Dakar and Casamance

Hi from Ziguinchor, Casamance.
We ended up staying four weeks in Dakar which was an interesting experience, always exciting and sometimes discouraging. We were anchored in front of the Cercle de Voiles de Dakar at Hann Plage, a lovely little yacht club in the palm trees with a lot to offer yachts including wifi and even a workshop just made for Martin. The beach is unfortunately really polluted but very pretty at a distance (from the anchorage). The people in Hann village are nice and leave you in peace to wander about and do a bit of shopping. Not at all like downtown Dakar! There we were aggressively and mercilessly harassed by the street venders and Martin was even the victim of a pickpocket in front of me and the children. Two guys selling t-shirts were talking to us when suddenly one of them touched Martin’s trousers at the knee with no explanation. It was such a bizarre thing to do and quite invasive that all of us were looking at this and didn’t notice when his mate stole Martin’s wallet from his pocket while he was bent over. We realized five minutes after they had gone. Seems obvious in retrospect, but they were good! However we did love Dakar for its culture, its colours, its crazy side streets, its markets, its greenness, its decorated buses…. And we were especially happy to have our home with us for a break sometimes.

After Dakar, we sailed directly to the south of Senegal to explore the Casamance River. There in a bolong (smaller tributary) we met up with our friends on the yacht Irini, who have two children, friends of Max and Jack. There we all finished the school year – that was a party!

So now we are on holiday on this beautiful river among the mangroves and baobabs. We swim and we fish and we really should try to finish the interior of the boat…At the moment we are in Ziguinchor, the capital of Casamance with 130 000 inhabitants. It’s a nice little city with friendly people and good markets and delicious shrimps, fish and mangos. We are anchored in front of a very posh hotel which is strangely tolerant of yachties – we can tie the dinghy up to their pontoon and use their wifi bar. Tomorrow we are going back to the bolongs where there are small villages with no electricity or internet but each one has a mast for the mobile phone network! So we probably won’t be able to read emails for a while but can be contacted on 00 221 77 309 7096…hopefully.