Dakar, Senegal - Pink Lake

17 photos and 2 videos

Driving through the Niayes greenbelt we get to the Pink Lake (located 22 miles NE of Dakar) which was not pink today and actually has not been since the heavy rains (its rainy season from May to November) in the last few weeks and the washing away of algae that makes the color. It is normally pink because of the high amount of salt that feeds an aquatic microorganism making it’s 40% salt content, more than even the Dead Sea at 35%. They were selling salt and showed us how everything is very salty. There are 3000 workers that work 7 hours a day to accumulate (for export) 38,000 tons of salt per year from this lake! Due to this high salt content, they need to lather themselves in shea butter to protect their skin from this toxic effects.

We went on an 4x4 adventure. The 4x4 needed a little maintenance. Well, that is an understatement since it was falling apart everywhere, with bars that were rusted away and could easily become projectile objects, holes in the floor and the engine that stalled numerous times, leaving us abandoned as the other 4x4 left the area. We took an incredibly bumpy ride to the lake and then the famous sand dunes used for the Amsterdam-Dakar and Paris-Dakar races. It is a 6,214 miles, 10 hour per day, 2 week off-road motorcycle and 4x4 endurance test where it is hard to find your way in the rocky and dangerous sand dunes as indicated by the fact that right from the start, of the 182 vehicles and only 74 finished. Although there have been 28 years of races all with different routes, this location in Dakar has always remained part of the race and its finishing point. Note: You may remember that in 1982 Margaret Thatcher’s son did this race and got lost for 6 days in the dessert. This adventure ended with cleaning up and then eating at a Senegalese lunch at a resort, Keur Salim.En savoir plus