As Andy has mentioned we met up with two french chaps Claude and Begnat in St Louis. I am presuming that it was down to the freely flowing Gazelle Beers that we agreed to take on the next part of the journey as a convoy with them, but we did.
After another day exploring the town we sat round the bar table in the relaxed ‘Camping Dior’ as Claude pointed out a route on his tattered but trusty 1974 Senegal map. Apart from the fact that there was no obvious track, let alone road on the prospective route it all seemed fairly straightforward. I think the fact that the plan involved leaving at midday and so avoiding an early morning wake-up swung it for me.
Odd start to the day as had to report strange goings on the night before - security guard (not up to Sovereign standard by the way Steve/Keith) spent most of the night looking for things to steal from around the site. I had left my washbag out but luckily by trying to find out whether we were asleep or not - whistling and shouting! he woke me up. So as he went to snatch the bag of mouldy soap and nail clippings i popped out of the tent, this caused him to turn on his heels and scratch his eyebrow. The french chaps also noticed similar activity so had word with proprieter Mrs Dior and dobbed him in!
Anyway set off after freeing both cars from the inch deep sand in the car park!! (Didn’t quite need to get the sand traps out!) Went into SL where C bought tomatoes and asked every third person he drove past where I could buy bread at midday during Ramaddan! One place open after approx 13 stops at side of road with cars/taxis/lorries/goats/horses etc. pipping every driving error i made. Then off through the police checkpoint at max speed with friendly officer waving vigourously as he dusted himself off at side of road!
A couple of miles on the tarmac and then off onto the yellow stuff i had seen in my dreams and nightmares, the unforgiving sand! Luckily started fairly firmly and was just a case of trying to keep up with the Landcruiser as it ploughed through villages and villagers! This went on for a number of miles with a couple of stops for C to confirm his bearings with a local fruit seller who waved him on regardless.
Eventually we came to the village where the dirty work of lowering tyre pressures and checking the differential lock etc. would take place. It was also an opportunity for C to meet with approx 1000 small children who enveloped the convoy. Pic below.
What followed this village was an off road course following the Senegal river to the beach and was a good starter for what was to come later, apart from nearly ripping a huge tree down which a village was eating around and backing into the only brick building for 50ks i did okay and got the fierce approval of our guide. As a reward we stopped next to the river for about 3 hours waiting for low tide.
The beach section was somewhat more eventfull. It only took about 10mins before i had covered both of us with sand and salt water checking out how deep the water was that was lapping up the beach. I desperately tried to keep up and maintain stability by staying on the most recently saturated sand and this proved the most effective way of killing burrowing crabs aswell. This part of the day involved the french guys burning off and then slowing down while barking into a two way radio which had been given to us just in case we got lost?!
Anyway despite thinking we may have died we got out okay and off the beach into a village with the help of 30 local kids and to tarmac road. Thoroughly exhausted but content with the days adventure. A quick stop at the Pink Lake, pic below. And on to the town of Malika. Here we were guided to a hostel/brothel which served cold beers and had electricity so we setup camp.
Ta Ta for now.
