Another early start with people crashing round in the dark long before they needed to be – I really must go further from the truck with my tent!
It was also another day of lots of dew and condensation so my tent fly was sopping wet as it went away – once it was daylight it became clear that there was quite a bit of mist in the valley adding to dampness.
I’d heard sirens in the night just as I was going to sleep, but hadn’t really paid a lot of attention – they seemed to be up on the road above camp – seemingly not. I’d noticed at dinner time that the jeep with the machine gun on top had appeared in the bushes above camp, the sirens were reinforcements.
Canadian Kevin had been watching and listening (and growing concerned to the point that he was dressed with his passport in his pocket, his torch in his hand and ready to head for the hills) as an entire platoon of soldiers, complete with machine guns had deployed through our camp to form a perimeter guard.
Thankfully they were looking outwards not inwards, and I discovered they were all still on-post in the morning as one of them followed me when I headed into the bushes with a shovel – once he realised my intention he disappeared back into the bushes.
Because of the thorns we carried our bikes back up to the road which was significantly harder than carrying them down last night had been!
The old pavement seemed to be worse this morning than it had been yesterday – maybe it was because we were starting on the bad stuff, rather than the gradual descent we’d experienced yesterday.
Lots of people out on the road, including children heading to school – one thing I was pretty impressed to see was that there were as many girls as there were boys going to school. In the lunch break yesterday when there where children all about it was almost all boys – presumably the girls are at home doing chores with their mother’s, but at least it seems that they do go to school.
We were making pretty good time – to the point that we could negotiate the potholes and sand faster than the trucks on the road so were overtaking them as we undulated our way south.
Exactly on schedule at km 22 the road improved and was back to being silky-smooth pavement which meant we could pick up the pace.
We stopped for our mid-morning coke, during which Australian Kevin discovered that one of the shifters on his bike was lose – we tried to tighten things up, but in the end had to admit defeat for want of a small enough Philips screwdriver to take things apart.
Back on the way and Canadian Kevin, Mateo and I were cruising at 33 – 35 km/h and were soon back past all those who had got ahead of us while we were helping Kevin.
Lunch came earlier than we’d expected because they’d found an abandoned car park in which to get set up, well off the road and away from any dust. While there wasn’t the pressure of the previous crossing to get through lunch in record time we decided that there were benefits to getting there before the crowd and so made lunch a reasonably quick affair.
By lunch we were down on the river plateau and so from there to the border crossing was essentially flat, with evidence of crops and increasing population density. We wove our way through the town of Rosso without stopping – there wasn’t really anything there for us – had we not just had lunch we’d probably have stopped for a coke, but it was a pretty rough and ready border town so we carried on to the border itself.
A quick chat with a solider at the gate who ticked us off the TDA list he’d been given and we were into the compound. Dehon was there to meet us, and very kindly took our passports from us and went to get our entry stamps – it’s fantastic have French-speaking crew who can deal with such things on our behalf.
Surprisingly the dinner truck was still there – it seems that the ferries aren’t running to the expected schedule but more-or-less continuously, however in true African style the truck had been paid for but when they went to board the previous ferry they were asked to pay an additional €55 so missed the ferry while discussions and negotiations occurred.
While we waited we stood in the shade of the truck, narrowly avoiding being hit by another truck which was backing off the incoming ferry. We got our passports back and Sharita said that we’d cross on the ferry with the truck – not quite the ‘small boat’ plan…
…and then Dehon came and said ‘we’ll go to the small boats now’. At this point there were about ten of us ready to go, so we followed Dehon along the riverbank to where a cluster of local boats were operating. By now it was in the high thirties, and we stood in the sun on the bank while Dehon and Mohamed attempted to negotiate the fare across the river.
About ten minutes later Sharita arrived, asked what was going on, and told us all to go back to the truck and wait for the ferry – it seems that the negotiation wasn’t going well, and it was likely that we were still going to be standing there in a few hours time.
While we’d been waiting we ended up standing in the middle of the watermelon line. One of the small boats was filled with watermelons, and they had two ‘bucket chains’ of about a dozen guys each throwing melons from the boat onto the dock and up into a waiting truck – we’d managed to end up in the middle of one of the lines, which was slowing progress of unloading the boat.
Back at the truck and by now there were about twenty of us ready to cross, so we flocked down to the ferry with the locals to make sure we would make it on.
The ferry didn’t take very long – we’d certainly spent a lot longer waiting to get on, and waiting for the ferry to leave than it did to cross. As we came off in Senegal we met Max and a security guard whoo collected our passports from us – initially this seemed like it was going to be a good thing, but it didn’t quite work out.
Tom was a little further up the quay, and led us to a relatively secluded area to the side of the customs building where we could leave our bikes. From there it was off to immigration – we got moved round a few times before we ended up in the right place. It was then that having had our passports collected didn’t work out – the two border officials behind their glass screen would call out someone’s name and we had to try to understand who they wanted and get them to the front of the queue.
One advantage of where we were is that we were in the shade, and behind some bars which meant we were sort-of invisible to the passing people and the money changers which led to some photo opportunities in a place it wouldn’t usually be possible.
In the end having been first on and off the ferry proved to be a disadvantage because when the passports had been collected a stack had been made from first to last which meant first off, last out.
While I’d been behind the bars I’d done a quick transaction with one of the money changers to get rid of the rest of my Mauritanian Ouguiya – surprisingly they gave me a really good rate, so I also changed €20 so I had enough cash to get through the first few days.
Although we were now officially in Senegal there was no point in leaving until at least the dinner truck was out on the road – we only had a few km to go, and as well as getting the crew and riders on the truck through immigration, they had to do customs and the formalities of the truck carnet etc all take time – lots of time it seems!
I took the opportunity to pop out into the street to the Orange store to get a SIM card – it took a while, and a lot of configuration on my phone, but about 15 min later I had a working local connection, which included 7Gb of data which was super fast!
Back in the border compound and I found a shady spot to sit – Noah came by and wanted to take a photo of me with the wall behind me.
A drink in the shade with a cool mural behind me while I wait to enter Senegal – border crossing day means I wear my NZ riding kit.
Eventually the truck was clear and on the road so Hanne, Mateo and I extracted our bikes from the stack and headed off to find the campsite. Once out of the shade of the compound we discovered that it was damn hot, and that the proximity to the river and the irrigation system had really pushed the humidity up.
This was one of those border crossings in which the whole world changed – there are irrigation canals across the flood plane, and fields of sugar cane and rice all along the roadside. It’s obviously more affluent in Senegal – there are still plenty of horse and donkey carts, but far more motorcycles, scooters and private cars on the road.
We were into the wind to begin with but quickly turned back south and with a pretty good wind behind us were soon into camp which looks like it’s a dry lakebed.
Tent up, a wash, rinse out my riding kit, solar panel charging my Garmin and I’m more-or-less sorted for the day.
There weren’t many crew in so I offered to help out in the kitchen – initially unwrapping 20 chickens which are going to be quartered and barbecued for dinner, then helping to peal a sack of potatoes, which even with three of us working on it still takes quite a while.
Doug has been talking with our new local fixer Phillipe and it seems that beer might be an option so I’ve ordered a couple – let’s hope they’re cold! Noah has decided to go fishing so I’m going to go for a wander with him to see what’s about.
Later: Evidence of beer being a reality came with a guy riding up on a scooter with a sack full of ice – I’m guessing 1litre bags of water which have been frozen – for now they’ve gone in the chilly bin from the lunch truck.
A little while later and the beer showed up – it turned out to be 600ml bottles, so the 40 which had been ordered needed two sacks, and two guys on scooters. Australian Kevin and I have stacked as many of them as would fit in a large washing basin with several of the ice blocks and were able to bludge enough water to cover the lot – cold beer soon. The rest of the beer and ice and in the chilly bin, but we weren’t allowed any more water for that, so those ones aren’t going to cool terribly quickly.
I wandered out to check on BBQ progress
Some people had opted to take luke-warm beers, but by riders’ meeting it was getting a lot colder and tasted pretty fine – certainly better than the very expensive beer we’d been drinking in Nouakchott.
During the afternoon the SIM cards of a number of us who had got them at the border stopped working. Paul asked one of the French-speaking members of the group to listen to the message he was receiving – apparently the identity verification hadn’t been done properly, and we needed to take our ID documentation to an Orange store – sigh!
Fortunately my original plan for tomorrow had been to go into St Louis to get a SIM card anyway, so I’d done the research ahead of time and knew where the Orange store was, that it wasn’t a significant detour, and that St Louis is a UNESCO site anyway, so worth the visit.
Max mentioned this during the riders’ meeting and I was able to fill in some details for people who were also interested in the detour – by the sound of things about half of us are going to make the detour.
I had my second beer with dinner – I’d made sure that a couple of them were right at the bottom of the bowl and fished out of those which was now properly chilled!
Dark comes pretty quickly, and I sat chatting with Clive and George for a while before heading off to my tent which I discovered was seriously hot – the drawback of pitching a tent on sandy ground which has been baking in the 40 degree sun for most of the day – it’s like having the most efficient underfloor heating imaginable when you really don’t want it!
I’m looking forward to tomorrow and the opportunity to do something a bit touristy during our ride – these last days there’s not really been anything much to see or do along the way so it’s been more about getting the distance done than anything.
View from my tent
Selfie of the day
Riding data
