.

Caroline and I's travel started off in Dakar, with two other volunteers, Delaney and Britney, who were leaving the following day. We went to the île de Gorée aboard the noble sea vessel “Beer.” I loved how the name of the boat didn’t have any letters before it. Not the “SS Beer”, just “Beer.” The other boat we took during the trip was called the “Osama” so the boat namers of Senegal clearly have a problem.

Travel in Africa can best be described as cheap and uncomfortable. So for only 15 dollars, you can travel in a taxi for 10 hours from Dakar down to Casamance (Southern Senegal), but you have to share said taxi with seven other people, and it’s about the size of a station wagon. So it’s incredibly cheap, but you are sitting butt to butt, knee to knee, for a very long time. We started out with a ride like this from Dakar to Ziguinchor, in Casamance. It took us briefly through The Gambia, which is the small country that is completely surrounded by Senegal. While passing through Gambia, the taxi needed to cross the Gambia River to continue the trek, so there was a ferry that the taxis and the other cars boarded to cross.

While waiting on the ferry, we spotted an Osama Bin Laden supporter, manifesting his support in a sticker on his taxi.

I’ve seen a few Bin Laden stickers in taxis, and it’s always kind of frightening to think that the drivers share a similar mentality…but the people that were waiting for the ferry with us were very nice, and they really took a shine to Caroline.

The whole trip was basically planned with a copy of a Lonely Planet travel guide, which helped us find places to stay while we traveled. While in Ziguinchor, the hotel that we wanted to stay in (which had a pool and reportedly hot water) was full, but the dive hotel right across the street had rooms available, and, check it out, air conditioning!

The room did have a great view of the pool at the hotel we wanted to stay at across the street.

So the next day we took a bus to Cap Skiring, a coastal town with a great beach,

you just have to share it with some livestock

There was also a festival in town that we think was celebrating Mardi Gras? We ran into a bunch of cross dressers on the street who also had flour all over their faces so they would appear white. So it was like they were cross-race-dressing. It was a huge shock to us, just because Senegalese people are normally so conservative, but Casamance feels like a completely different country than the rest of Senegal.

There has been a lot of attention in Casamance because there is a separatist movement composed of rebel groups near the Southern border. Though the travel guides do warn travelers to this region about potential violence, and some things we read about the area made it seem very active, we didn’t see anything while we were there that would indicate an active violent movement. So, don’t count out Casamance in next year’s family vacation plans! Possible advertising schemes: “Casamance: no longer violent!” “Great food, no coups!”