Being a natural sanctuary, Djoudj isn't exactly near anything and therefore wasn't super easy to get to. First we needed to get from Dakar to Saint Louis, the former capital of French West Africa back during colonial times and itself a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This entailed going to the "Gare Routière," a giant lot filled chaotically with vans and buses and cars all waiting to be filled. We cabbed to the Gare, and before the cab could even stop completely we were literally surrounded by people ready to find out where we were going and eager to take us to a bus going there. This is their job - they recruit people to fill up buses so the buses can leave (because they will NOT leave until every last seat is filled, including all of the pull-down aisle seats), and in return get tips from the passengers (and maybe a tip from the bus driver, too, but I'm not sure). We had hoped to independently find our bus, but this is impossible - firstly because the bus escorters outnumbered us by maybe 40-1, and secondly because there was no clear system for finding a bus going your way other than simply going from bus to bus and asking the driver where he was going. Naturally, it's in the bus escorter's interest to get as many tips as possible, so he's not above "stretching" the truth a little as far as how full the bus is in order to entice us on. "Saint Louis? Oui. There's a bus that's almost full - just two seats left! Come! Come!" Of course to us the bus did indeed look full. All of the benches had at least one person on them, some had two per bench. Well, of course the bus wasn't even close to being full. In reality, it could hold exactly 26 (if I remember correctly) people, and wasn't going anywhere until every last seat was filled. So, we did what we have learned to do so often in Africa: hurry up! and then wait...
Meanwhile, Matt and I entertained ourselves by watching the vendors making the rounds. Anything and everything you could possibly imagine was for sale: cookies, fruit, other snacks, sunglasses, calculators, scarves, cell phone chargers, flip-flops, stuffed animals, skin cream, some product called "Relax!" (I have no idea what it was - clandestine Prozac?), etc. I concluded that the Senegalese economy depends fundamentally on two things: 1) boredom and 2) traffic. Vendors constantly work their way through gridlocked traffic jams and do a good bit of business this way. They simply hold their wares up to the window or, if more insistent, shove their wares inside the window, right in front of your face. If the transaction is not completed before the traffic starts to move, the vendor will simply walk / run (depending on the rate of the traffic) along with the car until the deal is done. At the Gare, we weren't yet in a traffic jam per se, although sitting in a parked car produces the same effect whether you're in a parking lot or on a highway: boredom.
Which brings me back to Matt and I entertaining ourselves by watching all of the bustling mercantilism around us. Bored passengers would engage a vendor just to pass the time. They'd examine the merchandise, and if something vaguely interested them, they'd venture a "nyaata?" ("How much?"). Since everything is bargained for, the vendor would naturally quote a price absurdly high, to which the passenger would theatrically balk and laugh. Then the passenger, who really couldn't care less if he bought the object or not but figures the bargaining is a fun game to play to pass the time, would proceed to quote an equally absurd low price, to which the seller would balk and act insulted. This banter would go on and on for a while, until either the bored passenger ultimately found the vendor willing to sell him the object at a price he found worth his while, or until the vendor refused to bend any further and walked on to the next bus. The guy behind me bought a Casio calculator this way - I noted that he paid 2000 CFA ($4) for it. It's good to keep these prices in the back of your head, given that when Matt and I went to buy a set of mini screwdrivers (the kind you can get at a dollar store) at the gigantic Sandaga market, the initial quote the vendor gave me was $44!! I'm not joking!
Eventually, after maybe 1 1/2 hours, the bus was full and appeared to start moving. Really? We're finally going? Can it be? Indeed it was. First we just creeped over to the gas area to fuel up, but then we were finally on our way! Matt and I have a tradition of yelling out the open window "yeeeeeeee-haaaaw!" whenever we set out on a road trip. So of course we had to do it - it would be wrong not to! - but we also didn't want to freak people out, so we just did a quiet, under-our-breath, discreet "yeehaw." It was still gratifying.
I'll interrupt here to put in some pictures...:
Buses waiting to be filled, a vendor selling scarves, and a bus escort / hawker.
The inside of our bus. (It's not filled up yet).
Finally the bus started to move! A broader view of the chaos of the Gare.
"Yeehaw." On the road at last! Alas, this didn't mean much because we were literally gridlocked. It must have taken us over 2 hours just to leave Dakar.
An apprentice - these are the equivalent of the bus escort / hawkers, but for the local car-rapides within Dakar.
Here are some more photos from the road, once we finally left the city proper:
Anti-Wade (Senegal's President) graffiti by the "Alliance of the Forgotten Youth of the Suburbs"
I will never cease to be amazed by the grace in which Senegalese women balance wares on their heads.
I think we might have been in Rufisque.
Baobabs en route.
Eventually, about eight hours later, we made it to Saint Louis. It was not a comfortable journey, especially for poor Matt. Unfortunately, he got stuck with a seat that was falling apart more than normal - it was slanted downwards slightly and there was a rod underneath that wedged itself up his ass for the entire 8 hours. He was not a happy camper.
Once in Saint Louis, I thought that we were supposed to take another bus to a tiny village and then from there walk to the park. This was based on a phone conversation I had with the reservations person at the hotel on the park premises. Well, clearly despite all of my years of speaking French, I'm still horrible at it, because I was completely and utterly mistaken. Fortunately, we didn't end up having to learn this the hard way. When trying to find a bus that was going to the village, we asked our bus driver from Dakar for help. He said there weren't any more buses going out to that place today (it was evening already), and that we'd have to take a cab. He helped us find one and we negotiated a price. It was 20,000 ($40), which was $10 less than what the guidebook says is average (so, yay to me, the bargaining diva!). (You can see why I had hoped to find a public bus instead, which would've maybe cost $4 max.) Once we passed the village the hotel person had mentioned, we started looking around, anticipating that we would arrive at the park at any moment. An hour later, we still hadn't arrived and it was almost dark. It took maybe 75-80 minutes to get to the park, which really is in the middle of nowhere just shy of the Mauritanian border and off of some very difficult "roads." Our cab was not exactly equipped with the shocks of a 4x4 - in fact, I don't think it had any shocks at all. Whatever it may have had would have been shot by the end of the trip. I hoped our trip wasn't going to mean the end of the guy's car!...
By the time we got to the hotel, we were utterly exhausted and were trying to imagine what would've happened if we had managed to, idiotically, take a bus to the village and then tried to walk from there. We concluded we would be sleeping underneath a tree in the middle of nowhere. So! Way to go, Melissa! Way to speak that French!! And, YAY cabbie, for getting us there so we didn't have to sleep in the dirt!
Not that that really made much of a difference as far as our cleanliness was concerned. The ride from Saint Louis to the park required open windows, as it was quite hot and of course there wasn't AC. But open windows meant flying dust / dirt everywhere. By the time we got to the hotel, we were literally covered in dust. Matt took a picture of me - he made me pose for the picture before he'd let me see for myself what I looked like in a mirror:
Lovely, huh?
Needless to say we were exhausted. After showers (WARM WATER!! Whoo hoo!) and a change of clothes we felt slightly more human again, but were still really tired. We ate dinner at the restaurant and then crashed pretty much instantly.
The hotel manager arranged for a French family who was going to be driving to the boat dock to take us with them in their SUV. So when we woke up, we had a quick breakfast and then rushed to the car, because we could see the driver was a serious bird watcher. What with his insane telephoto lenses, we didn't want to be the reason he missed prime bird-time. Yves, the driver, works in the oil industry and lives with his family in Gabon. His son-in-law (Franc) and grandson (Tristan) were in tow as well; his daughter was back at the hotel having fun being sick. We got to the boat dock before any other tourists had arrived and therefore we got a boat to ourselves, which was nice. The guide of course knew all of the special places to go and pointed out the different species of birds we were seeing along the way.
Here are some more photos...:
We saw some dozing warthogs right off of the road as we were driving up to the boat dock! They're so ugly they're cute. Especially the top one. I learned a new French word: phacochère
is the French word for "warthog."
At the boat launch - already we could see tons of birds of all types. Here are some pelicans and cormorants.
The boat dock and a traveler passing by.
Our boat.
Pelicans plus an great white egret.
Here the pelicans are fishing: they group together and make a big ruckus, which stirs up the fish and makes them easier to catch. Yves called it "dancing."
A grey heron (heron cendrier).
Cormorants.
A cormorant, an egret, and another bird which I can't remember.
A giant salamander!
A "fishing eagle."
The following photos are from what I dubbed "Pelican Island." All of a sudden, through a gap in the brush we saw (and heard) thousands of pelicans all congregating together. This was the feeding station and nursery. It was an unbelievable sight, and an unbelievable sound. I don't think I've ever been surrounded by so much life at one time before, certainly not in such a natural setting. It was utterly humbling.
The grey ones are the babies! They don't turn white until they grow up...
Franc and Tristan.
Yves and his enormous lens.
More cormorants.
Another heron cendrier.
More phacochères!
Some cows. By the way - you'll note the horns. These are small ones, but we also saw some genuine longhorns! Being a Texan, I found this quite disorienting - with the scrub brush and the longhorns, I almost felt like I was in my home state again.
A chacal - kind of like a wild savannah fox.
Unfortunately, this is about as close as we could get to the flamingos. They were in a different area of the park only accessible by car, so Yves drove us to the big lake where they were known to congregate. Matt and I thought it was pretty cool to see so many flamingos in their natural setting, but Yves was disappointed because the other day when he went there, he said, there were literally thousands. He concluded we were there at the wrong time of day (since we had gone to see the pelicans earlier; to see as many flamingos we probably would've needed to skip the morning boat ride). Nevertheless, with his power-binoculars, we were still able to see them pretty close up.
We also got to see someting else a little TOO close up... a gigantic spider of some kind who was living on the fencepost near the binoculars:
In this setting it was all very fascinating, but if I saw something like that in my room I think I'd scream.
The hotel's walls were covered with murals of the various species found throughout the park.
Our hotel.
Our room.
They had a swimming pool! Run and DMC liked it.
This is the next morning when we're getting ready to cab back to Saint Louis. The only way to get back to civilization is to hire a driver, and our cabbie had given us his number hoping to get some more business with our return trip. So, another long, bumpy ride in which the cab lost more of its shocks, along with the rear-view mirror which fell out into the driver's hand when he tried to adust it. He just put it near the gearshift that didn't have a top on it and kept going. Once we got to our hotel in Saint Louis, we again desperately needed to wash the dust off of ourselves, and once again relished the luxury of hot showers! Once we felt more human, we set out to explore Saint Louis.
The old Saint Louis is an island; it sits near the mouth of the Senegal River.
We went out to dinner at a Cape-Verdean restaurant (or at least some of the dishes were Cape Verdean, and Cesaria Evora was floating from the speakers). Matt got gambas which we thought was just another word for shrimp, but in fact turned out to be crawfish. This was fine by him, but he knows I get slightly grossed out by watching the process of the animal's gradual dismemberment right before my eyes. Here he is pretending to be a googly-eyed gamba.
More pictures of Saint Louis the next morning. The night before, we had dinner and just walked around the island a bit. We shopped a little and bought a few souvenirs, then headed back to the hotel to crash.
Here's the terrace of our hotel. It was really charming and cozy and offered a beautiful view of the city.
A community garden behind the wall of the building across the way from our hotel. (Taken from the rooftop).
Sleepy doggy! When we returned from our walk he hadn't moved.
Some walls and windows...
Bouganvilla!
A quieter spot for fishermen.
All in all, we had a great time. If we had it to do over again, we learned that for the journey involved, it's really much more worth your while to spend more days in the desired location than in getting there. So, we'll take that into consideration next time. But, we had Minou to consider - my neighbor Thomas was taking care of her but starting on Monday he had classes and in general I didn't want to take advantage of his help, especially because he was having to give her pills (for tummy trouble).
It's hard to say which ride sucked more - the one to Saint Louis or the one back to Dakar. I think Matt would have to chose the former, because of the rod up his ass. For me, it was a tough call. For the ride back, we decided, on account of Matt's sore ass, to take a real bus with real bucket seats. But, here were the down sides to the return "Suck Bus": 1) No ventilation. There were windows, but they only opened up a tiny bit at the top. This was nice in the sense that you didn't have to worry about having tangerines and peanuts shoved up your nose, but unpleasant given the heat. 2) Despite having bucket seats, there really wasn't any more room. The bus still had aisle seats to fill, and Matt still found his long legs to be completely cramped. So, I suppose it was better for his ass but worse for his knees. 3) This was a real bus of the Greyhound variety (albeit in much worse condition than the average Greyhound at home), which means it held considerably more people than the bus we came into Saint Louis on. That meant waiting even LONGER for the bus to fill up before we could leave, during which time we were stuck without a breeze. 4) Despite appearances, the bigger bus was in much worse condition than the smaller one, it turned out. At some point during the journey, in the middle of some tiny village, the bus stopped and someone had to repair something. I didn't have a chance to get out at first because all of a sudden, RIGHT NEXT TO MY SEAT, on the floor of the aisle, the guy lifts up a little latch and there's the engine, right there! I had no idea. So I got to be extra close and personal with the fumes, which was great. Eventually we were able to get out (by climbing over other seats) and like everyone else we just sort of lingered aimlessly while being eyed by the villagers, and wondering how long this whole thing was going to take. Fortunatley, it didn't take too long (certainly not as long as it could have!) and we were back on our way. By the time we got back to Dakar we were so tired that we didn't even realize that we had slept through our stop. At some point someone woke us and asked us where we were going, and we realized we were the last ones on the bus. So, we got dropped off at a different spot, which was actually closer to home, cabbed back, and then crashed.
And that was our trip to Parc Djoudj and Saint Louis!
