You know how sometimes you visit a certain place and immediately think, “Wow, so-and-so would really love it here”? Well, I don’t exactly have that thought cropping up too frequently in Senegal, but that’s not to say it never happens. Today’s adventure had me bringing someone to the very place that I thought he would enjoy, and fulfilling that rare thought process made for a very cool experience for the two of us.
We’re on the road out of Dakar, and on this day I got my first glimpse of the new toll booths installed to match the shiny new autoroute. As I mentioned in my previous entry, progress
is taking place in Senegal.
Ndank ndank.
There aren’t too many major roads out here, and when you’re talking about going north and south off of the peninsula, I’d say that your choices of paved options are pretty limited. When you’re traversing the same routes all the time, you always keep your eye out for familiar sites. For example, when leaving Dakar I’m always looking for 1) the sheep market 2) the cement factory 3) the OiLibya station and 4) the mint sellers. But that’s just me.
I’ve also passed this sign many times- and each time I go by I am intrigued. Sure it would be fun to check out one day, but over the past two years I have always thought that my little brother would be a fun person to bring along for the (potentially treacherous) adventure.
Well lucky for me (and him!) that my excellent little brother (he’s
le benjamin of the family) is in town. He’s never been to Africa before, so I want to try and give him a visit that shows a diverse cross-section of what this country is all about. Our first stop outside of Dakar takes us to
Accrobaobab for a morning of climbing trees.
I’ll pause here for those of you who are not familiar with baobab trees. I learned about these amazing giants back when I first read
Le Petit Prince in high school (it’s an excellent book that you really must pick up, by the way). Senegal has two national symbols- one is the
baobab tree and the other is the lion. I kinda liken these trees to our sequoias- they live a really long time and grow very tall. People say that they look they’re growing upsidedown, and the fruit has many uses (to include food, juice, medicine and skin products). Baobabs are even sometimes used as burial places for holy men- and also I believe that somewhere in this country someone stuck a modern toilet inside one and it is now kind of a bathroom. But I’m getting off topic. Back to climbing…
John and I sign forms stating that we have insurance (Whoa! We have to sign something that hints at safety and liability in this country?!) before Adama (our guide) gets us going on the familiarization course that is just a few feet off of the ground.
John and I are both proud graduates of Falmouth High School. Our fantastic public school education offered many gym classes that suited just about every taste and ability level. Me, for example, I only got a B+ in my Basic Badminton class (“Well, you sucked” was the explanation given by the teacher before he decided to bump me up to an A). There was another gym class offered, and it was called Project Adventure. John and I both took this course during our tenure, and we both did very well. It involved a lot of climbing and swinging from stuff- which was simultaneously kinda scary and exhilarating. Accrobaobab is a lot like Project Adventure.
So here we go, on our way up into the trees to see how rusty our climbing skills have become over the years. Wait, was this really my idea?
It’s a nice morning- not yet hot and we largely have the place to ourselves. Adama speaks a tiny bit of English so he knows what must be communicated to John in terms of safety. Me, I’m doing a half-assed job of translating the rest because my brain often forgets to distinguish between English and French. Good thing John scores high marks in dexterity and intuition, because I just keep expecting him to understand what is going on.
We’re zooming around like two little kids. This place is really great!
Most of the activities that are worth doing in Senegal are the ones where you just have to push the “I Believe” button. Over here people are not as keyed up about safety and fear of being sued. Life just operates with a different mentality- for better or for worse- and out of necessity. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?
At this stage I’m not sure how the rest of our trip is going to compare to this experience- that is, if we get down off this course in one piece. Yes, I am still a protective older sister who needs to ensure that her sibling gets back home again so without any hockey sidelining injuries.
They’ve actually hauled a pirogue up here, and we board our Senegalese spaceship for a quick trip to the next tree. Much more rapide than your standard
car rapide.
It’s all in the swing…
We zipline across some trees and stick our landing onto this webbing before climbing across. I will say that for me, the toughest part of the course was all of the upper arm work. Before joining the Navy, I could do exactly zero push-ups. I can now do 30 ugly ones on my best day- but tis place has given me motivation to switch up my workout regimen and do 30 pretty push-ups.
The grand finale for the ropes stuff is a really long zipline. They advertise it as the longest zipline between two trees in the world- and I figure that they don’t have much competition at this niveau. So up, up, up we go to check this adventure block.
Aw man, this is a long zipline. The view from 24 meters up is pretty fantastic. It’s also windy up here.
“Allez John! Cri de guerre- yee haaa!” says Adama. We’re not spanning any gorges or anything, but it does take a fairly long time to traverse this thing.
After all of that upper body work, we move on to the scaling a baobab. Me, I am pretty much depleted in terms of strength, but I do my best to scale up as far as I can. See that big branch on the left? That’s as far as I got. I was wiped out.
The show-off brother on the other hand? Well he zips straight to the top of the tree. Methinks he found a secret ladder located just around the back.
Our two hours of tree scaling is successful, but I’m ready for retirement. We’ve earned our completion certificates and a nice bottle of cold water. Accrobaobab did not disappoint, and the staff was truly fantastic. Adama, by the way, was a real professional guy who also works in Dakar to clean windows of tall buildings. He says that he loves this kind of work. I think he’s nuts.
Here’s me and our chauffeur (who took all of these photos, by the way) heading back out to untamed landscape and towards our car. We’ve got more adventures that await, and all of them will be closer to the ground.
