It’s been a week, so guess what that means?
Relax, at least this time my travel is legitimately regional. And with the travel schedule that I am currently keeping, I seriously am considering leaving my suitcase packed.
I do so love maps, and I’m quite sure that most of you have never heard of an area called Cap Skirring in Senegal. Weird name, you say? Not really. For example, if my Masshole family had been French-speakers, we’d say that we came from Cap Cod- or actually Cap Cabillaud. But I digress…
Here we are in the south of Senegal, quite close to Guinea-Bissau (bet you didn’t know that was a country either!!).
How did we get down here to the Cap Skirring/Ziguinchor environs? Airplane? A drive through The Gambia? Nope, even better….
Behold the chariot! It ain’t haze grey and you don’t have to wait 60 days to enjoy one of these…
Poseidon Look at me, oh (all hands on deck)
That’s right, we took the ferry down from Dakar. A rather new boat, it takes about 14 hours to reach Ziguinchor. Our scheduled underway time was for 8pm, and Liz (above) and I were quite impressed as we hung out at the stern and saw the lines cast off at 8:01. Not bad, Senegal. You still manage to surprise us sometimes…
So overnight on the ferry- I shared a four-man cabin with the Meydo family. Happy to be back at sea, I was rocked to sleep at the early hour of 10pm.
The next morning. Thanks to my trusty body clock, I woke up in time to see that something cool was going to happen soon.
Waiting for that cool thing to happen, I can’t escape the reality that I am a bit of a nerd, impressed that Senegal knows what ball diamond ball means…
When I was a kid, we had an end table in the living room that Dad made (well, he made all of our furniture, but that’s besides the point at the moment). On this particular table he had affixed a series of photographs at sunset that he had taken by the ocean. So, in a tribute to my father’s long-standing creativity, I give you a few photos of sunrise over West Africa while in the river:
I do love being at sea- and a big reason for that is the stuff you find in nature: the photoluminescence, the aurora borealis, sunrise, the CO screaming at you because the BMOW forgot to strike eight bells on time….
Our arrival at Ziguinchor isn’t all that remarkable- somewhat akin to arriving back in Falmouth via the Island Queen. Okay, so it’s totally not like that, but I will say that our arrival did produce one major point of intrigue:
That’s right, we get armed escorts to our hotel
I’m totally not kidding!
More to follow….
