The Best Worst Day Ever

As family trip planner, this is the day I have been most stressed about: getting from northern Senegal down to the beach on Dec 31. It's about a 4 hour ride down to Saly, and I assume it will be just as boring and hot and dusty as the ride up, with the added advantage of arriving to the beach too late and too tired to do anything fun for New Year's Eve. On paper, it's looking to be the worst day of the trip, and I vaguely dread it.

So imagine my surprise when it turns out to be one of my favorite days of the vacation -- one of those magical, go-with-the-flow days where everything just turns out right, and the whole thing feels like a treasure we've stumbled upon instead of canned tourism. I love it. Our guide from yesterday, Ismaïla, has promised two of the Italian guys who were with us at Djoudj that he would take them down to the Dakar area in a day outing that involves a 4x4 ride down the beach.

At first he quotes us a very high price -- high enough that instead of negotiating, we just shrug and say no. It's not anything we've heard about, and doesn't sound so intriguing, so we figure we'll just save the money and go directly by taxi. But since he's already promised the two Italian guys he'd take them, anything he can get from us is straight profit, and so he comes back to us, lowers the price drastically, and finally with about as much enthusiasm as we had for the taxi, we shrug and say, "OK, why not?" We like Ismaïla and the Italian guys a lot, so for only an extra $50 or so, it seems like it will be more pleasant and less hassle than having to find our own taxi. Out of sheer laziness is born a fabulous day.

First they drive us through a market, which is a great way to see and photograph it. By the time we work our way through here, and I get my colorful photos, I'm already considering the day a huge success.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And once we hit the beach, we give up all pretense of normal road rules. I propose the following for the official national motto: Senegal, where safety rules fly out the window -- but your kids don't.

This Atlantic beach is just gorgeous and virtually unpopulated. We absolutely fly down it, and it's like being on a superhighway, but one where there's no traffic and what makes it so super is the view. Once in a while we see a cart going to or from market, but that's just about it for hours.

 

There are two small villages with fishing boats, and we stop near one of them for a lunch break.

The local kids come up and stare and beg for a while, until a) we realize we're not going to drink all the sodas the guide brought for us, so we let them have the bottles b) we use the girls as icebreakers and have them do some gymnastics tricks, and c) we start taking photos of them and showing them the results on the digital camera screens. We can't take the photos fast enough, which is a lovely change of pace from the women in this country who generally try to avoid being in our pictures.

After hours of just hooting and hollering and switching places depending on who needs a break from the wind, we head off the beach to go inland to see the Lac Rose (Pink Lake). It is not actually pink at this time of year, but we do get to see them gathering salt -- both rock and fleur de sel (a salt that is derived from evaporating the foam that collects at the edges of the lake in which the salt is naturally pulverized to a fine, soft powder).

 

We have a drink in a Senegalese dive together with our Italian friends Davide and Stefano before heading our separate ways for the last little bit of the trip. For a Worst Day, it's been pretty much the Best.

This Park Is for the Birds

From Saint Louis, we take a day trip to nearby Djoudj National Bird Sanctuary, possibly one of the most remote and unassuming UNESCO World Heritage sites I have ever visited.

 

The thing to do here is to take a boat ride on the lake, which is the first major stopping point for birds who have just flown over the Sahara during their winter migration south.

Our goal is to see one of the world's greatest migrations and concentrations of flamingos. But instead, what we see is one of the world's greatest migrations and concentrations of pelicans. No complaints; we'll take it.

 

 

It's not just pelicans. There are also ibises, herons, cormorants, and even a couple eagles (and way, way off in the distance, some of the flamingos we had hoped to see; it turns out, however, they are very skittish about being around people).

So mostly what we get pictures of are pelicans -- the largest species in the world.

They seem almost like albatrosses, they're so huge, and of course they seem that much more impressive because we're in the middle of a flock of thousands.

But this park is not just for the birds. We also see a few warthogs, called "phacochère"  (pronounced fa-ko-SHARE) in French. Though it's not a word I've ever heard before, once I see the warthogs, and hear people repeatedly saying "phacochère", I cotton to the meaning pretty quickly. These are baby phacochères, and we are able to get right in their faces. I know it's a close encounter with a wild animal, but somehow they just don't seem that threatening.

Meet Me in Saint Louis

The guide book says that Saint Louis, in northern Senegal, is like Ile de Gorée, but even more renovated and charming. Yet our first impression of Saint Louis is "What a dump!"

 

 

And no wonder. Not only are the buildings and streets dilapidated...

...but the scourge of the developing world -- plastic -- is out in full force. Truly, nothing will make you regret the invention of plastic more than visiting a poor, polluted nation.

But we soon settle into Saint Louis and see the beauty through the garbage. I find that any time I change abruptly from developed to developing country, it takes a while to feel at ease. In this case, the process was postponed by Ile de Gorée being so charming. But now we're back in the "real" world of Senegal, and I find it's like breaking in a pair of shoes -- a couple days of squirming and then suddenly it feels comfortable. There is beauty in the chaos (but not, I must say, in the plastic piles).

I think the guide books haven't really changed in 100 years, back when Saint Louis, a colonial city, was indeed a sort of clean, tropical paradise. I suspect that even 20 years ago, when my uncle lived in the country, it would have been a far sight cleaner than it is now. A couple decades is a long time for plastics to accumulate.

 

But some things haven't changed: the tropical weather; horse-drawn carts to transport cargo and people;

 

 

women in long skirts made of bright fabrics, walking with baskets on their heads;

 

  

 

sidewalk markets;

 

   

 

handmade (and hand-painted) wooden fishing boats;

 

But some things have changed, and not always for the better. Where there used to be a stretch of pristine sand leading down to the river, there is now an unending stretch of garbage.

When we talk about Saint Louis, we are actually talking about two small islands that lie on the other side of a big bridge from the main part of the city. So we are amused to realize that we have traveled from Ile St. Louis (in Paris) to the ile de St. Louis (in Senegal).

The two small islands are where you find the colonial zone and, therefore, the tourist zone. We come across the Siki hotel, where we are unable to get a room, but we eat dinner there every single night. We recommend the pineapple chicken curry. And getting a room at this hotel, if you can.

These two little islands are in turn separated by a small bridge, yet they seem worlds apart.

The first island is the more tranquil and relatively quaint of the two. It's where the better known hotels are located, lots of restaurants, and craft shops. I strongly suspect the local authorities make sure the streetside sellers and beggars stay on the second island so as not to frighten tourists away from Saint Louis.

 

Also on the second island is the fish market, the local food market, and the dirt-roads filled with goats that we wander down, but not 100% comfortably; we definitely attract a lot of attention. The girls feel a little intimidated by the environment, but everybody is friendly (as long as they don't catch me taking photos).