Day 1: Getting to Saint Louis

The first leg of our trip was tame compared to all the rest -- but we had to start somewhere, right? The morning before we left I asked Tsilat if she'd ever traveled outside of Dakar with public transportation. Probably something we should have covered before, but it's evidence on just how little we did to prepare. Somehow, we'd both managed to be the only students in our program to never take the station wagons, or sept places, that serve as the public transport for getting people to and fro cities in Senegal. We arrived at the Gare Routiere, Dakar's Grand Central Station, not at the bonne heure (early hour) like we probably should have, but around 11 in the morning hoping to find a car to Saint Louis. I knew it would be rough getting through the crowds and the guys who always trail you trying to get you into some car or another, but there's something to be said about learning to keep your cool and having fun with it. And that's just what we did.

Tsilat in our mini-bus.

A woman who rode with us.

One of the many vendors circling the waiting cars. You buy seats in a car and so if there are seven seats you have to wait until more passengers come along before departing.

A guy who was sitting in our car to make it look more full. You always try to find the cars that are the fullest since those are the ones that are leaving the soonest.

Saint Louis was deserted for Dakar as the capital sometime mid-colonial period. What's left is a quiet historic downtown, protected by UNESCO, with all the old French colonial architecture still in place. Aside from the trailing talibe (little beggar boys), it's a pleasant place to just walk the streets and imagine it really is in the past. It's about two hours from the border with Mauritania and about three hours from Dakar so we thought it would be a good jumping off point letting us get into the rhythm of traveling while we're still in Senegal and still in our comfort zone.

We stayed at the auberge of my host father's brother and had dinner with his nephew overlooking the bridge that interlinks the island of centre ville and the rest of Saint Louis. The city georgraphically is in any interesting position since it's the place where the Senegal River enters the Atlantic Ocean. The centre ville, where all the French lived and the part which is protected today, is on an island formed by a fork in the river.

Dakar was still fresh in our minds but its roar was diminishing with the calm of Saint Louis, however we still had yet to enter the desert, where the true silence would reign.