Part 2 of Dakar & the pink lake

Ok so part 2, I forgot to tell you all about that Monument, it was the Renaissance Monument it is 160 ft tall monolith weighing 190 tons, it celebrates Senegal’s 50 years of independence from France, this to me says be carful what you wish for. The only nice structures I saw were originally built by the French, and they are now deteriorating. 

Now on to the lake was not pink, and actually that was a good thing, as that only happened in the rainy season, (we were in the middle of the dry season) and then they have a real malaria problem. We traveled about 50 minutes by a new highway, very new, not sure who built this. Now we arrived and were suppose to have lunch here, at the hote, but no we are going directly to the lake, but befor that there was a big hassle over how we were to get in the 4 wheel and 6 wheel drive vehicles. Seems they had not planed this out for all the busses that came, so this took another 45 minuets. We finely get in and, now we have a guy driving that really enjoys popping the dunes, and this will get worse! 

 

This was our friends in their  4 wheel.   And this was as pink as the lake Retba, was for us, it is caused by a type alge in this shallow lake, and it is so high in salt everything floats. 

 

We get out to the lake, and they are mining the salt that forms there, which was very interesting, what looks like sand is salt. 

 

This was a visit to a stop for a brief encounter with the chief of Fulani Village, where we thought we would get more then a pitch fo money, but that was what we got. The hut is the old and the cement block is the new housing. We spent more then an hour trudging through the sand, before we coul finely climb back in our four by. Then we went out to the ocean beach, where lunch awaits us. 

 

By the time we got there it was almos over, and seeing Ed and I trying to get down and up from this seating was laughable! There was a show but we didn’t get to see it well enough to ge a picture of the dancers, and they came around for money too!

Then there was again, a big delay with getting us back to the big busses, so we all had to spend another 50 minuets with the halkers trying to sell us more stuff!  This was most unpleasant, until we started the drive back to the busses, as the guy driving this time made us airborne more then once, we almost fell off!

Finally back on the bus, now we were going to be late for sure, with traffic and when we got to the port,,,,, there were 6 big gas trucks blocking the way to the ship, I thought for a while, we would have to walk the mile in, but through some hair raising maneuvering they made it, in 30 minuets, now the tour and 4 busses were only an hour late, glad they couldn’t leave without us.  

Quote:  “No matter WHERE YOU GO, there you are.”  -Buckaroo Banzai