A foggy morning at Zebrabar that got thicker by the hour. We had breakfast and wanted to pack up our gear. A lot of gear, such as the tents, chairs and tables, was damp. A fast wipe and they were ready to pack. In the morning, while cleaning up, Alex came to me and apologised. He had just broken the tap of one of the water jerry cans. I wasn’t happy, but we had another jerry can we could use. Not even two minutes later, I wanted to clean my breakfast bowl and bang! The other tap had also broken off. The plastic must have become brittle from the heat and UV light. We laughed as it also made Alex feel better that the same thing happened to me. Trevor, the legend, offered us a tap from one of his jerry cans that are the same made. Now we can at least tap water again from one jerry can. Many thanks Trevor! On our way out we stopped at the reception, met Ursula again who was just adding up our telly. Ursula informed me that she was expecting 78 Dutch rally participants to night as well as an overlander bus with twenty odd people. It was a wise coincidence to leave today. We said our goodbyes to the various overlanders, we had become friendly with, before we paid and left.

The route I had chosen, was the more scenic route, taking us more through the small villages along the coast than the big motorway leading you much faster into the capital.
The landscape was dominated by small sandy hills with lots of little patches of farmland and plenty of acacia trees. All little villages along the route were like beehives with plenty of activities, such as markets, school children and taxis. There was a manifold of excellent photo opportunities, but, unfortunately, I had to concentrate on the road and all the domestic animals and people using the same space around us.

At a certain moment our road, a road classified as a national road, abruptly came to an end. An open pit mine had swallowed up the road. Our access back to the coast was cut off. Unfortunately, that also meant that we had to miss the view over the pink lake, that was most likely not pink at the moment anyway. We continued on the new route and the traffic got busier and busier.

Finally, after many kilometres behind various slow trucks, we reached the wonderful motorway. Stunned by the good state of the road, we advanced swiftly towards the capital at 90km/h. We came to the first toll station and I held my breath, because the normal tariff for cars, lower than 2.30m, was 500 cfa. Eeyore is 2.38m and if they have sensors at the booths, like in Côte d’Ivoire, the system might classify Eeyore as a truck that tariff is much higher. But luckily, no sensors I could see and the lady classified us correctly. So, I paid just 500 cfa. Trevor paid too and we continued.
After a few kilometres cruising down this wonderfully dual carriageway, we came to the next toll booth. This time we happily paid the 1,000 cfa tariff to be able to further quickly advance to downtown Dakar. It was going very smoothly. Much smoother, than we had feared, because Dakar is know for its notorious traffic jams.

At the end of the motorway, in the middle of downtown Dakar, we met the first serious traffic jam. It went very slowly into the very crowded small streets of Plateau, the commercial heart of Dakar. Most of the roads are organised in a grid system and are oneway. Street signs are usually absent and, therefore, you have to go with the flow of traffic, not to turn wrongly. We shuffled along and made little progress, as many people walked around our cars and motorcycles swerved around us. We came to a larger crossing, where it was evident that we were not allowed to turn left. A friendly taxi driver next to us gesticulated and shouted out of his window, that we had to turn right and take the next left afterwards, when he saw where we wanted to go. Thankful, we followed his instructions. Just around the corner from the place, where we wanted to be, a cement truck took one half of the road and we had to squeeze past it.

We turned right twice and made it to the hotel. A small hotel in the old colonial style of Dakar with a nice inner courtyard. But damn, this entire street is full of cars, either parked or waiting to move on. Where can we park for just a few minutes to ask, if they have three rooms for us for two nights? A bit further, I spotted an empty parking space in front of a bakery. I parked there and informed Trevor and Charlotte to find some parking somewhere around here too. The parking warden was not very amused, when he noticed, that I didn’t want to go shopping in the bakery, but walked towards the hotel. A few words containing “interdit” (forbidden) were shouted at me, which I ignored.

The two friendly ladies at the reception of the hotel had a good look in their good old hand-written reservations book. Yippeah, two singles and a double were still available for two nights. One of the ladies swiftly helped to organise some parking across the road on an empty plot, just as Trevor came around the corner still looking for parking. Swiftly he was directed into the organised parking. Afterwards I ran down the street to fetch Eeyore, while I found Alex in the bakery donut shopping to please the parking warden outside. What a legend. I gave the warden some change and ordered Alex back out to take him and the car to the parking opposite the hotel. After filling in the checkin forms, we were shown the rooms. Two upstairs and mine downstairs. All rooms are accessible from the inner courtyard, that features many tropical plants. In the middle and at one side of the ground floor, it has a small restaurant.

The remaining time we wanted to use to extend Trevor’s passavant (temporary import permit), that was only valid for five days since the border. The address of this special customs office we knew from the internet. We walked down the street a few blocks. Because of this proximity, I had also chosen this hotel. The custom office is located in a large office and apartment building at the Independence Square. After we had some trouble finding the right entrance, we took the stairs to the fourth floor, as we didn’t want to cramp ourselves with others into the small lift.

Trevor walked into the office of the responsible officer and explained his desire, while Alex and I waited outside. At a certain moment Trevor called me in to help translate and understand the problem. Apparently, the customs officer at the Diama border misunderstood Trevor and issued him a passavant for five days only, because he thought, Trevor wanted to import the vehicle, as it was almost new. The officer explained the situation again to me and also said that there was not much he could do now, because Trevor had now only two choices, officially start the import process at the guiche unique or exit the country before the expiry date of the passavant on Thursday with the vehicle. At that point, Trevor started to understand the problem and voiced his anger strongly. Repeatedly, I told the officer, that we understand the problem and are sorry that this problem has arisen, but we are sure, we can together find a solution for Trevor to enjoy his holiday in Senegal a little longer. Then the officer, after a few moments of thinking, changed his mind and informed us that by absolute exception, he could extend it to fifteen days after entry. The holiday was saved. He reiterated several times, that it was an exception and we acknowledged that fact thanking him. He stamped the form and scribbled something on the back that the purpose was actually ‘tourism’ and not import. We thanked him very much for his assistance resolving the matter and left.

Trevor was still mad about the incapacity of Africa working properly. Alex and I explained to him that the reason, why the form was filled in incorrectly, was probably lost in translation between the two at the border. Happy to have resolved the matter efficiently and having tomorrow for sightseeing, we walked back to the hotel, not passing by the little supermarket further down our street, and didn’t treated us to some ice cream and drinks. At the hotel, we had some late sandwiches and cool drinks, as we hadn’t had lunch yet.

Again at sunset, we realised that the hotel was right next to a mosque, where the muezzin would call at the set times loudly through their loudspeaker. Let’s see how this goes tomorrow morning.
When it was dinner time, we walked through the streets of the neighbourhood in Plateau in search of a nice place to eat. Earlier, we had passed a restaurant that looked good and it smelled yummy too. We walked back to the place, just to find it closed. Via Google Maps we tried to find more eating options and any option we evaluated by foot, was closed. People do not seem to go out to dinner in this part of town at night. After several tries, we had basically walked back to the hotel and tried two open restaurants in a parallel street. One was serving Moroccan food and the other offered Chinese kitchen. In the end, we chose the Chinese restaurant. After we had ordered our dinner, we noticed on the very last page a list of zodiac signs. Curious as we were, we looked up our own zodiac signs. Alex is a horse, I am a cock and Trevor is actually no cock, but a dog and so is Charlotte.
We ate well and went back to the hotel for an early night to be fit for tomorrow’s sightseeing.