Day 3: Ile Gorée, Dakar & a flat tire...

Day 3 (10/22/23)

We have breakfast at 7:00. We're pretty much alone at that time because the buffet doesn't actually open until 7:30. Last night was very humbling for all of us. This time it wasn't just me who heard the bass and music from the disco directly below us. The beds shook until 2 a.m., the music was so loud it was like having a boombox in front of the window.

We will definitely ask today if there is another room! So we can't stand another week here... (and the many critters in front of and in the room are another point of criticism).

At 7:30 the local driver is at the door. Into an absolute piece of junk. Welcome to Africa! We only pay a fraction of the price of what the TUI package trip would have cost. And we wouldn't have been able to decide individually where we wanted to go.

The first thought when you see the car: “Does it have air conditioning?” Without it I probably won't survive the 2 hour drive to Dakar..."
Son gets sick quickly, so he sits in the front, husband and I in the back and daughter in the middle. There is a blanket on the back seat that we sit on. I'm not sitting down yet, I already have a wet bottom. The seat is soaking wet! The driver laughs and explains that he cleaned the car and washed the seats especially for us - with a lot of water!

Ok, we notice. I'm sitting on the towels we packed, but my butt is still wet. It will be a great 2 hour drive to Dakar.
Our travel guide “Magnifique” joins us at the hotel gate. He also makes his jokes about the soaking wet seats. I don't understand everything, it's been a few years since I learned French at school, but my husband speaks it fluently and talks to "Magnifique" while we bump through the many small streets of the towns, looking for an ATM, changing money, with a bad feeling Stomach ignore the begging children who press their noses against the car window and put their little hands in the car as the husband gets money from the ATM.

The kids, five in total, are wearing torn clothes, two of them have no shoes on, and all of them are carrying a small plastic bucket in their hands. My heart breaks. Unfortunately I don't have anything with me, not even sweets or anything. Our driver chases them away.

Welcome to Senegal, away from the “beautiful, ideal world of the 5***** hotel”.

Today is Sunday, so the streets are largely empty, no markets and no “rush hour traffic” – if you can call it that. Here and there a horse or donkey cart. I also get a stomach ache when I look at the small, delicate, mostly completely emaciated horses running in front of huge, sometimes fully loaded carts.

How spoiled we are...

With every passing minute I understand my husband's dislike of “consumption” and “waste” more. If you grew up in a third world country for years, you just have a different outlook on life...

At around 9 a.m. we are on the highway just before Dakar. Our driver speeds past the overcrowded local buses at 120 km/h, where some of the passengers are standing on the outside of the bus at 100 km/h and holding on to the railing. OMG!!!

I'm just barely over the sight of the bus passenger standing on the back of the bus bumper, holding on to the rear doors, when there is a loud bang followed by a violent thud directly below me. Oh god – what was that????

The husband shouts something in French to the driver, we slow down and with careful steering movements - with loud French shouts from the husband and "Magnifique", we roll to the right on the 3-lane road to the side and stop - in front of the gates of the big city - on the dusty shoulder. The tire on my rear side burst!

How lucky that nothing happened! We didn't even have working seatbelts in the back of the car.

We all get out and look for some shade under a tree, Magnifique and the driver look in the trunk for tools and a spare tire. Apparently something like this happens more often, neither of them are surprised about the burst tire or helpless. You know exactly what to do.

I, on the other hand, am anything but relaxed. The situation is overwhelming for me, the heat, lack of air conditioning, flat tires... In Africa….

The driver and Magnifique put the spare tire on after about 10 minutes and assured us that everything was ok. We could now move on.

With mixed feelings we get back in the car and drive on to Dakar, to the port. Here we buy a ticket for the Ile Gorée, the former slave island.

In the waiting area we meet two TUI groups who also come from our hotel.

I am also approached by dozens of “traders” who all tell me their names and of course have the “best” shop on the Ile Gorée and definitely give me the best price for souvenirs. I have to promise to visit her on the island and buy something. Oh dear...

So after less than 15 minutes I have a date with “Ayla”, “Maria No.1”, “Maria No.2”, “Elisabeth”, “Mama” and “Claudia Schiffer” 🤣😂😅

After an almost endless wait in the ferry terminal building, you board the ferry with the sonorous name “Beer”. The ferry is packed!!!

We first sit on top, but as we drive through the harbor and see not only the big “pots” but also the cruise giant “Mein Schiff”, we stand in the shade on the lower deck at the railing. It's too hot up in the sun.

The crossing to the island takes 30 minutes, then we have solid ground under our feet again. We are greeted by a drum and singer group on the jetty.

You are not allowed to visit the island alone, you need a “guide”. Magnifique organizes an English-speaking guide for us to explore the Ile Goree.

The gate remembers many details, but also many things that did not exist 40 years ago (the “selfie” heart on the pier, the Mémorial Gorée-Almadies, which stands like a huge white sail on the hill).

We walk through the colorful streets, past the church and stalls up to the hill to the cannons “Canon de Navaronnes” and the Mémorial Gorée-Almadies. From up here you have a beautiful view.

Some sheep are lying in the shade of the bushes, dealers are sitting everywhere trying to sell their works of art, pictures and jewelry.

It's getting very hot in the sun, luckily there's a bit of wind.

We go back down and continue to the House of Slaves (Maison des esclaves), where millions of Africans were enslaved and shipped to America for almost 200 years.

A truly horrible idea. The small museum on the first floor of the house shows many painted pictures, documents and models from that time. Goosebumps moment at the “Door of No Return” (Porte du voyage sans retour). Anyone who passed through here never came back.

After lunch in a small restaurant opposite the pier, we take the same ferry “Beer”, which is again packed, back to Dakar on the mainland.

Our driver is waiting for us – with a new tire! The car was in the workshop in the meantime. We drive past the train station into the city center and stop at the husband's former home, discover his old route to school, which he used to walk to his school when he was in primary school, and then drive on to this very primary school, which still exists today - 40 years later ! The “École Franco-Senegalaise Dial Diop” has even opened its doors. Since today is Sunday, of course all the rooms are locked and no children are in school, but some workers who are working on the outside of a school building allow us to enter the school yard and look around. The husband reminisces. He rediscovers his old classrooms, which he used in grades 1 and 2. Class and 3rd + 4th attended class. Of course, everything here is now new and renovated, even the schoolyard is now very modern and colorful, but the husband is still visibly touched by the journey into his past.

Very exciting for us too - after all, we only know everything here in Dakar from old photos.

After a few photo stops, including at the Mosque of the Divinity on Plage Ouakam and a short visit to the market (we are overrun by the merchants as we are the only tourists and end up quickly looking for the “far away”), we drive to the last destination for today, the Monument de la Renaissance Africaine, a 49 m high bronze statue from 2010 depicting a woman, a man and a child looking out to sea.

While the husband, daughter and Magnifique climb the steep stairs to the statue, my son and I wait in the shade below. Too hot and too many steps…

In front of us, 5 “Mein Schiff” excursion buses roll down the street and park on the shoulder. The ferry was already half full with “Mein Schiff” tour groups that were visiting the Ile Gorée and were traveling in groups of 30-40 people each.

Same now. All of a sudden, hundreds of cruise tourists are milling about on the stairs to the monument. Luckily we got there a little earlier and were able to leave the monument before the hustle and bustle.

The TUI bus with the tour group from our hotel also stops here. So we'll see each other again 🙈😅

We are exhausted and decide to go back to the hotel. The return journey takes forever and our local tour guides are now really unlucky! Shortly before the hotel a police officer waves us out. We learn from Magnifique that the police here are corrupt and that if you are waved out you actually have no choice but to “buy your way out”. This is what happens to our driver, who grits his teeth and comes back to the car and says that he has now lost all of his earnings from today's tour to the police officer. We don't know whether the two are officially not allowed to play travel guides. But one thing is clear: for both of them, today is a losing proposition with us - after a burst tire, a workshop and a police report.

Since we only paid a few euros compared to the TUI tour or the tour operator's offer at the hotel, where you could also have hired "a driver and car", we gave them both a €50 note and thanked them for today's trip.

Both are still trying to persuade us to go on another trip. If it weren't so hot, I would like to do something, but with temperatures of almost 40 degrees - without air conditioning - I can't imagine doing that.

At the hotel we ask at the reception if there is an opportunity to change rooms as we cannot cope with the disco noise at night.

The staff is really helpful. After 15 minutes of “searching” we were told that we could come by in 30 minutes and pick up our new room cards.

Yay – it can’t get any worse (… or can it!?)

We pack our things, take a quick shower and roll our suitcases downstairs. Our new rooms are in “Villa Number 6”, sounds promising 🤩🤪

Villa 6 is the building in the first row of the beach, near the main pool, on the outside... so the furthest away from, for example, the restaurant and water park. Doesn't matter!

We have rooms 6210 & 6212 on the 2nd floor. No elevator, but a sea view 😃😃😃

And: almost no critters!!! Yeah!!! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

We move into the new rooms, go out for dinner and just manage to watch today's show, a Madonna cover show, before we fall into bed exhausted!