Senegal - 2 November, 2000

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Travel Distance

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Today is the first day of our long drive to get to Bamako, capital of Mali.  We are uncertain of the route we will take and the road conditions once we enter Mali, so we need to cover as much ground as possible.  

After packing up the campsite, we head into the town of Rufisque to go shopping for our cook group.  The town is not very nice - one of the most unpleasant we have been in.  There are basically open sewers running through the streets - some are flooded and you have a narrow sidewalk to use and stepping stones to get across the street.  Anyway, we do our best to get some food.  We pick up the usual vegetables and then we go look for some meat.  We finally find the chicken market and we go select our three chickens - live ones.  We negotiate the price and they then slaughter them and pluck them right there - they were fast at the plucking!!!  We spent a total of CFA 19,000 (about US$25) for three meals.

Once we have completed all the shopping and have loaded it on the truck, we are on our way at 11:00 AM towards the border.  At 1:40 PM we stopped on the roadside for a quick lunch of sandwiches, and we were back on our way at 2:15 PM.

We stopped for the day at 5:15 PM at a bush campsite just east of the small town of Koungheul, just off the road.  As we needed to cook dinner, we got right into it.  We made a stew of the vegetables and chicken and served it with boiled rice - very simple.  After cleaning up, we set up our tent (no problem any more to do it in the dark).  We relax for a while and then we go to bed.  We did not use the fly on the tent, so we were able to watch the moon as it slowly set in the night sky.