Day 3: Change in plans

The Halal pizza was delicious. It was a thin crust pizza with tomato and cheese and had chicken, beef, olives and mushrooms on it. The hotel restaurant was taken over by about a dozen Dutch tourists in their 50s-60s who were boozing it up. They were very loud, but friendly.

Though it was pitch dark I decided I wanted to see what Saint-Louis was like at night. Well, for one thing, it is dark. I suppose that in a poor country, wasting energy on streetlights probably doesn't make sense. Fortunately, I had a flashlight, a key thing to have given how uneven the roads are.

There isn't much going on. The only thing I stumbled on was activity at the military domicile. There were some teenage kids around the front of the complex and other, older soldiers in uniform watching TV inside. The news all over TV tonight is about the attempted coup d'état in neighbouring Guinea-Bissau. Some mutinous soldiers surrounded the Presidential Palace in Bissau, the capital, and are shelling it. Sénégalese troops are on high alert and have been rushed to the border to keep the violence from spilling over here. (Now keep in mind this is on the southern border. I am on the northern border, 700 kilometres away. Please understand that I am in absolutely NO danger.)

Tomorrow I was supposed to take a bush taxi 500 kilometres south to Banjul in The Gambia. But I had been rethinking that plan already. It's a 10 hour drive, including a 2 hour wait at the border, payment of bribes and boat trip across the river on a ferry notorious for pick-pockets. I am not finished exploring Saint-Louis yet. Also, I think the military situation might make the drive even worse with a longer wait at the border into Gambia and even more so when I come back into Sénégal on Wednesday. My nightmare scenario is that Sénégal closes the border altogether and I am stuck in The Gambia unable to get back to Dakar and catch my flight home.

Tomorrow, I will ask Marcel if I can stay a couple more days. I may have to switch rooms but that is okay. I will spend the last 3 in Dakar then. That means more relaxing and exploring and less driving.