After a good nights sleep we got up had some tea and started to packed up. Before we had finished, we had some more visitors from one of the villages close by, three women and one man. Which we had a broken chat with in a mix of French and English. We said our good byes and headed out onto the main road and continued east. Only a short distance down the road we stopped and picked up some fresh bread and then drove on a little more before pulling off the road to stop for some breakfast. Within a couple of minutes some local lads had found us, and they kept us company while we had breakfast. Once out on the road again, heading east, we passed through Koungheui, Koumpentoum and Koussanar, before arriving at Tambacounda around late morning. Once in town, we spotted a Total garage with a mechanics pit, which we stopped at to change the engine oil, oil filter and fuel filter. As well as filling up on Diesel. Emiel went first with their Landy. The mechanics didn’t have the wright-sized spanner to remove the drain sump plug, so I fished out my tools and loosened it off for them. Then they made an ordeal of getting the old oil filter off, and in he process punchiered the oil filter, covering them selves in oil. Eventually they got it off, replaced it with the new one and refilled the engine with new oil. Then it was my turn. Thankfully mine was more straightforward, as they drained the oil and got the old oil filter off with not too much grief. Whilst they refilled the engine with new oil, I changed the fuel filter, and then checked that they had done everything back up tight. That done we popped round the bank to change some more money and then went for a walk round the market to stock up on supplies. This included stopping at the local bottle shop to get some more beer and then going next door for some lunch, before returning to the Landies. With our jobs done we left town and headed for the national park. It was an easy drive down and it was late afternoon by the time we got to the park entrance. Figuring it was not worth paying to go in straight away, we decided to stay at the campsite nearby and then go in the following day. Once settled in we checked over the Landies. I found that the air filter was quite mucky and so sent a lot of the evening cleaning and re-oiling it, whilst having some dinner while it was drying. Very tired I fell into bed and was fast asleep in minutes.
We woke up, had some breakfast and packed the gear. Then drove round the corner to the park entrance. It was only when we tried getting tickets to enter the park did they tell us the it was obligatory to take a guide. This would cost us an additional 6000CFA per day. We tried telling them that we didn’t want a guide, but they kept insisting it was a new rule and pointing at a notice on the wall. Well this meant it was more expensive than we expected and decided it was not worth it, as unknown to them we would be passing world class nature reserves in a lot of the countries we intend ongoing through. Disappointed, we decided we would drive on to the Casamance region in south Senegal, as that was were we were planning to go after the national park anyway. We decided to take a piste, which was a short cut to the main road we wanted to travel south west on. This turned out to be a great drive, with some good off-roading in places, passing through little villages and lush bush land. Once we had met the main road we then turn and followed it south-west until we arrived at a small town called Velingara, and stopped and had some lunch. Over lunch we decided that we would take the piste to Kolda, as it took a more direct route and would be more interesting that the main road. We were not disappointed, as the piste took us through some great villages and passed some lovely scenery. We even spotted some monkeys hiding in the bush not far form the piste. As we were nearing the end of the piste, we decided that it would be nicer to bush camp short of Kolda and then drive in first thing the next day. We turned off the piste and drove into the bush about 60m or so. The bush was quite thick so we were well obscured from the piste. I was late afternoon and there was still a few hours of light left, so I took the opportunity to have a wash and investigate some electrical problem caused by the rough piste. It turned out to be the split charge relay. Which I removed and connected the two main leads coming from the positive terminals together. Other than a herd of cows and a herdsman coming through around dusk it was a quiet cool night, by the time we went to bed.
We awoke with the light, had breakfast, packed up and pick our way through the bush for the short distance back to the piste. It was a short drive into Kolda, were we only stopped to get some bread before heading out of town for Ziguinchor. It was a straightforward drive down, which gave us a chance to look at the scenery as we went along. The foliage was far more tropical looking, with big palms and ferns, broken up with areas of wetland and the occasional view of the river. There was plenty of army check points along the way, but the majority just waved us through, and the ones that did stop us generally just wanted a chat and were very friendly. It was early afternoon by the time we arrived in Ziguinchor, but we ended up spending a couple of hours driving round trying to find a campment called ZAG. After a big tour of a lot of the available accommodation we settled on a place just on the southern outskirts of the town called Auberge Aw-bay?. We later found out that this was the place we had been looking for, and had changed its name from campment ZAG. The place was clean and tidy, with nice showers and toilets. But the rooms were a bit stuffy and hot, so we slept in the roof tents inside the compound.
After a leisurely start to the day we set off for Cap Skiring. It was not long down the road did the driving conditions get bad. The road was very pot holed in places, so much so it was virtually impossible to not hit a few, and in many cases it was easier to leave the road and drive along the edge were other vehicles had made tracks. The evening before I had found cracks in the rear doorframe. As the weight of the spare wheel and the rough roads were too much for it. So I stopped in a small town called Oussouye to get the door welded up. The local welder had a go first, and turned what were small cracks into a bit gap. I then took the welder off of him and had a crack at it myself. I managed to weld to plates over the cracked areas and weld another crack up. But it was a real rough ass job as it was hard to see what I was doing and the welder had no adjustment on it. With the temporary repair done, we continued on our way to Cap Skiring along the potholed road. Once there we decided to continue on to a little village 9km further north. It was piste all the way there, and once we had had a look around decided we would be better off back in Cap Skiring, so we drove back. We then drove round a lot of the accommodation listed in our books trying to find some were to stay at a reasonable price. This took all afternoon and there was no one really good option. Along the way we had met this local guide who had latched onto us and way trying to help us out. We eventually settled for the compromise of Emiel and Mirjam staying in one of the nice but pricey small hotels and I opted for staying in the garden of one of this guides mates. We spent the remainder of the afternoon talking through what to do next and sipping a beer. I then took my Landy round to this guys place and soon was introduced and got talking to the local lads. Most of them were guides in the area and they told me about the tours they run around the local waterways. Later that evening after dinner I went back t one of these guys places were we said chatting and drinking tea. Until it was time for me to return to the Landy and get my head down.
I awoke shorted a few bits and bobs had a snack for breakfast before heading round the corner to meet Emiel and Mirjam at the hotel. We decided that we would spend a little time seeing if we could arrange to go on a half day trip around the waterways in a motor driven canoe. This didn’t work out and so by around 09:00 we left and headed back along the potholed road to Ziguinchor. We were originally hoping to stay a couple of days at Cap Skiring chilling out and catching up on jobs. But the place for me was a bit of a disappointment. As lots of things were closed or very pricey. Once back at Ziguinchor, we returned to Auberge Aw-bay?. Where we spent the afternoon getting chores out of the way and reading. During which I fell asleep for an hour swinging gently in a hammock under a mango tree. We had an nice meal that evening and spent the rest of the evening sorting out photo’s on the laptop, before going to bed.
We woke, had some breaky and went into town quite early. There we done a quick bit of food shopping before finding our way out of town and to the main road heading north-west to Gambia. The road it self was smooth all the way to the border, which was not what we were expecting. As we had information from our various books that the road was bad. Pleasantly surprised we were at the Gambia border within a couple of hours. The formalities were straight forward and we got no hassle from any of the officials. As Gambia does not use the Carnet we got another form of passage paper from the customs. This cost us 3500CFA for each car. In total in only took about an hour to cross the border. The road soon degraded after the border post and was a potholed mess until we reached the next police check point at the junction with the main road that runs through the country on the south side of the river. We encountered many checkpoints on our way to Serekunda, all of which were freindy, but a few insisted of going through all the papers. Once in Serekunda we drove along the main street for a while before stopping for some lunch. We then went in search of a good book store we had heard about, but along the way spotted a sign for a Land Rover garage. We followed the signs and soon came across the place. There we chatted with the owner to sort out the various jobs that needed to be done. His welder and electrician were away diving for the weekend, so we arrange to return Monday to start work. We then went on to the bookstore and found an internet café right next door. So after quickly checking our e-mails we had a look around the bookstore. Indeed they were well stocked and had many Lonely Plant books and other guidebooks and maps. I got a couple of maps for countries I planned it visit later on. After a quick detour to a local hotel to get a map of Gambia, we made our way to the campsite at Sukuta. Once there we settled in and quickly got chatting to an English couple who had come up from South Africa with there Landy. So we spent the evening with them swamping stories and information over a couple of beers. Late that evening Matt (the one we had left at the Petite Cote) rolled into the campsite, and told us of this long days travel down to Gambia. Time flew by and it was quite late by the time we got to bed.
I woke early but enjoyed a nice lay in, before getting up and having some breakfast. I spent a little while reading, and then spent most of the day catching up on diary entries on the Laptop. Only stopping for some lunch and the odd chat. The evening was spent having a nice meal at the camp bar, a few beers and swamping more adventurous stories and information about interesting places to see.
The morning was spent putting together the picture page to go along with the diary entry update. We then got a lift to the internet café, from the campsite owner called Jo. The first place we went to didn’t have a connection to the internet. This is something at fails quite regularly in The Gambia. We then moved onto another one, and after a short time there the connection failed, but only for about 10 minutes. The connection speed at this section internet café was real slow, and so one reason and another I could send my update. Frustrated, we left and started to walk back to the campsite. Doing some shopping along the way before sharing a taxi back. The rest of the afternoon I spent the afternoon making spreadsheets for the fuel consumption figures for the Landy and my daily distance log. After sorting dinner, the dutch and English couples and Matt and me again said in the campsite bar chatting the night away, over a couple of beers.
After breakfast the Dutch couple and me packed up our Landies and headed into town. The first stop was to the bank to get money. This proved to be far more time consuming and frustrating than we imagined. We soon found out that you can only use Visa credit cards in the cash machines out side the banks that had them, and that you could no longer get cash advances on any credit cards inside the bank. This proved to be a problem as I only have a Master card. After trying 6 different banks and even driving to Banjul to try there, we were unable to get money. Over all this was not a critical problem as we both still had cash to change into the local currency, but we were hoping to replenish our cash reserves, not use them up. By this time it was around midday and we had achieved nothing. So we headed back to toward the Landy garage and along the way stopped to change some money. Once there we were soon greeted by David the owner, and talked to his various employees about getting the jobs we needed done. It was then arranged to return Friday, as by then all the parts should have arrived and we could get cracking with the work. Tried of running around, we stopped and had some lunch and a fast food place. Then popped back up the road to an internet café to try and send my sight updates. Again I could not do this and so left. We then returned to get some beer from the local supermarket and started our hunt for Solar panels. We wanted to buy a solar panel for each landy, as when the weather is really hot the batteries in the vehicles would struggle to run the fridge and lights used at night, for more than 24hours. This not a problem when you are driving every day, as the batteries are recharged. But if you stay parked somewhere for longer than a day, it means that you have to run the engine for an hour each day. So the solar panels would be a solution to the problem, and would recharge the batteries while the vehicle were idle. We had been given to location where we could by solar panels from. The first was outrageously expensive, but the second gave us a reasonable price for a 50W panel and regulator. We decided to sleep on the idea and arranged to come back the next day. On returning to the campsite, we found that it had filled up, as 4 Dutch cars with 9 people had turned up. They were travelling as a group and had all bought cheap old cars to drive down and sell in The Gambia, before returning home. So then evening was spent chatting to them and listening to their adventures in getting the cars down.
After a slow breakfast and reading for a bit, the three of us left in the Dutch couples Landy to return to the solar panel sales shop. After lengthy negotiations we finally bought two panels, regulators and connecting wire. We then went in search of brackets and things so Emiel could mount his to the roof of their Landy. We didn’t have much luck, and returned to the campsite, along the way popping into the internet cafe. Where finally I managed to update my site, and check my e-mails. At the campsite I put together my unit and plugged it in for testing. Later, Emiel got the bits he need and he spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening fitting his panel in place. We then had relaxed evening chilling out, before going to bed.