TOURING

We stayed in Serekunda for the first few days just relaxing after our adventurous ferry ride into Banjul. We quickly learned that Gambia is a country where everyone wants to be your friend, buy your car, sell you anything and everything, and where the men are dressed like wannabe rap stars. There is at least one charity organisation in everything village that we passed and we were constantly demanded by the kids to give them something or to sponsor them. We were starting to think that perhaps the charities had gone a little overboard with their generosity or at least had done it in the wrong way.

We headed towards Kiang West National Park which sounded good in all the travel books and we were expecting to see Gambia’s wildlife at its best. We had planned to stay in a nice river camp in the park but once we arrived, we found that the prices had doubled since last year to a ridiculous price. After trying to argue with the manager to lower the price since its low season and there really are no other guests, we left to explore the park and find a nice camp ourselves. This national park turned out to be our first bad experience in Gambia.

Park Ranger number 1 was a boy dressed in jeans and a football t-shirt, with no official park ranger card and no official prices or tickets. We were very sceptical of his authenticity and argued with him for about half an hour, then deciding he was probably working there we entered the park. We found a great spot overlooking a watering hole full of baboons and enjoyed our evening there. The next morning we are ready to leave the park early, concluding that there is not much there except for baboons and birds, which we had seen and heard plenty of. This is when we see Park Ranger number 1 cycling after us in his fluorescent green shirt – hard to miss really. He claims that since we spent the night in the park, we have to pay more money. He shows us a notepad with names and amounts and claims that all these other tourists paid the additional fee. Of course he had not mentioned this to us when we asked him the day before, so this is where the big argument started, in the middle of the village. Louise stayed in the car not having the energy to argue with the guy anymore. She’s surrounded by ten children all calling her a wicked woman and a liar. This really got her fuming since they did not know the story and still had the nerve to call her names. Louise joins the others arguing with the Park Rangers 1 and 2 and another ten people from the village that all gather around to see what all the commotion was about. In the end we left in bad moods without paying.

The next idea was to head to a hotel in Georgetown, maybe even see the Wassu Stone Circles since they were on the north side of the river. This is where our second bad experience happens. We get to the ferry to take us to Georgetown, and we find out that since we have foreign licence plates on our cars we have to pay in foreign currency. This was fine, we had a bit of foreign currency on us. But oh no, Mr. Captain only wants CFA, and 3’000 of them as well! Considering that the ferry from Barra to Banjul cost a little under CFA 6’000 for about 45min boat ride, this seemed absolutely ridiculous as it was a ferry ride over 15m of river. The local rapper boys with Chanel sunglasses and D&G jeans and t-shirts were very nice and served us numerous cold drinks while we thought out a good strategy for the ferry man to let us pass. It was extremely hot and humid and we were in bad moods anyway since the morning’s ‘issue’ didn’t make things any better. We tried to argue with the ferry man and offered him CHF, EUR, USD etc but he only wanted CFA. Deciding this was the most ridiculous government law in the whole world we left and found a spot to bushcamp a bit further down the road. It was getting too humid to do anything but sit in our chairs and sweat, Ellen cooked up some soup for us and we went to bed sweating. The winds came and we had a bit of rain which cooled us down for the night, ready for the border crossing into Senegal the next morning.

It’s worth to note that Gambian roads are the worst we have yet to see in Africa.