Dakar, Senegal

Dakar is the capital of Senegal, in West Africa. It’s an Atlantic port on the Cap-Vert peninsula.

Instead of 8:00am, our ship got cleared close to 9:00am. Not a problem for us as our tour was suppose to start at 9:00am.

I booked a tour for 4 people. Erin, Mui and us.
We met our guide Oamar as soon as we exited. the ship.
He spoke very good English and almost all the way to Reserve de Bundia talked nonstop. He told us many interesting facts about life, education and history of Senegal.
The area was colonised by Portuguese in the 15th century. Portuguese established a presence on the island ofGorée and used it as a base for slave trade. French took over the island in 17th century.
The country gained an independence in 1960.
Still 40 percent of population is illiterate and 60 percent younger then 19 years old. Unemployment is 50 percent. Big problem with drugs.
95 percent of the population are Muslims, and the use of drugs is prohibited.
Our tour guide told us he has 29 brothers and sisters from his father’s side and 9 from his mother’s side. Each man can have up to 4 wives if he can afford them and has to threat them equally.
It took us one hour to reach the Reserve.
We got onto safari 4x4 open car and had a wonderful tour for an hour through the reserve. We saw lots of animals, trees, birds. Very enjoyable.
Then we drove for another for more then 1.5 hours to reach a restaurant for a lunch.
The traffic was very heavy and the roads are horrible.
The so called restaurant was on the property of the hotel.
The meal was in the form of the buffet: rice, chicken, pasta and bananas.
I had a small piece of chicken and two bananas.
The restaurant was close to another attraction- Pink lake. This lake has a very big concentration of salt and used for salt mining. The lake is suppose to have a pink colour because of algae. Recently there were lots of rain and the lake was flooded.
Because of the this, the algae died and the colour of the water is changed and now it is a normal water colour.
We needed to be back on the ship by 5:00pm and were a little concerned about the traffic.
Our driver took a short cut on unpaved road, but avoided the traffic.
We were back on the ship after 4:00pm, took shower and had a great dinner at the specialty restaurant.Read more