Christoph slept pretty badly and compared his tent to a one person private sauna. I must admit, I slept quite well despite the heat in my roof top tent with natural air conditioning, i.e. the sea breeze.
In the morning, before being able to prepare any hot breakfast, I had to service our little stove that refused to burn a few days ago in Guinea. No idea what was wrong, but now it works again, although not perfect but you can make breakfast. Our eggs from Abidjan had survived the rough roads of Guinea, Unfortunately one egg was not well anymore on the inside. I made some scrabbled eggs with ham and fresh coffee. Christoph organised some bread. Delicious camping breakfast.

Afterwards, while I started on various administrational tasks on my laptop, Christoph did the wash up. Once all admin tasks were done, we started washing our clothes. Within minutes the freshly washed t-shirts and underwear were hanging from the washing lines in the sea breeze to dry. A bit difficult as the humidity was above 75%.

Time for relaxation. Christoph organised us a taxi into town for two pm. We decided we wanted to have a shower to wash off the sweat of the hard work of the morning and be proper for town. Shortly before two o’clock we went to the main building to wait for the taxi. There we met Lorenz, a young Swiss lad of 19 years of age, who had just arrived for lunch, cycling from Morocco to South Africa. He told us his adventures and that he does between 100 and 220km a day! What a brave chap! This is hardcore especially in this heat! Compared to this, our trip feels more like a walk in the park with an air conditioned vehicle transporting everything for us. Chapau!
The taxi arrived and we wished him all the best for his onward journey. The taxi who brought the owner’s daughter home from school took us to the heart of the old city of Saint Louis.

We crossed the bridge spanning 500m across the Senegal river giving the country its name and being the border further north between Senegal and Mauritania. Tomorrow we will cross this border and a dam across this river.
We started walking through the streets of the old French colonial streets. What a beautiful vibe this city has. Some buildings were beautifully restored to its former colonial glory and some have clearly been neglected since independence. What a shame! We strolled through the old town and took many pictures. What a lovely place! The city has a Caribbean feel, similar to Havanna or Martinique. We were debating amongst ourselves, why ‘our’ former capital of Côte d’Ivoire, Grand Bassam, having almost the same heritage and similar buildings, does not look like this. It would equally be beautiful and more attractive to tourists.

We found a little bar at the river for a beer to quench our thirst. Mind you, it was still above 34°C and high humidity and we had been walking several kilometres in the old town. The cold one was very welcome. We strolled back along the quay to a restaurant near the main bridge for some early seafood dinner. We treated ourselves to fresh squid salad with cucumber a la Portugaise. Very delicious.

At sunset we tried to find a taxi that would bring us back to the camping, located in the National Park of Barbarderie, approximately 25km south of town. Either they were full or the drivers wanted exorbitant fees. Then stopped a very old Renault from the early 1980s with an old man at its steering wheel. Initially he asked too much money as well, but we knew the normal tariff and negotiated hard. Eventually he agreed to a slightly higher price than normal. We drove off and it quickly became clear that his taxi was in a very sorry state. It rattled and squeaked from all sides. Many parts had already rusted through and you could see the road. The seatbelts didn’t work. We raced across speed bumps, he clearly noticed too late. The daylight started fading fast. He then made a fateful mistake and turned off the main road at the wrong crossing. We drove over sand paths and he constantly reassured us that he knew where he was going and knew where the Zebrabar was. Christoph and I were getting more and more annoyed at him for not listening to us. All of a sudden we stood in front of one of the many small wetland lakes and the path leads right through it. He mumbled something about water and impossible to cross. We urged him to turn around. He tried clumsily and bumped his old Renault several times backwards into a tree he obviously did not see. We told him to drive back to the main road, again he would not listed and tried different routes until we came across a gentleman, who he asked and eventually after some discussion in Wolof, the local language here, got into the car next to me on the back seat bench. Fortunately he clearly knew the area well and started guiding the taxi driver out of the maze, back to the main road. Day light was completely gone. We made good progress towards our campsite with the help of this gentleman. He explained, that he lives and works in this area and showed us his sister’s house while passing it. We turned off the main road at the last minute and hobbled down the sand path closer and closer to the camping. Then we turned right and he almost crashed into a tree, because he could not clearly identify the path. When we got to the first of two dams across small wetlands, he got really frightened and stopped. At that point, we also decided it would be better for us to get out. We were afraid that he would accidentally drive off the dam into the wetlands. So we paid him the agreed fare only, gave a little thank you to the other gentleman and started walking the remaining 600m with our phones illuminating the track in front of us and the many big crabs crossing our path.
Back at the camping, we had a drink with the owners to tell them from our adventures.