Day 58: Trip to St. Louis

Trip to St. Louis. As is usual here, we take a taxi for 5,000 CFA, a little less than 10 euros for the 20 km. That's OK.

St. Louis has the charm of an old French colonial town in the center, albeit a bit downtrodden despite its UNESCO World Heritage status. The Senegal River is brown, but the pirogues on it are extremely colorful. Kind of a really nice atmosphere.

First, we search for Orange Telekom to buy a second SIM card for Brigitte and an upgrade for Wolle. First we are in the official office, where we would have had to wait for 1-2 hours. That's why we go to a kiosk and pay this time benefit with around 50 euros for 2x7GB – but we hope that we'll at least be able to work, plan and research well. We have a lot to clarify.

Afterwards some food and drink, absolutely necessary. For the sake of simplicity, we take the tip from the guidebook (La Linguère) and have an excellent lunch with Thou Calamare (a kind of stew with a dark, thick tomato sauce) and fish skewers. Plus hibiscus juice (Juice Bissap). Yummy.

We then look for working ATMs that also accept our cards and supply us with cash again.

The last stop is a large supermarket (Auchan) to restock our supplies. Bulk purchase for over 43,000 CFA :-) Food is not as cheap here as in Morocco and Mauritania. Now it's time to get a taxi back fully loaded – the second attempt works. We insist on the 5,000 on the morning outward journey and “here we go”.

By the time we get back, the day is almost over. Putting things away, picking up the laundry that we had washed (some of the Sahara dust will probably never come out again), showering.

In the evening Catherine and Ian treat us to a barbecue, which is probably the last camel meat of the trip. All we have to do is provide the cold beer from the Zebra Bar fridge.