Dakar, Senegal

We had a casual days drive to Dakar through lots of little villages, on nice smooth roads and some bumpy, dusty dirt tracks.  We stopped at Lake Rose which was pretty salty, similar to the Dead Sea.  The lake gets its name from the pink colour it is supposed to have but actually it's more of a brown colour.  We bush camped in an abandoned housing estate which was pretty houseless with only 2 or 3 which weren't complete.  This meant that we could be within an hours drive of Dakar the next day.

Dakar was far more civilised than I expected.  It was a busy city and we received a lot of hassal especially around the market areas.  As a result we didn't really get a look at anything.  Due to Ebola in neighbouring countries I think that a lot of tourists have been scared off as we didn't see any walking around all day.  We had a great drive along the coast out if the city centre and we stopped at a huge statue on a hill which apparently is bigger than the Statue of Liberty.  It was said to cost 30 million US Dollars to build and wasn't the most attractive.  We were due to be staying in a restaurant garden in Dakar but when we arrived they didn't want us to stay.  After an hour or so and some local help we ended in a carpark area outside another restaurant.  No campsite in Dakar.

The following day we packed up and Steve dropped us in the city for the day.  Not fancying any more city centre hassel me, Lucy and Saskia got the ferry to Goree island for the day.  The islands ownership has been passed between many countries and in the past it had been used as a holding point for slaves.  It was lovely to walk around as there were no cars and the island is full of reasonably well kept colourfully painted buildings. 

Our next stop is The Gambia.  This is a passenger led detour that we all decided would be worth while doing.  The Gambia is not on the Oasis itinerary due to time constraints and the fact that the truck would have a lot of difficulty crossing the river due to the small ferries.  As we are not going through Sierra Leone or Guinea we had a few spare days so we waved good bye to Steve at the border and set off on a 4 day holiday from a holiday!