March 9, 2016
We're entering Senegal, spending a few days in Saint-Louis, and then setting of on a 1300km drive over 6 days to Mali's capital, Bamako. A lot of bush camping, and now in countries where it's possible to get a cold beer.
It was time to cross the border into Senegal. The main border crossing for this, Rosso, is widely known as one of the most corrupt border crossings in Africa, so we went for the much smaller rossing in Diama. I’ve read about other travellers still going for the larger crossing as the smaller one is quite a drive on bad roads, and lack facilities for the mandatory vehicle insurance. We had the insurance prepared already, and our truck has no problems with bad roads. Easy pick. The crossing was pretty smooth and quiet, and as soon as we had our stamps we set off for Saint-Louis.
Saint-Louis is a small city on the Senegalese coast, mainly known for the Unesco-listed historic part of the town built on an island by the mouth of the Senegal River. It was a quite a contrast getting from Arabic Africa in a dusty desert setting, to Black Africa which is a lot more colorful. But even more importantly, after over a month in islamic countries it was finally possible to get a cold beer!
After two relaxing nights it was time for the next big drive and also our longest set of bush campings so far. It took us six days and five nights of bush camping to make the 1300km through northern Senegal and western Mali and eventually reach Mali’s capital Bamako. Even though I didn’t actually drive the long days were tiring, and it didn’t help that my throat started aching. I guess all that iron ore dust from the train caused some problems after all.
But there were also quite a few highlights and experiences these days. It was very common for local villagers to show up while bush camping. It can be anything from just saying hi (without any common language whatsoever) to asking for water or even to help us cutting wood for the camp-fire. At one point we were offered to try what we think was fermented goat milk in exchange for some water. Not the tastiest beverage…
There’s also quite a big change in prices once you get out of the cities. I had what’s probably my cheapest lunch ever, a big serving of rice and peanut sauce, for CFA300, equivalent to about €0.45. I’ve also gotten used to buy water in small bags instead of bottles. It seemed a bit weird at first but turned out to be really convenient as well as cheaper. Normally CFA50 (€0.08) for a bag of 400ml of (usually) clean water.
The vegetation is changing now too as we’re leaving the desert and entering a more subtropical climate. One of the funniest but also most annoying trees that we’ve started coming across are the acacias, or as I like to call them, toothpick trees. They’re funny since their thorns look exactly like toothpicks. The less funny part is that the thorns go through anything, including flip-flops, sleeping mats and tents…
Another really funny tree is the baobab tree. The trees are huge and sometimes really easy to climb. Nothing beats watching the sunset while drinking a cold beer 10 meters up in a tree!
Now that we’ve finally reached Bamako I decided to spoil myself with a hotel room to get a good night’s sleep, see if I can get my throat better, and fix my sleeping mat (again). We will hang around here for a few days to get some more visas and to get more accurate updates about the current security situation.