overland travel | Jason Around the World

Banjul to Ziguinchor, Senegal overland and visiting Ziguinchor

hotels, overland travel, Restaurants, Senegal, The Gambia, West Africa 2015-16 No Responses »

Jan 202016

Our taxi driver showed up right on schedule, and soon we were off to the Gambia/Senegal border. Our transport to the border, photo courtesy of Jordan:

It looked to be not too long of a drive, and our driver confirmed it should be about an hour, inshallah. Fortunately we had no troubles at all, and got to the border in under an hour. I was expecting some trouble at the border since I’d never been asked to pay for a visa, but nope, super easy and friendly, stamp stamp, and we were out of The Gambia. Our driver was super helpful, and engaged in a bit of negotiation for us.

See, after you get stamped out of The Gambia, you have to drive another two miles to the Senegal entry point/border. However, our driver didn’t have Senegalese/ECOWAS insurance (which we learned was quite common) so he couldn’t take us. He did, however, negotiate a local taxi for us for what came out to be about five US dollars.. Our driver was super helpful, and engaged in a bit of negotiation for us. That driver, however, didn’t want to go all the way to Ziguinchor (the capital of the Senegalese region of Casamance) so we would be going to the local taxi hire and seeing what we could do there.

After dropping us off, he went to find us a “good taxi” – as opposed to a bad one I suppose. This is when all the negotiating started. He had found a good car, but he was going back in what sounded like pretty angry Mandinka with the driver. One spoke French, one spoke English, but they both spoke Mandinka, which left us out in the cold. He told us he had negotiated around 30,000 CFA francs (about US$50) and that sounded good enough, so we agreed. However, when we went to pay him, he wasn’t going to take $5 as agreed because it “took so long.” It was annoying, but only took $1 extra to get him to agree, so it wasn’t so bad.

Once that was done, it was on the road in our rather fabulous ride to Ziguinchor:

Daniel managed to snap this photo from the backseat. Notice the Senegalese flag steering wheel cover, and complete lack of any other dashboard instruments….

The drive itself was pretty uneventful, maybe two hours or so, and we arrived in Ziguinchor. Our driver had a bit of a hard time finding the hotel, so he headed first to the taxi station to check in. He needed to go there to get in the queue to go back to Banjul for his next trip, so wanted to make sure to check in before dropping us off. He also used this to get directions to our hotel, which wasn’t too far away.

We arrived at the Le Flamboyant Hotel, where the friendly staff let us know our rooms were ready. They were rather basic, but for less than US$40 per night they were amazing. Good, functional air conditioning as well as good free WiFi and breakfast for like $4. Can’t really go wrong at all! The bed was pretty hard, but given I slept nearly nine hours it must have been pretty comfortable!

View from the balconies:

After checking in, we were pretty hungry so went for a walk through town to find some lunch. We eventually managed to stumble upon the Kadiandoumagne Hotel, which was serving up lunch still…and had great carvings in the courtyard:

The lunch special, strangely, was Cordon Bleu…served with either beef or ham. I went with the beef option, and it was rather tasty all things considered. Washed down with a La Gazelle beer it was tasty enough, and fueled me for what was to be an afternoon wander.

Next stop was the local church/cathedral. Unlike most of Senegal, Casamance is largely Christian and animist, which fueled a decades long struggle for independence from Dakar which only ended a few years ago. No signs of conflict here, however, although the church has clearly seen better days:

We wandered the town for maybe an hour, where I eventually came upon a Total station which had ice cold Diet Coke. It was a message from the gods! I made mental note of it, so I could stop by the next day for snacks before we headed onwards to Guinea-Bissau.

After resting in the hotel a bit, we headed out for dinner at the Le Parroquet hotel and restaurant. Fresh-caught Barracuda was the special, but very small pieces buried under a large pile of chips and salad. At least it was pretty tasty, and they had bananas flambé as the dessert!

After a relaxing dinner, we headed back through the “well-lit” centre of town to the hotel. Yes, this is bustling Ziguinchor, Casamance, Senegal:

When I got back to the hotel, they informed me they hadn’t fumigated the room for mosquitos since I didn’t leave my key. I agreed to stay out of the room for 15 minutes, and they went in and absolutely sprayed the hell out of things. I went to dreams with foggy memories of dead bugs, and slept like a rock on the rock-solid bed. Up for breakfast in the courtyard: instant coffee, baguette, and some bissap juice was the order of the day. Daniel tried to get some eggs, but apparently the chickens weren’t around because they told him they didn’t have them today. But what they did have was a very festively decorated African mask hanging in the courtyard:

After breakfast, our mission was to find the consulate of Guinea-Bissau and get a visa. Why hadn’t I done this in Washington, you ask? Well, Guinea-Bissau is one of like two or three countries that doesn’t have a capital in DC. The others are tiny countries like Tuvalu, but Guinea-Bissau…that’s a unique case. See, they used to have an embassy in the suburbs in Maryland, but somewhere around 10 years ago they ran out of money…and rumour is the bank foreclosed on the mortgage. That’s right…the Bank repossessed the embassy. Even stranger, because you’d think under diplomatic conventions they should be protected against this or something, but whatever the true story, there is no longer an embassy in DC and the consulate in New York doesn’t issue visas.

Since so many people go overland from Banjul to Bissau, general consensus is that Ziguinchor is the best place to get a visa. The embassy had moved a couple years ago because, well, they couldn’t afford the rest on the main street in Ziguinchor, but after a good wander through a residential area with dirt roads, we finally found it:

There, the consul was very cheery and helpful, and we joined several others getting a visa…all Americans oddly enough. A group of older American women who’d been in The Gambia and decided why not see Bissau while they were in the area (seriously – my heroes!) and a strange evangelical guy from Texas who was going to Bissau to do some sort of missionary work. That said, the consul was great, we had visas in like 20 minutes, and they were dirt cheap at 20,000 CFA francs (around $33) versus the 55,000 francs charged in Dakar!

Walking back to the hotel, I stopped at the Total station again to get some biscuits and Red Bull for the journey (one small packet of instant coffee was not about to cut it) and then we went to pack up. View of the main circle in town from the Total Station:

After the walk, it was time to get some extra cash just in case the ATMs in Bissau weren’t functional as rumoured online. The first ATM I tried in Ziguinchor was out of service, and then when walking the half mile or so to the next it started raining. Which didn’t matter, because it didn’t want to take my card either. Neither did the third ATM.

Nearly a mile of walking later, we found a fourth ATM, and it started to make very promising noises…which I discovered were the sound of “I’m going to digest and keep your card now…mkay?” Panic ensued…almost. Here I was in relatively rural Africa, low on cash, and no ATM card to improve the situation. Oh, and it was raining and I was seriously soaked. Miracle of miracles, the bank branch was actually open….but when I got inside there were over 100 people waiting to see a teller/agent. I pulled the stupid/crazy/confused white guy, and just walked right to the front of the line and told her the machine ate my card.

Apparently, this is not uncommon. She signed, and asked for my passport. I told her I didn’t have it. She sighed. I offered to write down everything about the card on a piece of paper…she sighed and went in the back. Miraculously, she came back with my card, looked to see that it somewhat matched what I’d written down, and gave it to me. Whew. Huge disaster averted.

With that, it was back to the hotel to pack up and get ready to head to country #187 visited – Guinea-Bissau!

Syria

Lebanon, overland travel, Syria 8 Responses »

Jun 092014

Not that I’m seriously considering it any time soon (or am I) but one of the biggest gaps and challenges to my plan to finish all countries in a little over two years is Lebanon (easy) and Syria (very not easy.)

Ideally, of course, I’d prefer to do them together since Beirut and Damascus are relatively close, but this opens up lots of questions:

1) What’s the visa situation? Are Syrian embassies still open, and if they are, are they even issuing visas?

2) According to this map, the road from Beirut to Damascus appears to be solidly in government hands (assuming your driver knows which roads to take) and would be feasible. But, are taxis still running this route? Could I even find one willing in Beirut?

3) Once in Damascus, are their still safe areas? Possible to spend a night, or would this be a daytrip type of thing from Beirut?

4) What direction are the winds blowing? From media reports, Assad appears to be gaining the upper hand again, so it would appear things might get safer, at least in Damascus, over coming months?

5) Is there a “safe and easy” option? A relatively safe area that would be easy to daytrip over from Lebanon or Turkey? A border I could cross with a town on the other side, spend a couple of hours, and go back? The Jordanian border seems to border rebel-held areas, so that looks out of the question. Maybe west from Mosul (which I think is safe from Erbil these days?) into what appear to be “safe” Kurdish held areas like Al-Yarubiyah? Who controls the border here? Visa situation?

6) Latakia sounds to be completely (a relative term) safe these days, but is there any way to get there? From Turkey? The border at Kesab (based on the map above) appears in rebel hands?

Any thoughts?

Evening and Day in Pristina, and travel to Skopje, FYR Macedonia

hotels, Kosovo, Kosovo and Macedonia, Macedonia, overland travel, Restaurants No Responses »

Feb 142013

Got to our hotel, the Swiss Diamond Hotel Pristina, and check-in was a breeze. Hotel was quite nice, staff were friendly, and the room was quite nicely furnished as well. Overall, very impressed! The front desk staff pointed us to some major areas to walk and where we might find a bar serving drinks, and overall were quite helpful. Just a few thoughts on the hotel:

Breakfast was included and was quite comprehensive. Set up in what looked to be a ballroom or conference room, there were several stations including eggs to order, all sorts of breads and pastries, cold meats and cheese, salads, hot meats, you name it. Quite a good breakfast, and included in the rate. The only downside was trying to get coffee, as it was quite hold to find servers. Overall though, it was quite good.

Our room also had a balcony overlooking the city, with a pretty cool view:

Overland from Paramaribo, Suriname to Cayenne, French Guiana

French Guiana, Guyanas Trip, overland travel, Suriname 5 Responses »

Sep 132012

This was definitely the leg of this trip that I was most excited about, and most nervous about. Both for the same reason. Traveling overland by public transport definitely holds a romantic realness about it. You’re often traveling with locals, getting an insight on how local people get from place to place, and if you’re fortunate you get a good chance to interact with them as well. I can only remember one time that I did the shared car/taxi thing, and that was several years ago when I took a shared bus/taxi service from Moldova to Transdniester. That was a large bus, however, but I’ll still count it since it left from the shared transport bus station.

In this case, everything I’d read online said that in order to be assured your share taxi would leave within an hour, you really had to be there before 7am, because after that time there were very few passengers leaving Paramaribo and you could be stuck waiting for hours for your taxi to fill up unless you wanted to buy all the spots up. Everything I’d read online told me to expect about 70 SRD for one of five seats in a share taxi (about $22) for the three hour ride to the border. With that in mind, I asked the hotel concierge to call around and see what options he could find.

He first came back with 500 SRD for a private car (about $155) which was absolutely ridiculous. In theory, I could show up at the share taxi rank and buy out all five seats for only 350. He then called “some friends” one of whom was willing to not only pick me up at my hotel the next morning, but would agree to come at 9am (yay sleeping in) and only charge 80 SRD. I figured for this price I’d be doing some sharing, but for the convenience of hotel pick-up, a “known” driver, and sleeping in it sounded great.

Fast forward to 9am…no sign of the driver. 9:15. Nothing. Hotel calls him and he answers…”stuck in traffic.” Finally, around 9:45, he shows up with his sister and her small child already in the car. Great, at least we’re off! No seatbelts, but wouldn’t really expect that in a bush taxi. Of course, where do we go? You guessed it, the share taxi rank! Fortunately, it was just to meet three of his “friends” he’d agreed to pick up and drive to the border, so the wait was only another 10 minutes or so. Doing the math, I was probably subsidizing the others a bit, but it was what it was.

He was a relatively safe driver, although once again the entire conversation was in Dutch. We attempted both French and English, but they couldn’t really keep up in either, so we spoke what Dutch we could and the rest of the time they all conversed in Creole. We did need to make one “ganja stop” along the way for the other passengers to smoke, and then we made another stop maybe 30 minutes from the border in order to…buy watermelons. All the passengers bought watermelons from the roadside, as well as buying huge slices of watermelon to eat. The driver offered “I buy you, you eat!” but I wasn’t in the mood for suspicious roadside fruits with another 4-5 hours in shaky taxis to go. This is where things got strange. He confirmed I needed to go to the immigration building (the locals don’t bother, and just take a water taxi across the river), since he knew it was important for foreigners to get the exit and entry stamps. “No problem, no extra.”

After we started up again, the driver’s English suddenly improved a bit. “You have girlfriend?” “Uh, no, too busy, too much travel.” “Oh too bad. I have 3 girlfriend. You have boyfriend? I have two boyfriend!” “Uhhhh…” This was definitely getting very very weird. Little more small talk and he gave up, until we pulled up to the border. The local boat tout across the river swarmed the taxi, grabbing at my luggage. Driver assured me “It’s ok, he my friend, he take you across river.” Ok, that’s fare. Saves me negotiating with the touts, and we confirmed the price was the same 20 SRD I’d seen online. Then, it got really weird. “You pay 80 SRD. If you no want pay, my friend have house down the street.” Now, I’m pretty sure he was suggesting trading the ride for, um, “adult activities” and I quickly gave him his 80 SRD and walked into the immigration hut.

You can see above the tout hurrying to the building along with my bag. Once inside, there were about 100 people milling about, most of them with French passports. I chatted with a few, and they were all from French Guiana. Seems it was important for them to get stamps too, to document just how long they’d been out of the E.U. It seemed to just be the local Surinamese who didn’t care. Of course, why the line? It was just before 1pm, and the immigration person was on lunch! I had to wait about 30 minutes, and finally he showed up. I’d obviously been in the region long enough by now, because when the shoving started I held my ground and was near the beginning out of the line.