Endless Summer Tiny World

I’m not there yet but I bought a 19 day tour around Egypt. This will give me a couple days there and then the rest of my time will be on tour. Check it out at: http://www.topdeck.travel/africa-trips/egypt-pyramids-red-sea-resorts-htueg/ultimate-egypt-2011-12-holidays

I’m so excited!! Oh and it’s official my friend Greg ward will be meeting me in turkey!! It’s gonna be an awesome 5 weeks!!

And today while watching the sunset on the beach I thought to myself, like I’ve done several times in the last 3 months- it’s really awesome that I’m in Africa!

So today was spent at the beach! It was really nice and I found that wearing headphones helps to not have to talk for at least an hour to absolutely everyone that walks by! I left in the afternoon as it was so hot and I had gotten so much sun the day before, and when I returned there were TONS of locals everywhere! It was really cool, you could hear drums, see people dancing, watch people cruise up and down the beach like it was college ave. on a Friday night ( thought you’d like that Appleton reference sept!) and watch people wrestling. In Senegal this wrestling is popular and it seems similar to sumo except smaller much more fit men! But these boys would roll up their shorts so it looked like they were wearing diapers and then wrestle each other to the ground for about 3 hours! And if they weren’t wrestling they were doing pushups! It was really cool to be around and great to see so many locals enjoying themselves and not bothering me!!

What mystery did I solve?? The mystery of why so many guys follow me around even if I can’t speak with them! And the answer is I think they want me to make them my Senegalese boyfriend or husband. I only just heard it referee to once I got south to an area where the europeans have homes and are much more common but it is a common thing for Europeans to come here and have Senegalese wives or husbands or boy/girlfriends. It’s actually really sad in all ways, but really sad that I think all that’s in it for the Senegalese is to have good food and a nice bed and home while it lasts, of course I could be wrong and there may be money involved as well. Chelsy and I also saw this happening in Kenya too! Amazing though because africa’s the last place I would want to find a prostitute!

Anyways you will all be happy to know I turn all my followers down and normally try to leave them as soon as possible! Though I did get sone hand carved gifts from one of them today! He even gave me one for mom and dad too!

Well everyone should be happy to know that, as am I, that saly beach is much nicer than saint Louis beach! No dead animals! Though this place is so so so expensive! Because it has a good beach it is like the French peoples Mexico and the prices show it! The beach here goes on forever! And though I’m not on the each like the last place it is right down the road!

There are tons of large hotels on the beach front and tons of houses on the beach, as well as lots of huge houses for sale! It is nice to stroll the beach though, try to dodge all the women selling jewelry and avoid all the men wanting to walk with you and enjoy the water and watch the fishermen in pirogues. I’m amazed at how many places in Senegal, here and in saint Louis, have so much free wifi! It’s everywhere! Idont even think we have that much in the US! but I’m not complaining it definitely helps me stay in touch!!

My French is getting better as I think I had a 3 hour conversation with a guy who walked along the beach with me. Doesn’t mean it’s good, just better. But it’s also nice sometimes to pretend I don’t know any so I can make a quick get away!! Haha!

So I have spent the last week at a hotel on the beach in saint Louis, Senegal. Though I would never ever swim in these waters!! I have walked along the beach here and everyday brings a new dead animal to the shores! I have now seen a dead dolphin, a dead sea turtle and today I came along a dead goat! This totally disgusts me but I think it is normal along with all the garbage along the shore. It’s really very sad, and even worse the closer to town you get. On my walk to town I saw children running out to use the beach as their bathroom, they were using it as their shower, to clean their goats and animals and saddest of all as their garbage. The grossest is that I even saw the severed hoofs of goats lying on shore! Basically saint Louis is in major need of some education and a beach cleanup!

I have decided the crabs are like ants/spiders/vultures of the beach! Their tunnels are like landmines on the beach and you know you’ve found one when you sink very far down which is almost every three steps! And they walk and run like spiders with their eight legs and prey on the dead fish and animals which wash up on shore! They are brave as well since last night when I was chasing one in the dark (there was the common nightly power outage) one came right up to me to try to attack me!!

All in all the beach here needs some work and thank goodness my hotel has a pool! But tomorrow I leave for saly which is south of dakar, which is super touristy and I’m told a cleaner beach! Hopefully I make it there easily!

So last night the guys who work at my private hotel ( I say private because I’m the only one staying here so it is like 5 star service) invited me to go to the local disco. At first I said no as I am fighting an ear infection right now (don’t worry I have medicine). But since it was Saturday night and it may be my only chance I figured I may as suck it up and go for it! We left at midnight and no one was there. Apparently since this disco is out of the city a little ways it’s the one people go to when the ones in town close. So we played a little pool to pass the time and then when it got a little busier we headed into the disco part of the bar.
There are a few things different about Senegalese disco than american clubs or bars. The first and biggest thing I noticed was that the men were the first ones dancing and many times were the ones out dancing by themselves!! This you would almost never see in US. Also the disco is less about drinking like many places in the US, most of the people I saw had one soda if anything. This maybe has to do with the fact that they are better dancers and don’t need the liquid courage like many of us do! I think after watching the few white people with all the black people that generally white people can’t dance, myself included as I think I scared several people when I danced to a couple songs and looked more like fish flopping around out of water! Needless to say it was a really great time!

After the 5am bedtime my private tour of the town was over but I might try to get one out of these guys later this week! One of the big challenges with these guys is making sure their intentions are right as I’ve had to repeat several tines that I’m engaged (or at least that’s what they think!) but with a good sense of humor and the friendly reminders it’s all fine!

That says my French is very bad!! Anyone here never would believe that I had a French minor in college! Not that I was so good at speaking it then eithe, but after 6 years it’s even worse!! But I can uphold franglais (French and English) conversations pretty well!!

After leaving Dakar I went and stayed on the ile de goree, the little island about 20 min ferry ride from Dakar. Most people doNt stay on the island as it is so small but it is famous for being the last stop before the Americas during the slave trade. It is small but I definitely prefered staying there to the big city! I spent my time there relaxing, seeing the memorial and also the couple museums on the island. Everything is in French so it’s a good thing I read French much better than I speak it!

When lonely planet says that Senegalese love to make conversation with you they were not kidding! I was sitting on a dock one day when a guy sat down and we were talking in franglais. I ended up following this guy around the entire island and had to feel bad when I turned down every artist and vendor he walked me by! But he took me to some very cool places on the island and I got an awesome private drum session, so I guess it’s ok! Haha!
The next day when I was at the fort/museum relaxing the worker came and told me he wanted to make me tea, so I ended up sitting in his office with some other guys drinking tea. But that’s the short boring story, this tea party took about two hours! The office is more like a small room with a sort of twin mattress on the floor, a desk, a tv playing really bad Senegalese music videos or really old American ones, and two chairs. The tea is a mint tea but with tons and tons of sugar in it. He had three little glasses on a tray and here there is a big production made out of pouring the tea back and forth several times between 2-3 of the glasses. And you can’t just pour them you must put them up high and pour them! It really was quite entertaining! And all Senegalese are super nice! Except the cab drivers when you bargain with them because they rip off all tourists!

I have also found that every person in Senegal knows or is related to someone living in the us and they want to go to the US. I have given away my email to many people and they are never happy when I don’t know my phone number!!

My second morning on goree I was all set to leave when I found out the ferry to casamance went the next day and ten would stop running for 10 days for repairs, so I would have to fly back or even fly there. Casamance is te region in the south with lots of animals and some really nice beaches! Well after looking how much flights cost I decided it’s an area I’ll have to come back to later! So I headed up to saint Louis instead, saint Louis is the first French settlement town in Senegal. The ride up to saint Louis was interesting. Our bus/van (really an 8 passenger van by US standards holding 15 people) only broke down completely once and then the last hour we had two men arguing in the front, though I think if I could understand Wolof I would have found it humorous as apparently the others thought it was.

Now I am in a hotel on the beach right near saint Louis. The people here are very nice and I might be headed to a discotheque tonight, though I will not be doing any dancing, and tomorrow I think I have a private tour guide around town! I find that my French improves some while here but because it is so bad I also tend to keep to myself a lot! So I think I’ll be happy by the time I head to morocco and more europeans/Americans! Sorry if there are spelling errors but i did all this on my phone!

So my hostel in Dakar is more like a family stay, and they are all very nice. Most the day I spent wandering the area and then sitting on the beach until I couldn’t take all the people sitting to can’t with me! Haha! Mostly cause it’s all men and it starts to creep you out after awhile!
The young daughter, she’s 18, of the owners invited me to go to the market with her and it was a true African market selling absolutely everything and small little alleys between stalls. They also invited me to have dinner as well which was some rice and spices with chunks of fish in it, it tasted and smelled and I guess kind of looked like dog food, but I managed to choke some down. They all eat out of the same dish as well. I then hung out with the girl while she sang American hip hop and she also danced like a Senegalese for me in the kitchen! I will not ever be heading to a disco here as I will just look like an idiot!

Needless to say it was an experience and they were very nice! I’m excited to head out of the city and off to the ile de goree! Thanks for the comments!

So I say Dakar finally because it took me two days of travel to get here! 10 hours on a bus, a 5 hour flight, a 4 hour layover and another 10 hour flight!!

The bus ride was not supposed to be that long but just as we were leaving Mombasa we came along a riot and there were about 4 different tires burning in the road! It was a little crazy and we have no idea why it happened but it took almost two hours for some police to come and break it up and drag the burning tires to some puddles! Also, the bus ride seemed more like 87 hours long because we had the delay an because it was so hot!! We paid a little more for the bus w aircon but we didn’t realize that would mean there would be no windows to open and that we would be sitting above the engine! The engine was at the back of the bus and it got so hot you couldn’t put your foot on the floor and it would blow super hot air out of the radiator! This made for a very long ride!

Also Chelsy and I asked which was closest to the airport as our bus made several stops and we got dropped on the side of the highway, which was fine until it was dark and there were only motorbike taxis! We finally found a taxi and definitely overpaid, but after some interesting times at the airport (the cabbie ordering Chelsy out of the car even though it was the incorrect gate) we said our sad goodbyes 🙁 and were on our way!

I had a four hour layover and 15 hours of flights but I finally made it to Dakar! Thank goodness I know a little French as noone seems to know any English! Haha! But it’s nice, I can smell the ocean from my room and this hostel is almost like a family stay which is cool! There is sand everywhere!!! You can tell I have come to the desert, even paved roads are mostly covered in sand! And I have crossed the equator into summer because the sun stays longer! I’ll be in Dakar tomorrow and then I will head to the ile de goree only 20 minute ferry ride from here before heading into the casamance or up north!

It’s been an amazing week or little over having chelsy around! We spent a couple days in Nairobi going to a giraffe park- we fed them, even from our mouths! – and an elephant orphanage and just saying bye to everyone from my tour. We then made the 8 hour bus ride to Mombasa and thought we would stay at the hostel here. Our first night was so strange because there was only one other person staying there. And it was in the middle of nowhere. We hung out with the one other guests and some locals and it made for a strange night! So the next night we decided to move to a hotel, it was more expensive but nicer to be near other people and it’s right on the beach. We spent a couple days walking along the beach and swimming in the pool and we made another American friend zack who has been volunteering near Nairobi, so we’ve been hanging out with him a lot.
On Wednesday we left and went on a one night safari to tsavo east national park so that chelsy could see all the animals. It was cool and we were told we were lucky because we saw a lion and cheetah dragging it’s kill, as I guess it’s not real common to see cats in this park. It was nice but I would definitely recommend that others go to Serengeti or Masai Mara instead…. They just have more animals. But we stayed in a safari lodge which was very nice. We had a huge room and bathroom and were the only ones there. And during the day we could see elephants at a watering hole a little distance away right from our front porch!

Last night chelsy, zack, a worker named Felix, and I all headed to karaoke and a disco. The choice and small selection of music at karaoke was minimal and humorous but still entertaining and once we got to the disco we were dancing machines, and the only people on the dance floor. But none the less so fun! Today we will sit by the palm tree lined swimming pool and maybe try to go trade stuff for souvenirs on the beach. Tomorrow we head back to Nairobi for our night flights and I am off to Senegal while chelsy heads home. It will be tough to go back by myself and I’ll miss chelsy but I’m excited to see what northwestern Africa is like!

The tour ended yesterday!! Sorry I was off the radar so long but overland tours don’t really allow for too much internet time! Rather than go through absolutely everything in the last three weeks I will simply go through some brief highlights and it will probably be enough. The pictures unfortunately will have to wait as I am not allowed to upload any right now.

so here goes: after leaving zambia we went to lake malawi , which is beautiful. The highlight there was that we had a bag night where we all got one garbage bag and had to wear it and make ourselves into animals out of it… awesome! Then we were off to Tanzania where we went to zanzibar. Zanzibar is amazing and beautiful we did a spice tour and stayed in historic stone town one night and then headed to north beach and went snorkeling! it was amazing. Then we headed up to the serengeti and the ngorogoro crater and saw all of the Big 5! it was amazing!! so many babies and so many animals! Then nairobi and now with Chelsy!

I will update more now but this is all the time I have at the moment! Thank you everyone for the comments! I love to hear from you all!!