This weekend I left the Dakar peninsula behind and set off, with my friend S., to the Sine Saloum - the beautiful region of Senegal where the Senegal River delta bleeds into the ocean, forming thousands of islets of sand, mangroves, and varying degrees of salty-fresh water beloved of oysters, breeding fish, and colorful sea-birds.
The road trip was half the adventure. We traveled by bush-taxi, one of the ubiquitous gray station wagons known here as "taxis sept-place" because they cram in seven passengers in addition to the driver. (See top photo.) After finding a sept-place headed to our destination of Toubakouta in Dakar's gigantic "gare routiere" (taxi depot) at 3:30pm, we waited for an hour before the driver had signed on all seven passengers, then sat for another 2 hours in the slow crawl of traffic out of the bottlenecked single road out of town.
Then, however, we were on open road for four hours, whizzing through the regional hubs of Thies and Kaolack, past road-side tea-stalls, mango stands, rice-and-sauce purveyors, and multi-function boutiques. We were dropped off on the pitch-dark roadside next to Toubakouta at 10:30pm, the brightly-lit milky way twinkling overhead in the moonless night.
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