The real Africa – it’s a (very) long story
Now that we’re south of the Sahara, I guess we can say that we’re in ‘real’ Africa, a first for both of us. Two days ago we took the second leg of our flight from Dubai – our eight-hour layover in Morocco turned into 28 days – and are now in Dakar, Senegal.
Our plan for Africa has changed so much that it’s worth an entry in itself. As I think I noted in a previous post, our very first plan was to fly from the Gulf to Cairo, and go overland across North Africa through Libya, Tunisia and Algeria before flying to Morocco for the final part (the Algeria-Morocco border is closed). We monitored the Libya visa situation for several months while we were in Doha and eventually determined that visas weren’t being given to Americans.
So we cut Egypt and Libya out and, by this time knowing that we had more time than we’d thought, decided to add the West African countries of Senegal, Mali, Mauritania and the Gambia. Then we decided that Niger (not Nigeria, which is a different country) would be great to visit, and Gambia got the flick.
Unfortunately that wasn’t the end of the tinkering as the Algeria situation is another difficult one. You’re supposed to get the visa in your own country and it’s only valid for 45 days from the date of issue. This made it impossible for us to get it even in Qatar, so we were going to try in neighbouring countries and see how we went. A couple of weeks ago we decided to give up the Algeria (and thus Tunisia) section of the trip and add two more West African countries – Burkina Faso and Benin.
The result of all this is that we’re not going to the two major countries of the original itinerary (Libya and Algeria), and suddenly our North African trip has become a West African trip. We’ve recently been thrown another curveball (long story, not worth explaining), and the consequence is that about an hour ago we decided to ‘trade’ Mauritania for Ghana (finally, a non-French speaking country!). So now our three months in West Africa looks like this: Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger and Benin, from where we fly out on May 19.
I’m actually really happy with the current plan (should it hold up) because it gives us a much different experience from the first few itineraries. The main West African countries we wanted to go to – Mali, Mauritania, Niger – are more like North Africa in their geographic makeup, religion etc. Now, by adding three smaller countries in the southern part of West Africa it feels like it’s a more varied trip and isn’t just all Islam and desert – it’s Voodoo and jungles instead…
Having said all that, I’m still probably looking forward to the (mostly) Saharan countries of Mali and Niger the most of the remaining places we’re going to visit.
Meanwhile, we spent our last few days in Morocco on the Atlantic coast in the seaside towns of Essaouira and El-Jadida. Essaouira is by far the more famous and popular of the two, but I liked El-Jadida much more (perhaps precisely because of that). El-Jadida has an old Portuguese fortress that contains (among other buildings) a few mosques, a couple of churches and a synagogue, as well as a vaulted underground cistern which was really quite impressive and almost unique – the only other place like this that I’m aware of anywhere in the world is Justinian’s sixth-century Basilica Cistern in Constantinople.
Anyway, some photos of both towns are here.
Tags: Africa, planning, Senegal, Travel, West Africa
Nick