Senegal? No thanks

Aug 19, 2010

This morning we left Sunugal camping. It was a dejavu experience being in the very same place we had stayed long ago. The French owner was delighted to see us there. The nice old man, who is an architect, transformed completely the place around his camping – restaurant. “Because you are Greeks you can stay 1-2 nights more for free” he told us in the morning.

We should go though, because the customs officer was waiting for us at Rosso. We escaped Dakar easily through a newly built motorway section (tolls still to come) and drove through Thies to Saint Louis. Before SL, we stopped on a police block where we were asked to pay a fine for not… using the direction lights of our car.

I persisted smilingly and in the end I told him we are “Greek journalists around the world”. He smiled, gave me back the driving licence and the insurance document and he accepted happily to be photographed with his colleagues. This is Africa. If you show fear to them they will take advantage. If you are calm and show them strength, they stay back…

At Saint Louis, the traffic was far worse than 3 years ago. At the market place, out of the town we had the familiar beggars – some of them with rasta style hair – who were impeding us to go on, asking for money. We had a laugh with one of them and proceeded to Rosso.

There, the customs officer who was supposed to escort us from Dakar (but he never did) was waiting for us. I tried to deny the fee of 60.000 CFA he was promised by Grimaldi (it seems to be an official one but no receipt is given), he blackmailed that he wouldn’t leave us go on.

Anyway we paid him the amount of 90 euros for one days work (and not really one day work) and he accompanied us to Rosso. This is a notorious border crossing we had skipped three years ago, as we had chosen to drive off road 80 km. west at Diama border crossing. The place is really nasty, full of mediators who try to take advantage of you.

We had to wait for 40’ in the customs office for no reason and then we were allowed to get aboard the barge among some other travelers. On the barge, David, a nice Mauritanian asked us to do the formalities job for whatever fee we wanted to give him.

The process was annoying and costly at the Mauritanian side. We paid officially 2500 ouguias for the immigration stamp (normally 360 per 1 euro, we took 340 for a euro), 2000 for community fee, plus 5000 for customs (carnet was not accepted here as well…), plus 5000 for the barge, 4600 for 10 days car insurance plus 3000 for David and his friend. That means about 50 euros to enter Mauritania, plus the 120 euros we had paid for the visas in Dakar. Maybe the most expensive country we ever visited!

Driving towards Nouakchott, we saw the environment changing completely. We entered Sahara! Its incredible to be in the green surroundings of Dakar the same day, cross the Sahel south of Senegal river and enter the desert north of it. There is nothing else to see on the road to the dusty capital that was built in 1964 except some dunes and 2-3 villages on the road.

Nouakchott was ugly and dusty as ever by night. We didn’t bother to drive around. We found the Auberge Sahara a French traveler suggested us and checked in. We pay 3000 ouguias (8 euros) for camping at the courtyard, kitchen use and internet included. Not bad! Tomorrow, we will drive to Nouadhibu, where we will stay at our Greek friends house, like exactly three years ago. We feel better we got the hell out of Dakar and Senegal, by the way…_A.Temperidis