Chapter 1: Do I need 4-wheel drive?
After numerous fumbling attempts at public transport, paying a bit extra to hire a private taxi was looking better and better. On the way home from the Dogon trek, our guide had arranged a car to come pick us up in Dourou, a Dogon village, and take us back to Bandiagara (23km). We were planning to spend the night in Mopti, another 1.5hrs beyond Bandiagara, as were the other 3 people in the group, so we decided to hire the same car to take us the additional 75km from Bandiagara to Mopti as well.
The car that came to get us was a 1980s Mercedes sedan, driven (and ostensibly owned) by a police officer. (Unclear whether he was on or off-duty while running this little transport side business, but my guess from what I've seen in the region would be on-duty).
The road from Dourou to Bandiagara was bad. Really bad. Tons of potholes. About 5km into the 23km bumpy journey, we heard a loud noise behind the vehicle. I looked back to see a 2.5-foot long piece of the car lying in the middle of the road. We pulled over, retrieved the piece, and sat by the side of the road while the driver looked underneath the car. He eventually put the piece in the trunk, but apparently the pipe it fell off of was now hanging onto the ground and he had to tie it up (with a flimsy piece of twine) to the underside of the car. 3km later, the pipe fell down again: stop #2 for a retie. This happened about every 2-5km for the rest of the journey. After stop #3, I quit counting.
In Bandiagara, we waited and played sing-a-long pattycake with a bunch of schoolgirls while a "mechanic" "fixed" the car before continuing on to Mopti. At least the highway from Bandiagara to Mopti was paved. 5 minutes into the highway journey, we hit a bump and a harsh scraping noise reared its ugly head. Pull over. Yes, the "fixed" pipe has fallen down again. End result: a journey of just under 100km (62mi) took just under 6hrs. We had reached a record low of 10 mph average speed, and this was in a private car costing 10 times the price of the public!
Below: Our car (notice the ground clearance), and its muffler
Chapter 2: Commissioning a boat
Fast forward ahead a ways in the trip: we wanted to go from Joal to Toubakouta (back in Senegal now). We thought we had to take 3 separate public minibuses north, east, and then south again to get there, likely waiting for each one to fill (Reference Part 1, chapter 1 for details on how long that might take). Our hotel manager helpfully suggested that we could take a boat along the interconnected river channels of the Sine-Saloum delta directly there instead. We just had to take the bus 20km to Ndiange and we would be on the river network. And he conveniently had a friend who owned a boat who could arrange it for us. We spoke to his friend by phone before setting out, who told us that he had 2 other customers wanting to make the same journey that day, and that we could split the cost, 25,000 CFA each.
After a frustrating trip with a taxi driver who barely spoke French but nevertheless tried to dump us in a village only halfway to Ndiagne, claiming that it was "also called Ndiagne" (I checked, it was named Samba), and then restart negotiations for the taxi price he himself had offered up front, we arrived to discover that the other 2 people weren't going to take the boat after all. This was uniformly our experience with all of the privately-negotiated taxis we had tried since returning to Senegal from Mali: they arrived at the destination and then were upset when you paid them the amount that was initially agreed and they tried to demand more.
We almost left, but now we were 4 buses away from our destination instead of just 3, so we reluctantly agreed to pay 50,000 CFA (100 $USD, a lot of money in Senegal) for a boat directly to Toubakouta (supposedly a 3-4 hr journey). The friend of our hotel manager, Moustafa, claimed that it was going to cost 43,000 just in gas. We boarded our boat, which turned out to be operated by some 3rd party, not by Moustafa himself (also a frequent occurence: many middle men are involved in all transactions to thoroughly spread our money around).
2 hrs later the boat driver asked us which hotel we were staying at. Having been monitoring our map, and also the time, we were pretty sure that we weren't in Toubakouta yet, so we asked if the city ahead was Toubakouta. No, the boat driver said it was Foundiougne. We explained that we had paid to go to Toubakouta, not Foundiougne. The boat driver claimed that he had been told Foundiougne, that he had been paid just 38,000CFA (suspiciously less than the supposed 43,000 in gas costs alone), and that it was too late in the day and he was too short on gas to continue to Toubakouta. We called Moustafa for help. He claimed he had told the boat driver Toubakouta. He talked to the boat driver. Then he told us the boat driver would leave us in Foundiougne and give us back 3000CFA to cover the cost of public bus transport from Foundiougne to Toubakouta.
First of all, if we had wanted to take the bus, we would have paid 7,000CFA (total cost of all 3 bus rides from Joal to Toubakouta for 2 people) to take the bus, not 50,000 to take a pleasant boat journey. Second of all, it was now 5:30pm and we wouldn't be able to get to Toubakouta before dark, so we were stuck spending the night in Foundiougne, not in Toubakouta where we wanted to be. Third of all, the boat driver refused to take us to a dock that we specifically pointed out that led into Foundiougne, and instead dumped us out in shallow water that we had to wade through for about 250 yards to reach the nearest building, before another taxi ride for the additional 2-3 miles into town. This was the most unbelievable misadventure of all. I was livid.
The next day, we set off for Toubakouta in a sept-place (which quickly became nuff-place as we picked up more people along the way), then transfered to a minibus (From Foundiougne to Toubakouta was 2 public buses, instead of the 3 from Joal where we had started yesterday) for the 2nd half of the journey. We were driving on the worst, most pothole-racked road ever (when possible the drivers would drive on the shoulder or off in the dust to the side of the road rather than on the road itself). The whole journey took 3 nauseating hours to cover 60km and cost close to 7000CFA (the original pricetag for Joal-Toubakouta you'll remember, and more than twice the amount we had been "refunded" from the boat ride). I wanted to return to Ndiagne, find Moustafa, and wring his neck.
Chapter 3: So you think you found a 4-wheel drive?
After an interesting week working in the Gambia, it was time for a final African transport adventure. We had to arrive in Dakar, Senegal in time to catch a 10:30pm flight back to Europe on Friday. There are air flights connecting the two; however they only leave at 12:45AM Friday or 12:30PM Friday, and apparently they are regularly cancelled or delayed so when planning to catch a major international flight for example, one might not want to rely on them running. So instead, we opted to take a private car to drive 300 km (190 miles) from Banjul, the Gambian capital, to Dakar, the Senegalese capital. Normally one might allow 3-4 hours for such a distance.
We left for our adventure at 6:00AM on Friday in a nice 4WD LandRover. The first (and largest anticipated) hurdle was the ferry crossing over the Gambian River in Banjul. There are 3 ferry boats and the first crossing is at 7AM. Since cars and large cargo trucks can line up for hours to try to cross, we were advised to make the first ferry. We were also told that your chances of boarding a ferry depended not on the order in which you arrived, but more so on your driver's "powers of negotiation."
The first ferry was seemingly full by 6:30 when we arrived, but the boat wasn't even there yet. After multiple negotiations with ferry staff, our driver's neighbor, conveniently a ferry employee, arrived and promised us transit on the 2nd ferry. However, the "7AM" first ferry did not arrive, load, and depart until 9:30, and there was once again only 1 of the 3 existing ferry boats in operation. We were starting to worry about exactly what time that 2nd ferry would depart, since it takes over an hour each way to load, cross, and off-load. (The backup plan was to abandon our LandRover, cross on foot, and rehire a new car on the other side, although we really didn't want to let our spacious LandRover go.)
Then we received news that they were pumping the water out of a 2nd ferry boat. Our car was directed into the front-row of the loading zone for the 2nd ferry. Finally it arrived, cars loaded, then the gates for foot passengers were opened and literally hundreds of people streamed on board to find a place anywhere they could (photo), and we started chugging across with just 1 engine in service. We were finally in Barra on the other side at 11AM. Next we had to cross the border (another 1.5hrs spent waiting in line to clear the car through customs).
Finally, the bulk of the driving began. Unfortunately the majority of the road for the first half of the trip is in terrible condition. (It's the same road that we used during our shorter trip from Foundiougne to Toubakouta.) It looked like I imagine a road might look after suffering air shelling during a war. Even in a 4x4 LandRover, we were bouncing and rocking every which way. It was rough going. There were potholes in potholes. Cars and trucks drove wherever they could find the "best" path...often on the complete opposite side of the 2-lane "road." Our whole LandRover nearly disappeared into one of the potholes and I thought it might not be able to climb back out the other side!
Despite all this adversity, we were able to arrive at the Dakar airport by 6pm, concluding a 12-hour journey at a record average speed of 15.5 MPH, and thus conclude our grand West African adventure.
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