Another long weekend - this
time in celebration of the end of Ramadan - gave me another chance to explore a
little further into Senegal. Having spent my last day off at the Mauritanian
border in the very north of Senegal, I decided to go for the other extreme and head for the Gambian border (I
realize that’s a little ambiguous, given the geography, so let me clarify that
I was on the northern Gambian border – I didn’t actually cross through). The
region of Senegal that stretches south along the coast from Dakar to the border
is a stretch of supposedly beautiful beach, known as the Petite Côte, which
gives way to marshes, swamps, and mangroves in the Sine Saloum Delta, much of
which is a wildlife preserve and national park. Though the Petite Côte is on my
list, it’s a lot more accessible from Dakar than Sine Saloum, and a lot more
feasible in a weekend, so I decided to use my extremely limited free day to
make it to the delta.
With limited research (my housemates
have a Lonely Planet book from the ‘90s and Trip Advisor has a miniscule
section on Sine Saloum) and several bookings, unbookings, and rebookings as I
found more and more exciting places to stay (lots of internal debates between
poolside and riverside lodgings) I finally found, via a side-note of a review I
was reading, Keur Bamboung - an eco-lodge on one of the islands in the delta. A
little more digging brought up a few more reviews and comments. Even though
there weren’t many of those, the ones I did find were all glowing – people love this place. So it seemed like a
good bet. Over the next few days, I mentioned to several people that I was
staying there, and the reactions I got were all: “Oh you’re staying there? I’ve always wanted to go there!
My friend/cousin/sister stayed there once and loved it! You have to tell me how
it is! How are you going to get there?”
That last part was a challenge. Most
people I know who’d visited the Saloum paid for a private car, but as a solo
traveler, this just wasn’t financially an option. By asking around, and by
comparing a map with the list of sept-place destinations I found online
somewhere, I’d become fairly confident that I had to take a car to either
Kaolack or Karang. It ended up not being quite so straightforward:
1.
Taxi to Dakar bus
station
2.
Minibus to Fatik
3.
Sept-place to Kaolack
4.
Motorbike taxi to
Kaolack’s southern bus station
5.
Sept-place to
Toubakouta
6.
Motorbike taxi to
Dassilame Serere dock
7.
Pirogue to Sipo
Island
8.
Donkey cart to
campsite
So after eight forms of transportation
and more than nine hours, I finally arrived at Keur Bamboung. It was longer
than I’d been counting on, but the second half of the journey, at least, turned
out to be as much a part of the experience as anything else. After leaving
Kaolack, I got my first sightings of the delta, and the waterways that extend
much further into the interior of Senegal than I’d expected. From Toubakouta, I
road on the back of a motorbike through small, sandy villages and compounds
where families and neighbors gathered in plastic chairs outside drinking coffee
or tea in 100 degree weather. From the dock at Dassilame Serere, I followed the
pirogue pilot through the mud to a pirogue that looked like it’d seen better
days, and then we motored through the beautiful delta, watching pelicans that looked
far to big to perch in trees defying gravity, and gaping at the mangrove-lined
river. Arriving at a village on Sipo island, I sat on the beach with the family
who lived there while I waited for the donkey cart to arrive, watching monkeys
terrorizing a couple of chickens who were resting in the shade of an eight-foot
pile of discarded oyster shells. When the donkey cart arrived, driven by a
couple of drivers-in-training, it pulled us first through what looked like the
desert, and then forest, and finally, up to the gorgeous Keur Bamboung, where
the dusty plateau breaks off over the swamp.
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| Pirogue ride to Sipo Island |
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| Donkey cart ride to Keur Bamboung |
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| Home for the Weekend |
There were a couple of people visiting
Bamboung for the day, and one couple camping on the grounds who left the
following day, but otherwise, it was just me at the staff. It was a quiet and
peaceful weekend, but far from boring. I spent the evenings watching the sun
set from my lovely porch, and walked down a steep slope of the finest sand I’ve
ever seen (it’s been a week and I think I’m still covered in a thin layer of
it) to where a little break in the mangroves creates a perfect little spot for
swimming, and, when the tide was out, place on the muddy shore to sit and dry
off. Meals were all served on-site, and though they were simple, they were
tasty (fish, rice, veggies, and, once, oysters).
 |
| Down at the little beach |
Included in the price of the room were
a number of “excursions” so on Sunday morning, the guide asked me what I wanted
to do. I didn’t really know, and told him so, and he suggested we spend the
morning kayaking in the mangroves. I didn’t technically do any kayaking – he
told me not to paddle, so I suppose to be more accurate, I was kayaked through
the mangroves. Either way, it was gorgeous. Half the time we were in the huge,
open bay, where there are supposed to be dolphins and manatees (though we
didn’t spot any of those, we did see several pelicans and egrets), and the
other half we were navigating through waterways so narrow I was skeptical we’d
be able to fit (once it took both of us to push the boat through a space
between mangrove trunks that was just a little too small). The whole time, he
explained to me (in French) the ecology of the mangroves, the birds and other
wildlife in the area, and the restrictions on fishing in the national park.
The hike that evening was more of a
trudge through the swamp, but it was very cool. We walked across the shallow
mud, to see the different kinds of mangroves, which he explained to me in
French, so I’m not sure I got all of it. My most basic understanding is that
some species take in salt water, and secret the salt through their leaves – and
he showed me how some of the leaves are really covered in salt that brushes off
easily – while others have a kind of fungus that grows on their roots and
filters the water they take in. He showed me one little area where a couple
lone baobab trees grow out of the mud among piles of empty oyster shells, and
told me that, before this was a nature preserve, nomadic tribes passed through
for months at a time. The men are in charge of fishing, the women collect
oysters, and everyone gathers baobab leaves. On our way back across the mud, we
spotted a couple warthogs, nosing around in the mud for tiny crabs, apparently
a warthog delicacy.
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| World's Muddiest Hike |
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| Bamboung Sunrise |
The next morning, I had an early
breakfast – bread with mango jam and mangrove honey – and then took the donkey
cart back across the island. Although the rest of the world, as far as I can
tell, celebrated the end of Ramadan on Sunday, in Senegal the festivities were
held (unexpectedly) on Monday, so one of the staff members was headed back to
the mainland to celebrate with his family. When we got back, he called his
brother, who has a motorbike and had agreed to take me to Karang, to get a car
back to Dakar. Although technically Karang is in the wrong direction – it’s the
site of the border crossing to Gambia and is several kilometers south of
Toubakouta – it was a necessary detour. Since Toubakouta is a small town and
doesn’t have a bus station, it’s almost impossible to find a ride there, since
sept-places don’t originate there. As they only leave once they’re full, it’s
unlikely that a car driving through Toubakouta will happen to have an open
seat. So Karang it was. From Karang, it was actually a much easier trip – I
found a sept-place directly to Dakar, and was able to just relax, and even nap
a bit, as we made the four-hour trip back up the delta and into the city.
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