Decisions, decisions ......

We went to central Dakar the first morning, initially to the port to look at the prices & times of Le Wilis - the new boat to Casamance. I was keen to go by road, Gianni wasn't bothered either way but we had to consider both time & money

Looking at price of 18,500CFA for a couchette each, it made sense to get the boat down to Casamance rather than pay a variety of taxi brousse to Gambia, change currency to Dalasi and find our way out of Gambia and then back into Senegal to Ziguinchor. Added to which we would have had to pay for a night somewhere along the road, an additional expense!

We bought the ticket for the following night's boat and walked into town looking for somewhere to eat and generally milling around. We were both shocked by the amount of small shops owned by Chinese, these small outlets used to be Senegalese owned & run. Now the Chinese have bought them up and have one or two Senegalese working for them.

Zig

I was enamoured with Zig, generally a friendly town, very laid back in comparison with Dakar. We were immediately picked up by every taxi driver in town but kept walking out of the port area as we weren't sure where to stay and desperately needed a coffee.

Refreshed, we left a cafe and headed for an auberge mentioned in the Italian Lonely Planet, Keur N'dame (? I think). Arriving there we immediately decided against it, filthy and without showers. We hoped to find something a little better at CasaAfrique. Trudging through town with taxi drivers stopping to offer us a lift at ridiculous prices we arrived at CasaAfrique and found a great room having already been enchanted by it's garden coverered in hibiscus.

For 8,000CFA between the two of us it was a great choice. The owner offered us a better rate of 650CFA -1Euro as opposed to 640 in Dakar. As it was a Saturday we were going to have to stay until at least Monday morning so as to organise our Guinea-Bissau visas at the consulate in Zig.








We wandered around town for the rest of the day, got annoyed by touts and made friends with a jewellery selling tout determined to sell us something; we finally had the last laugh as I tried to sell him some of the jewellery I had on ...

Sitting in a cafe wandering where to eat as there didn't seem to be much open, we heard a lot of noise from outside ... a wedding procession.

Unfortunately the light wasn't good, so the pictures are very unclear ...

Killing time in Zig

There isn't too much to do in Zig without getting in a vehicle and exploring the surrounding area which is meant to be beautiful. Being a tightfisted pair, we wandered on foot around town prefering to save money that we might need later on during the trip.

Late afternoon we went off in a different direction towards the church and came across some pigs with their young foraging in the grass beside the road. Gianni noticed them first and as I had the camera out already and took a photo or two ... BAD MOVE.

Suddenly someone came up to us and started yelling at me that he was the pig's owner and demanded 2,000CFA for the photos. I looked at him and asked if he was really the owner, he insisted and wanted the money. I suggested that all 3 of us go to the gendarmerie and discuss it there. He wandered off still protesting that he was entitled to money ... we continued walking chuckling to ourselves ... but the story didn't end there!





Being a Sunday there was a lot of the centre of town shut but we bumped into Antoni, Scicilian working as an architect in Switzerland that Gianni had travelled with from Mauritania to St. Louis a few weeks earlier. Antoni was with 3 others, an Aussie, Korean & Parisien. They knew an excellent restaurant on the other side of town that they'd been to the night before so we all walked over to have the most amazing meal with a waitress that definately hadn't been to 'smile school' who managed to drop a plate of fish ends in my lap!!!



Jacques, the Parisien, was telling us about the drama that had happened 4 days earlier. He was concerned for our safety as we were due to cross to Guinea Bissau the following day once we'd got our visas in the morning. Apparently a German priest's car was ambushed on the road near the border (known for problems) and everything was stolen, to the point that the priest had to strip and walked back to Zig in his underpants; funny, but not so funny!

We left the restaurant and headed back to our hotels, to discover the 4 of them were staying in the place opposite CasaAfrique. They had an early start to get to Tambacounda, we had to be at the Consulate for 9am or so, we weren't sure of the opening times ...