The long journey back to Banjul - 12 Nov
When it was time to leave, I wasn't sad at all, in some ways I couldn't wait to see something else. I crave variety really. We were due to set off at 9am after breakfast but due to limited numbers of cars and drivers we had to bring our breakfast forward by an hour so that we could juggle all respective schedules as best as possible. At the time, it felt like torture as I hate getting up at 6.30am on holidays but it ended up being a blessing in disguise as it was going to be such a loooong day.
We first took a motor boat for 45 mins up river and then got off and boarded a bus for 2H30. I was seated next to the driver so that I could take decent pix and we made 3 nice stops on the way. The first one was the Stone Circle heritage site. It's a bit like Gambia's Stonehedge except that the stones were just about as tall as my chin (on average). There seems to be countless explanations for these stones (incl. "aliens did it") but no one seems to know for sure. They date back to 400BC-200 AD But this kind of monuments are found in several countries of Western Africa and also in France and the UK. Now people put little stones on top of the big ones and hope their wish will come true. They have a lot of weird beliefs like that... another is that if you can't get pregnant you should go to the crocodile pool and get the water from the pool blessed and it will help you 'so long as you stay close to your husband for 3 months' (I'd say that *this* will work far more effectively than the crocodile pool -- it has a ring of logic to it !). We even saw the Carmine bee-eaters (very red) in the area and they were delightful. Not too shy either, I could get fairly close for once - just walking slowly towards them. There were also plenty of abyssinian rollers on the telephone lines, dozens of them... what a treat...
The most beautiful stops though were near ponds with lots of giant water-lillies and what looked like trees of egrets. I took some lovely photos there. We even saw a beautiful exclamatory paradise whydah (a bird with a small body but a loooong black tail) and even a flock of 15+ hornbills (African Pied I seem to recall - white at the end of their wings). My guide said they are some of the rarest hornbills in Gambia and he had NEVER, in 15 years of professional bird watching, seen so many in one go. He was amazed. He understood the 'value' of the moment far more than any of us did as we had left the really keen bird-watchers behind at the Bird Safari Camp. We quickly stopped the car but they flew away before we had time to reach their tree (so I couldn't take decent pix, such a pity). We also saw quite a few monkeys, though, again, the moment you stopped the bus, they'd make a dash for the bush.
It was nice to break the journey a bit because it did feel terribly long. We then got onto the Safari Queen again for 2 H and that was the most boring part as we were right in the middle of the [wide at this point] Gambia river and there was nothing to see really. We never saw the dolphins :( We had a cooked lunch at 1.15pm, on board, and that was great. Thankfully I was seated to a chap who had travelled extensively so we passed time swapping tales: he told me of countries I hadn't seen before like Japan & South Korea or Cambodia and I told him of Palau and Iguazu. He'd been to Brazil just 6 months earlier but had skipped it. BIG mistake. I showed him my photos, he was crushed... oops. (I always keep my best pix on my memory cards for such occasions as pix speak louder than words). Sorry, let me rephrase that: I don't keep my best pix to upset people but to inspire them. He was going to go to Kruger for Xmas but had never seen a leopard so I gave him my tip on Arathusa Lodge in Sabi Sands Reserve and said he would most definitely see at least 2-4 leopards if he spent 2 nights there (we saw 14 sightings in 6 nights/7 days there last Sept).
Once we got off the 2nd boat, we then got BACK on another bus and drove for another 2 hours or so... To begin with you get excited to see village life again and all the different sights that you get along the road as opposed to along the river... but then by 6.30pm when it's getting a bit darker you just feel 'I've had enough now I'm ready for a quiet evening'.
The kids in the villages tend to run after the cars and shout 'toubab, toubab' (which I believe means 'tourist'). They ask for pens or sweets. But what I found a bit shocking is that they haven't been taught to say 'please' or 'thank you' [yet]... so if you walk down the street with a bunch of bananas bought from the market they'd say 'gimme banana', or 'gimme pen'... just 'gimme, gimme, gimme'... and if you did give it to them, they'd run away and wouldn't say anything else. Once a little girl approached me as I'd left a lodge with a cool 0.5L of mineral water and she said 'gimme your water'. I said 'why?', she said 'because it's cool'. So I handed her the bottle, thinking she was going to take a sip and hand me back the bottle, but no, she just walked off with it and never turned round to say thanks. I felt a bit stupid but thought 'ok, well, I can buy cool water again any time'... for them even the plastic bottles are a luxury and they recycle them to put oil in them as they are short of containers.
I guess a lot of it is down to education though. Parents obviously haven't taught them that 'toubabs' like such little formalities as 'please' and 'thank you'. But all of these little things were making me feel I wouldn't go back to Gambia really. I didn't find a spiritual connection there as I did in East Africa... I missed the 'big beasts'... and the acacia trees and the savannahs....
Gambian men were as persistent as I'd heard, with so many wanting my email address or tel number (as in 'I've never done this before, but when I saw you'... oh, PLEASE... spare me !) when really all they were after was an invite to come to the UK as they cannot come over easily without prior contacts (one of them actually told me). I also had a few proposals as in 'do you want me to come and visit in the middle of the night?'. This was, I may add, just after saying 'my name is Sylvie' when asked. NOT after a 3 hour of meaningful conversation. NO beating around the bush. Straight to the point. As I expressed shock & horror to my Nigerian friend on my return he explained : 'well, some European women do go over for sex, so why waste time? She knows what she wants, he is just checking they understand business, no need to dine & wine her'. Oh dear.... so NOT my scene. I must say I'd never seen sex so blatantly offered to me as I did in Gambia... and I wouldn't be surprised if I'd been expected to pay for it too! That also put me off big time.
What was rather sweet though was that the kids would usually wave as we drove past and it was like being the Queen or famous in some ways. Everybody got excited to see you and waved and screamed and run after your car... and yet they must have seen thousands of tourists by now, it's not like they wouldn't have seen anyone white for months !
Then, after almost 11 hours on the go, the end was in sight: we got to my b&b for the night, Farakunku. It was a little haven and something I'd given up hoping for in Gambia -- real high standards, spacious rooms, beautifully decorated, modern spot lights, 4 poster bed (!!)... It was like being in a royal palace after the cold shower treatment.
The mattress was beautiful too, airy, cool, soft linen... and even the food was superb. Houmus, olives and salad. Lady Fish with rice and a fantastic sauce and grapefruit & watermelon cocktail for dessert. It looked very European and SO HEALTHY. The electricity had gone in the patio area but it didn't matter... they had candles... so we put lots on the table and it actually looked very romantic. Moses & Heather, who own the lodge, were delightful. I only spoke briefly to Moses over dinner but Heather was so friendly. I was the ONLY guest that night, "the first of the season", so I felt we should share a meal instead of them standing up in the kitchen! Heather was really sweet, I felt I could relate to her nurturing type and to her feminine touch... the little bouquet of flowers on the tables... her own (very good) paintings on the wall. There, I felt I could have stayed much longer... but unfortunately this was to be my last night in the Gambia as I was leaving for London the very next day... but at least it seemed I'd saved the best for last...
When it was time to leave, I wasn't sad at all, in some ways I couldn't wait to see something else. I crave variety really. We were due to set off at 9am after breakfast but due to limited numbers of cars and drivers we had to bring our breakfast forward by an hour so that we could juggle all respective schedules as best as possible. At the time, it felt like torture as I hate getting up at 6.30am on holidays but it ended up being a blessing in disguise as it was going to be such a loooong day.
We first took a motor boat for 45 mins up river and then got off and boarded a bus for 2H30. I was seated next to the driver so that I could take decent pix and we made 3 nice stops on the way. The first one was the Stone Circle heritage site. It's a bit like Gambia's Stonehedge except that the stones were just about as tall as my chin (on average). There seems to be countless explanations for these stones (incl. "aliens did it") but no one seems to know for sure. They date back to 400BC-200 AD But this kind of monuments are found in several countries of Western Africa and also in France and the UK. Now people put little stones on top of the big ones and hope their wish will come true. They have a lot of weird beliefs like that... another is that if you can't get pregnant you should go to the crocodile pool and get the water from the pool blessed and it will help you 'so long as you stay close to your husband for 3 months' (I'd say that *this* will work far more effectively than the crocodile pool -- it has a ring of logic to it !). We even saw the Carmine bee-eaters (very red) in the area and they were delightful. Not too shy either, I could get fairly close for once - just walking slowly towards them. There were also plenty of abyssinian rollers on the telephone lines, dozens of them... what a treat...
The most beautiful stops though were near ponds with lots of giant water-lillies and what looked like trees of egrets. I took some lovely photos there. We even saw a beautiful exclamatory paradise whydah (a bird with a small body but a loooong black tail) and even a flock of 15+ hornbills (African Pied I seem to recall - white at the end of their wings). My guide said they are some of the rarest hornbills in Gambia and he had NEVER, in 15 years of professional bird watching, seen so many in one go. He was amazed. He understood the 'value' of the moment far more than any of us did as we had left the really keen bird-watchers behind at the Bird Safari Camp. We quickly stopped the car but they flew away before we had time to reach their tree (so I couldn't take decent pix, such a pity). We also saw quite a few monkeys, though, again, the moment you stopped the bus, they'd make a dash for the bush.
It was nice to break the journey a bit because it did feel terribly long. We then got onto the Safari Queen again for 2 H and that was the most boring part as we were right in the middle of the [wide at this point] Gambia river and there was nothing to see really. We never saw the dolphins :( We had a cooked lunch at 1.15pm, on board, and that was great. Thankfully I was seated to a chap who had travelled extensively so we passed time swapping tales: he told me of countries I hadn't seen before like Japan & South Korea or Cambodia and I told him of Palau and Iguazu. He'd been to Brazil just 6 months earlier but had skipped it. BIG mistake. I showed him my photos, he was crushed... oops. (I always keep my best pix on my memory cards for such occasions as pix speak louder than words). Sorry, let me rephrase that: I don't keep my best pix to upset people but to inspire them. He was going to go to Kruger for Xmas but had never seen a leopard so I gave him my tip on Arathusa Lodge in Sabi Sands Reserve and said he would most definitely see at least 2-4 leopards if he spent 2 nights there (we saw 14 sightings in 6 nights/7 days there last Sept).
Once we got off the 2nd boat, we then got BACK on another bus and drove for another 2 hours or so... To begin with you get excited to see village life again and all the different sights that you get along the road as opposed to along the river... but then by 6.30pm when it's getting a bit darker you just feel 'I've had enough now I'm ready for a quiet evening'.
The kids in the villages tend to run after the cars and shout 'toubab, toubab' (which I believe means 'tourist'). They ask for pens or sweets. But what I found a bit shocking is that they haven't been taught to say 'please' or 'thank you' [yet]... so if you walk down the street with a bunch of bananas bought from the market they'd say 'gimme banana', or 'gimme pen'... just 'gimme, gimme, gimme'... and if you did give it to them, they'd run away and wouldn't say anything else. Once a little girl approached me as I'd left a lodge with a cool 0.5L of mineral water and she said 'gimme your water'. I said 'why?', she said 'because it's cool'. So I handed her the bottle, thinking she was going to take a sip and hand me back the bottle, but no, she just walked off with it and never turned round to say thanks. I felt a bit stupid but thought 'ok, well, I can buy cool water again any time'... for them even the plastic bottles are a luxury and they recycle them to put oil in them as they are short of containers.
I guess a lot of it is down to education though. Parents obviously haven't taught them that 'toubabs' like such little formalities as 'please' and 'thank you'. But all of these little things were making me feel I wouldn't go back to Gambia really. I didn't find a spiritual connection there as I did in East Africa... I missed the 'big beasts'... and the acacia trees and the savannahs....
Gambian men were as persistent as I'd heard, with so many wanting my email address or tel number (as in 'I've never done this before, but when I saw you'... oh, PLEASE... spare me !) when really all they were after was an invite to come to the UK as they cannot come over easily without prior contacts (one of them actually told me). I also had a few proposals as in 'do you want me to come and visit in the middle of the night?'. This was, I may add, just after saying 'my name is Sylvie' when asked. NOT after a 3 hour of meaningful conversation. NO beating around the bush. Straight to the point. As I expressed shock & horror to my Nigerian friend on my return he explained : 'well, some European women do go over for sex, so why waste time? She knows what she wants, he is just checking they understand business, no need to dine & wine her'. Oh dear.... so NOT my scene. I must say I'd never seen sex so blatantly offered to me as I did in Gambia... and I wouldn't be surprised if I'd been expected to pay for it too! That also put me off big time.
What was rather sweet though was that the kids would usually wave as we drove past and it was like being the Queen or famous in some ways. Everybody got excited to see you and waved and screamed and run after your car... and yet they must have seen thousands of tourists by now, it's not like they wouldn't have seen anyone white for months !
Then, after almost 11 hours on the go, the end was in sight: we got to my b&b for the night, Farakunku. It was a little haven and something I'd given up hoping for in Gambia -- real high standards, spacious rooms, beautifully decorated, modern spot lights, 4 poster bed (!!)... It was like being in a royal palace after the cold shower treatment.
The mattress was beautiful too, airy, cool, soft linen... and even the food was superb. Houmus, olives and salad. Lady Fish with rice and a fantastic sauce and grapefruit & watermelon cocktail for dessert. It looked very European and SO HEALTHY. The electricity had gone in the patio area but it didn't matter... they had candles... so we put lots on the table and it actually looked very romantic. Moses & Heather, who own the lodge, were delightful. I only spoke briefly to Moses over dinner but Heather was so friendly. I was the ONLY guest that night, "the first of the season", so I felt we should share a meal instead of them standing up in the kitchen! Heather was really sweet, I felt I could relate to her nurturing type and to her feminine touch... the little bouquet of flowers on the tables... her own (very good) paintings on the wall. There, I felt I could have stayed much longer... but unfortunately this was to be my last night in the Gambia as I was leaving for London the very next day... but at least it seemed I'd saved the best for last...
posted by Sylvie at 9:51 PM
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