After a very restful night at the campement near Sokone, we woke up and had our last breakfast together with Ulrich and Alex. We took the last photos together and said our last goodbyes.

We were planning to try to go to Banjul, Gambia, to visit a former work colleague of Trevor and spend a semi-luxury weekend for his birthday. Since it was somewhat of a spur of the moment decision, we were not sure if we would be allowed in as there was contradictory information on the internet as to whether South Africans need a visa or if we should have applied before we came, but it was worth a try as we were so close to the border. We had not been gone for more than 5 minutes when Trevor noticed an engine warning light came on and called Ulrich to ask if he could turn around and have a look. After switching off the engine in the hope of the light resetting, and restarting and reading the manual it was decided it would be best to take the car in to a Ford service agent. As we were not sure if we would get entrance into Gambia nor if there was a Ford dealership in Banjul, we concluded that if it was a serious problem we would be better of having it looked at in Dakar, and so make the decision to head for Dakar. 

We stopped in Koalack to buy data and ensure we had connectivity and drew some cash as we were low on CFA.

En route Trevor called Ford in Dakar and the service manager, a friendly, young Gambian, speaking perfect English, said they usually do not take any work on a Friday afternoon, but since we are traveling, we could come in and they would take a look.  The time we made up on the beautiful highway, we lost in the last 1 km as we came off the highway. A row of trucks standing still holding up the traffic.  So back to the African way of solving the problem from one sidewalk to the next through the trucks. It still took us half an hour to get to the Ford agent.

We arrived during lunch break but soon the service manager came with his computer and connector box. He said it showed a number of issues and that it was showing oil a bit low. We added another litre of oil and it was full. He cleared the warning lights and checked that all was OK. He did enquire about the exhaust emission control fluid which was still reasonably full and we have a 20l container of it with us as it is not available south of Morocco. Although it was quite a long drive to do at 3 pm, we decided to get to the Zebra bar in St Louis, estimated time of arrival 19:30, taking the fastest route.

We arrived in the dark but we had driven the same route when we went to Dakar 10 days ago so were comfortable that the road was in good condition to travel a while in the dark.

We arrived dead tired, and decided to get a room, as we didn’t want to go through the process of setting up the tent in the dark.  They only had a small room for one night, so we took that.  It was about as big as a double bed with a half metre around and a mosquito net. We were just in time to get some dinner, fish with creamy potato and butternut. Then we hit the sac, exhausted.