We finally managed to prise ourselves away from the delights of The Gambia as the crew was slowly going different ways. Theo in his truck to Mali, Tina back to Austria and Alex & Sabrina had already headed off on their BMW F650 GS Dakar bike to go to Senegal. So we thought it was time to move on.

However we managed to get Colm on the back of our bikes for one last hurrah together in the Casamance region of Senegal. And the following day Max joined us in his Nissan Patrol for a couple nights.

The Casamance is the southern part of Senegal which sandwiches The Gambia and is really a much poorer area than other parts of Senegal, the roads and infrastructure have traditionally been notoriously bad, with years of discrimination against the Jola who live in this region by the majority Wolof who control and run Senegal. This is also a region with more Christians (mainly Catholic) than other parts of Senegal and this fact may also explain a small part of why they are discriminated against, though Christians and Muslims coexist very peacefully in Senegal.

Originally a Portuguese colony before being handed over to the French, the area still has some visible heritage going back to this period. Nowadays though this very poor region relies on rice growing and tourism for an income of sorts, though many here only earn about 8 Euros a month! The amazing beaches are still pretty empty and there is certainly a lot more room for tourists and their money in this spectacular region.

We spent our first two nights in Abene, described by the guidebooks as one of the most chilled out places on earth, it certainly lived up to its reputation. A town full of rasta’s who were running small shops, restaurants, art boutiques and teaching the drums! We certainly enjoyed the laid back approach to life and spent time on the beach  chilling out!

One highlight from our time in Abene was stumbling across a reggae party on the Friday night. We headed out on both bikes with Max and Colm on board looking for the Friday night party full of Swedish girls that must exist somewhere. After heading to the slightly larger town of Kafountine down the road, we followed the sounds of the night and a drunken rasta on a bike with no pedals to find a really thumping party! Picture 15 to 20 guys beating their bongos together in an amazing rolling rhythm of sound and beats, then throw in some dancers who jump in front of the band and try and set their own rhythm into the on going beat, it was really incredible to be in the middle of this wall of sound! Despite not finding that elusive bus load of Swedish girls, we did find an amazing kicking party and in usual comedy form the only 2 foreign girls at the party were in fact Swedish! Though slightly out of our age range as they were a middle aged duo looking for property to invest in before the impending tourism boom in the Casamance.

We were also able to spend an inspirational afternoon talking to Laurie, a French woman who is living in Abene, she has very little resources or experience, but she has started to teach the local people basic computer skills and runs the only Internet cafe there – with a laptop on a dialup connection (painfully slow for us techies!).

After Abene we all moved on to Ziguinchor, the regional capital, where quite surprisingly we bumped into Antoine and Chantal, a crazy couple who are cycling through Africa, we had last seen them over a week ago at the campsite in Sukuta in The Gambia! It was all the more amazing to have met them as we all rocked up at the first hotel we saw in Ziguinchor that had a bar and a fridge to get a cold beer before looking for cheaper accommodation in town! The road is a small place at times! Check out their website at www.cycletheplanet.com to hear more about their craziness! And you thought what we were doing was crazy!

The next day we rather sadly headed our different ways, with Colm going back to The Gambia to try and get an NGO job, Max northwards back to Austria and Keith and I south to the very bottom left corner of Senegal – Cap Skirring.

We spent an amazing night camping on the beach, far from any civilisation, with only our huge bonfire to entertain us! It was really quite nice to be so far out in the middle of nowhere with the sound of the waves and the full moon and stars above us!

To be continued in another post… we promise priests, beer and a hot dusty road!

Paddy’s day ended up being a bit of a mess. Colm and I started off by rallying the troops to partake in a day long celebration of Celtic mysticism. We set off at midday to a beach-bar for our first refreshments accompanied by our Jesus Freaks buddies.

We also managed to recruit two German twins into our group to drive us around in their huge Mercedes overland truck. These guys were a dead ringer for the twins from The Matrix. Unfortunately they left us half way through the day.

As the day progressed and the twins and their transport abandoned us we decided to hitch our way to McManns Irish bar in Senegambia. Colm got a lift off a guy on a push bike. This guy got a major thank you and a few free beers after cycling with Colm for 5km in the blazing hot sun. Tina, Jeremy and I were able to catch a cool open top 4×4.

We spent many hours reveling at an outdoor table in McManns. Think 6 Irish people standing on their chairs singing joyously to U2 and Luke Kelly songs. We eventually got home only to realise that our camera hadn’t come with us. It had been on the table and I’m pretty sure someone decided to liberate it. If it hadn’t been such a long day I may have been coherent enough to have kept hold of it but that’s the way it goes. We’ve not been lucky with our cameras. Jeremy’s replacement camera, which was broken in Andorra, was en-route to Dakar but was somehow also lost. It’s now turned up in Senegalese customs. This is more than two weeks after its 5 day guaranteed delivery date. We’re now trying to have it sent to London and then routed down to Togo. For now we’ve added some pictures that we’ve been able to scavenge from friends.

We arrived in Gambia after a non-eventful departure from Senegal. We had originally planned to spend just two nights in one of the quiet beach towns south of Banjul. That was the plan. Instead we spent a week there. This is the way it goes on the road. The trip takes on a life of its own through unforeseen interruptions. They’ve been the best parts so far.

The first night in Banjul saw us cringing at a package-holiday hotel. This was bizarre! It’s not the sort of life we’ve been accustomed to on the road. We mixed up the name of the planned accomodation which shared a strikingly similar name to that of a nearby package holiday hotel. The price was reasonable enough, we were tired, and we thought what the hell! I could swear that the people who go on package holidays are escaping reality. I can still vividly remember a middle aged woman dressed up as if she were a clubber in her late teens. She was paired with a dude wearing white trousers, long slicked-back hair and a golden medallion jumping out of a hairy chest which, to put the icing on the cake, was out on display through the open buttons of a flowery white shirt. Think of a fat Johnny Depp from Blow with a total absence of cool. The hotel and surrounding area were also full of old ladies with young Gambian guys. I’ve seen its reverse in Thailand. Old men with young Thai women. Can’t say I agree with the whole thing. Maybe I’m too closed minded but it’s not really right when 60 year olds are dating 20 year olds.

The next day we escaped to Sukuta camping. An overlanders haven. It was there that we found our interruption in the form of a group of Austro/German Jesus Freaks and a Dubliner who has thumbed it all the way down to the Gambia from Europe. The Jesus Freaks are a sect of young Christians who are devoted to the way of the lord. My impression is that they’re making Christianity cool. A bit like the ‘catholicism wow!’ campaign launched by cardinal Glick from Dogma but with a lot more of a rock and roll edge to it. Check out their Austrian website for a thorough overview. Or consider Theo. Theo drives a unimog which doubles up as his own personal home on wheels. He’s also given it a wicked paint job. On one side there’s a massive Christ head interspersed with ‘Jesus. The Christ has a posse’ and on the other side is the signature Alpha to Omega Jesus Freaks logo. He was actually kicked out of Dakar by the police because he was driving the van around during the Islamic summit which was being held there.

Colm was the Dubliner and his story is an inspirational one. He’s relied on the generosity of strangers to get him from Dublin to Gambia. That’s around 10000 kilometers of human kindness! Suffice to say he made fantastic company on Paddy’s day and it was great to be in the company of a fellow Irishman on the road. Apart from the priests and missionaries there’s really not a lot of us out here.

These last few days we have been hanging around in Dakar, a bit longer than planned, because we have been waiting for a courier to deliver Jeremy’s digital camera which was replaced in the UK after it was broken snowboarding in Andorra! What was supposed to arrive on Monday still hasn’t materialised and the courier in the UK can’t tell us where it is yet, except to say that the package is in Senegal! It reminds Keith of that Devlins song “Waiting”.

So we’ve been playing a waiting game, trying to enjoy the extra days and make the most of this buzzing metropolis full of all sorts of human life!

Dakar is a big busy dusty city full of everything that you can imagine. We’ve slowly been getting the hang of the city and a feel for the place. Traffic here has been something else – they’ve decided to work on practically every major road in the entire city simultaneously in an effort to get it ready for an Arab nations conference going on here this week… the only problem is that this is Africa… so none of the roads are ready and it’s utter chaos every day here. We both feel sorry for the locals who have to catch buses and drive their cars here as we sail by on our bikes. The traffic here is so bad that after a one hour bus ride to cover the two kilometers into town we have switched almost exclusively to the bikes – better to be lost for 10 mins than stuck for 50 mins!

We’ve made some good friends here though and the biker guys here have been busy trying to get us to stay for a while longer for a rally they have planned in just over a week’s time. We can’t say we aren’t tempted… but it might throw out any hopes of reaching South Africa in the next couple months!