Dakar, Or The Car?

Cotonou to Dakar, it turns out, is just as daunting of a voyage as it sounds. Through tropical forests, up and down coffee mountains, through scrub-country and into dry desert, and now bach on the Sahelian coast of Africa. Senegal is the the African mainland's westernmost country, stretching itself out into the great beyond that is the Atlantic Ocean. Dakar is the bee-hive of an African country that has wrapped itself in modern consumerism, with all its perks and pitfalls. The street-hustler here is a breed apart from the ones found in Cotonou, they persist beyond the point of simple annoyance and border on being theives at times. That being said, I myself find Dakar to be a dizzying city, concrete and glass sky-scrappers shoot up into the sky and cars speed down well maintained streets with street cafés that would make the French and Italians jealous. The impact this amazing city has on my senses is compounded by the difficulty it took to get here. A 37 hour bus ride through two countries fueled by instant coffee and cigarettes. This ride felt something akin to being at the bottom of a dirty sock hamper for a football team, hot, humid, hurty. The Bamako-Dakar red-eye we'll call it, as it left the Malian capital at four o'clock in the morning. How do you wake up for a bus that leaves at 4am?, you might ask. Not going to bed is the answer my friends. A nice local bar was very accomadating to us for a few hours as we hobknobbed with local Rastas, Peace Corps Volunteers, ex-pats, and a charming young French journalist who was headed to Dakar with us. This all made the first few hours of our bus-ride all the easier as we all immediately passed out from exhaustion upon arrival. The rest of the trip, not so easy. After having to put up with endless stops and checkpoints and other miscellaneous sheenanigans we managed to arrive in somewhat good spirits. How strange to confront the reality that this will be my last place in Africa before the jump off back into...whatever is waiting. The flight leaves tomorrow night for Istanbul, stay tuned for the next installment. Same bat-time, same bat-channel.