At the beach
Today we have not much to tell. After a very late breakfast we walk to the beach to stay there for the bigger part of the day. Elisabeth uses her suncream, but I lie down in the shadow. Well, not that we see much of the sun since most of the time the sky is grey and reddish from sand. But the temperature is very pleasant. This time we take the beachchairs where we are even served soft drinks. But there is no difference in the harassment by salesmen who walk by.
But the way people bother us here is totally different than the way they do it in Egypt or Morroco. People here stay friendly and leave when you ask them to. Well, most do and weknow from experience that it can be much worse. People try to sell anything, 'real' Rolex watches, women with plastic bags filled with water, fruits and vegetables, boys who offer horseriding on the beach, all is possible.
At the end of the afternoon we take a cab to Fajara. Otherwise we wouldn't see anything else than our hotel. From conversation with other people in the hotel we learn that many have only come to Gambia for the weather and the beach, not for the country; some even don't come outside the hotel complex at all!
Should people not realise this is a third world country? Where the inhabitants are very inventive and creative to repair anything that we would have thrown away a long time ago, like these car wrecks here. Don't be surprised if they make two running cars from 3 wrecks. Refrigerators and tv's are transported here to a repair shop, economical as the people have to be. But we are surprised, again, that we almost see no tourists outside the hotels.We want to have dinner at another place today and we walk to La Plaza, a restaurant that has a good name, but probably the chef has a day off, since we like the food in our hotel much better and it is also cheaper than here. We take an official tourist-taxi (green) back to the hotel and it turns out that we pay much less than the yellow-green cab we took on our way here: they are supposed to be much cheaper!
At night Elisabeth meets Salifu, the guard at our hotel. Yesterday I had a very interesting conversation with him and she agrees with me that he is a very nice and friendly man, not as obtrusive like most man who work here. This time we have problems leaving him, since he wants to keep on talking, but after an hour we tell him that that's enough for tonight and leave him with a few bottles of cola to stay alert throughout the night. We don't want to think about it: 12 hours of sitting outside with most of the times nothing to do...
We haven't done much but still feel very tired, maybe from the warmth and the fact that we finally get some rest. But we go to bed too late, because the temperature is still nice at night (20 to 22 degrees). Tomorrow we will have to get up early since we are going on an excursion.
© Teije and Elisabeth 2000 - 2012
Travel through Europe and Africa
with Elisabeth and Teije