7:10am – Sun still not up. Catch first pirogue off N’Gor Island.
7:30– In a cab down the highway, to sept-taxi terminal (seven person taxi)
8:00-10:30ish – A beat up Peugeot station wagon, lined within some apparent order at the terminal. Sand road is packed hard and oil-stained. Garbage litters the ground with an occasional waft of urine. Hundreds of cab drivers, travelers, hustlers, beggars, sellers of cookies, bananas, purses, prayer beads, car parts, watches, radios and toys…one bathroom… one heroic attendant. Fifty cents to pee. Worth it. Waiting for cab to fill. Thirty-six bucks for the three of us to drive 100miles. A family, two women, a man and a young boy, all packed in the back, they just bought a toy electric piano… Mary had a Little Lamb, Frera Jacqua, Twinkle twinkle little star. Repeat. Pat and I exchange glances… no, no, that wont be annoying. A bumper and, optimistically, a new windshield are strapped to the roof. Cab starts. Where is Markus? At the bathroom. We are leaving. “Wait, wait! Here he is!” Three of us cram on the middle seat. We go.
Noonish – The traffic and smooth roads out of Dakar have passed. Landscape looks like Utah…New Mexico… save for Seuss-inspired baobab branches reaching at odd angles like old and arthritic hands with very good stories to tell. Potholes occur with more and more frequency. No lines in the road and traffic slowly hurtles toward each other, slalom the pot holes on a collision course till the cab, the semi, bus, and occasional private car run onto the much smoother shoulder or forgo the road completely. We stop. The baby needs some medicine. Boys selling cashews and bags of water and open hands crowd the car. On past the salt flats. Dust. Windows rolled up. Heat. Windows rolled down.
Twoish – Arrive at a lean-to next to some houses. Toubakouta. Teenagers waiting with dirt bikes. Yes they will take us. Three bikes with three boys, and three much larger men balanced on the back of the bikes bouncing and bottoming out on the sandy road.
Threeish – A man takes us on a much larger pirogue down a wide river. Birds. Many of them. The driver casually points and names them out to us. We stop to pick up a man and a boy. The man is a traditional doctor and welcomes us to Senegal.
3:30ish – Land at a small village. Greeted by locals resting from the heat under a tree. Bags on a donkey cart, and a mile walk down a sandy track and we finally arrive in Bamboung, a small ecolodge in the mangrove swamps.