This trip offered the best way to see the most of Gambia.
Day 1: Collection from our lodgings 8.20 am. Drive along the South bank of the Gambia crossing by ferry to the north bank driving a bit more to reach the stone circles at Wassu , then boarding a boat for lunch and a 4 hour trip up river . Arrive at our overnight destination camp Janjanbureh in time for an evening meal. At this point we were issued with specific instructions " you will change for dinner, nice clothes please" . There was a fleeting aside "this will not be like your hotel" , the Gambian accent is just rich and groily ( i know, thats not a word either but this place just requires new adjectives) it resonates somewhere deep inside them, the smiles convince you every time.
Day two:Cross back to the south bank.Visit George Town. Visit the oldest college in the Gambia. Visit the women's clinic. Then on to a typical village family house and then lunch and back home for about 6.30. We are promised Chimpanzees , baboons , crocodiles and if we are exceptionally lucky ,hippos.
You will be in Gambia's finest tour bus with air conditioning.
We ask how gruelling the trip is and is it suitable for quite grown up people. "Yes, daas fine". Some 70 year olds had returned that very day . "Oh well then, that's alright"
Franco at this point decides to withdraw , he is going to go on a sea fishing trip with a young couple staying with us at Phoenix Lodge . He knows better.
We, however, enrol and pay up.
Sunday 8.20 am and the bus rolls up outside our gates. Perfect. We get on and introduce ourselves to the other 8 passengers and it is off we go. The bus is not too bad and there may well be aircon. The holes are certainly in the right places. Have you ever noticed that when you are in group of people one person very often feels that their particular requirements are far more important or correct than others in the group? so it was, one of the party, without previously checking with everyone else, decides its best to have his window wide open, leaving the rest of us to eat the dust that whirls in through the window and a sirocco wind blasting our faces. A friendly Dutchman who was wearing contact lenses, pointed out our plight.
Our guide informs us that we are not going to Banjul do the ferry crossing but we will drive along the south bank and cross further down stream. He gives us his guide spiel , none of it sounds to daunting and we are off.
We left Bijilo and traveled towards the airport where we did a right turn and headed inland along the banks of the River Gambia. Very quickly we were in a different kind of Africa. The countryside.
A very straight line of Tarmac has been poured onto the soil like thick jet coloured treacle, the edge's are undefined leaving a wavy line like melted candle wax that seeps into a border of burnt orange dust . There is the occasional straggled line of huts , some with thatched roofs others with corrugated tin panels , worn out holes on the rusty edges giving a lacy effect. Everything is crooked , wonkie, patched up and covered in a film of dust, Beige dust, grey dust and dust dust.Rather incongruously there is the odd satellite dish and occasionally a solar panel.
The Dutchman had done this journey a few years back and there was no Tarmac road surface. Ugh!
I cannot help making this comparison , in India everyone is walking, going somewhere intent on getting somewhere, making it happen. Here they are mostly sitting or lounging . An energy of a pre med injection, a languid lethargy wraps the whole country.
We see the women working over tin bowls ,straight legged and bending double from the from the hips down , babies still strapped to their backs sitting bolt upright giving the impression that if their mother stands up they might remain at right angles to her like a pantomime horse.
Beyond these village settlements a soothing pale ochre wash of elephant grass. Then, to my surprise ,the soil is grey, as pale as white ash where the sun has burnt out any moisture turning dark paynes grey in the deeper troughs of soil. It is still, lazy, an osprey glides overhead, it's hot .
This type of scenery in varying themes and styles flows on beside us, the huts are more of mud construction with the elephant grass roofs , the compounds are bordered by wonderful fence art. They are made either from the backbone of the palm tree leaves, now dried and bleached grey by the sun, resemble elephant tusks stuck upright in smart rows. Style number two is the whole dried palm leaf. Stalk end uppermost they overlap them in neat equidistant spaces like fans and tie them at the top of the stalk with a single dried strip of palm leaf. I would choose this style for my compound. Type three is the matted elephant grass panels not dissimilar to those you can find in B and Q. The further upstream we go the smarter these little settlements appear to be. The long drive is broken only by frequent police check points. These guys are serious and for real. Machine guns and all. Always polite, genuine big warm smiles, "Welcome to the Gambia" a slightly overly prolonged hand shake with the drivers mate up front. ;-)
The temperature is rising, our bums are getting flat and backs are creaking.
Hot, hot, hot.
" Can we have the air conditioning on please? How long until lunch?"
We don't exactly get a reply but in a few yards the bus pulls of the road into the shade of a large tree and we all get out to stretch our legs. Cold drinks in cool boxes on the luggage racks are thrown down to us and we are given some smallish but really good egg sandwiches . The men start disappearing into the undergrowth , us girls have a debate as to wether or we risk it and wait for the loo. Lunch must be soon. A TA nurse who has just returned from Afghanistan heads into the shrubbery . Three of us decide to wait. It is 12 noon as the bus pulls away.
"When will be at the ferry?"
" 30 minutes"
The air- con comes on fresh and cool. We all are smoothed over ..... For a bit.
Around about 1 pm ish the bus pulls into a rather good looking garage. Feeling encouraged by the surroundings and getting fairly desperate I ask for the ladies. We are pointed towards a still encouraging looking cement built toilet block. Two loos to be precise.
I go one side , Elaine goes to the other. As I have no idea what you are doing whilst you read this I am not going to elaborate any further on this experience. Suffice it to say , there is not a hygienic wipe large enough or bottle of sanitising hand gel big enough to cope. Dry retch , desperate needs require desperate measures
Back on the coach we are about to experience "Gambian time"
Nearing 2.pm and sweltering inside our air-con bus we are starting to see a more continuous line of huts bordering the road. Then we see a road block a red and white barrier halting all traffic heading north. Beyond the barrier the tarmac road becomes a single track of martian red dust.
Now the fun begins. This is just brilliant.
We dont know it but we are held in a queue for the ferry. The traffic heading towards the ferry port ( port is a large word) cannot pass the barrier until the traffic unloaded off the ferry passes over the single lane red dessert road and drives away . Now..... the traffic heading north is pushed off the sides of the main road to wait.
What is about to take place makes queuing for the ferry in Piombino look like child's play.
To start with we are all orderly in two lines one each side of the tarmac road. Quietly one Gule Gule sneaks slowly up along the Tarmac to get to the front of the queue . He needs to have a word with the policeman at the controls point. Of course he does. Everyone watches, by now the numbers of cars, lorries buses , goats, chickens etc. in the queue is fairly lengthy. Our bus , due to a friendly handshake is in pole position on the right bank . We wait, the patience of the drivers is melting in the heat, the level of chat is rising , drivers are getting out of their vehicles, almost imperceptibly traffic is inching forward. A game of grandmothers footsteps is taking place when ahead at the farthest point of vision down the one track road ahead a lorry is coming towards us. The game is on, like little kids the drivers can wait no longer and all run towards the Grandmother. All hell let's loose . Every vehicle facing north heads towards the barrier, not an inch of space is free, the road is completely blocked , in another land this collection of metal would be classed as breakers yard , a policeman, Mr Big, blows on his whistle whilst still talking on his cellphone. Arms wave , there is laughter , frustration and all has the look of your childhood dressing up box mixed in with a bag of liquorice all sorts.
The lorry traveling south, now brining its own queue of traffic, arrives head on at the barrier, which is now lifted. It really and truly is the most chaotic gridlock ever. I will never know to this day how it resolved itself but millimetre by millimetre the grubbly mulch of cars manoeuvred themselves and we all went on our way. Not a hand raised in anger no accidents things just dissolved . by this time it is nearly 2.30pm. Not yer crossed river. Not yet had lunch. Not yet visited stone circles.
A word about what "traffic " here consists of.
The Gambian street bus is called a Gule Gule. These are many times recycled European schools buses. The main fabric of the body work is rust held together by coats of white paint. They have outlived their life spans by several decades and they are FULL to the brim with bodies inside and on top they are stacked to the sky with a lifetime of possessions. Sofas, old fridges, goats, whatever. Then there are the bright yellow taxis with the green strips along the side. These cars are an art form all of their own. They nearly all belch out black fumes. They have been patched up and put back together on numerous occasions. They are dinted, dented, creased, crushed, the windscreens have straggly spiderweb cracks stuck over with Bob Marly coloured sticky tape. They would look perfectly in place at the Wimbledon Stadium stock car races. There are smart 4x4 s but not too many.
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Day 1: Collection from our lodgings 8.20 am. Drive along the South bank of the Gambia crossing by ferry to the north bank driving a bit more to reach the stone circles at Wassu , then boarding a boat for lunch and a 4 hour trip up river . Arrive at our overnight destination camp Janjanbureh in time for an evening meal. At this point we were issued with specific instructions " you will change for dinner, nice clothes please" . There was a fleeting aside "this will not be like your hotel" , the Gambian accent is just rich and groily ( i know, thats not a word either but this place just requires new adjectives) it resonates somewhere deep inside them, the smiles convince you every time.
Day two:Cross back to the south bank.Visit George Town. Visit the oldest college in the Gambia. Visit the women's clinic. Then on to a typical village family house and then lunch and back home for about 6.30. We are promised Chimpanzees , baboons , crocodiles and if we are exceptionally lucky ,hippos.
You will be in Gambia's finest tour bus with air conditioning.
We ask how gruelling the trip is and is it suitable for quite grown up people. "Yes, daas fine". Some 70 year olds had returned that very day . "Oh well then, that's alright"
Franco at this point decides to withdraw , he is going to go on a sea fishing trip with a young couple staying with us at Phoenix Lodge . He knows better.
We, however, enrol and pay up.
Sunday 8.20 am and the bus rolls up outside our gates. Perfect. We get on and introduce ourselves to the other 8 passengers and it is off we go. The bus is not too bad and there may well be aircon. The holes are certainly in the right places. Have you ever noticed that when you are in group of people one person very often feels that their particular requirements are far more important or correct than others in the group? so it was, one of the party, without previously checking with everyone else, decides its best to have his window wide open, leaving the rest of us to eat the dust that whirls in through the window and a sirocco wind blasting our faces. A friendly Dutchman who was wearing contact lenses, pointed out our plight.
Our guide informs us that we are not going to Banjul do the ferry crossing but we will drive along the south bank and cross further down stream. He gives us his guide spiel , none of it sounds to daunting and we are off.
We left Bijilo and traveled towards the airport where we did a right turn and headed inland along the banks of the River Gambia. Very quickly we were in a different kind of Africa. The countryside.
A very straight line of Tarmac has been poured onto the soil like thick jet coloured treacle, the edge's are undefined leaving a wavy line like melted candle wax that seeps into a border of burnt orange dust . There is the occasional straggled line of huts , some with thatched roofs others with corrugated tin panels , worn out holes on the rusty edges giving a lacy effect. Everything is crooked , wonkie, patched up and covered in a film of dust, Beige dust, grey dust and dust dust.Rather incongruously there is the odd satellite dish and occasionally a solar panel.
The Dutchman had done this journey a few years back and there was no Tarmac road surface. Ugh!
I cannot help making this comparison , in India everyone is walking, going somewhere intent on getting somewhere, making it happen. Here they are mostly sitting or lounging . An energy of a pre med injection, a languid lethargy wraps the whole country.
We see the women working over tin bowls ,straight legged and bending double from the from the hips down , babies still strapped to their backs sitting bolt upright giving the impression that if their mother stands up they might remain at right angles to her like a pantomime horse.
Beyond these village settlements a soothing pale ochre wash of elephant grass. Then, to my surprise ,the soil is grey, as pale as white ash where the sun has burnt out any moisture turning dark paynes grey in the deeper troughs of soil. It is still, lazy, an osprey glides overhead, it's hot .
This type of scenery in varying themes and styles flows on beside us, the huts are more of mud construction with the elephant grass roofs , the compounds are bordered by wonderful fence art. They are made either from the backbone of the palm tree leaves, now dried and bleached grey by the sun, resemble elephant tusks stuck upright in smart rows. Style number two is the whole dried palm leaf. Stalk end uppermost they overlap them in neat equidistant spaces like fans and tie them at the top of the stalk with a single dried strip of palm leaf. I would choose this style for my compound. Type three is the matted elephant grass panels not dissimilar to those you can find in B and Q. The further upstream we go the smarter these little settlements appear to be. The long drive is broken only by frequent police check points. These guys are serious and for real. Machine guns and all. Always polite, genuine big warm smiles, "Welcome to the Gambia" a slightly overly prolonged hand shake with the drivers mate up front. ;-)
The temperature is rising, our bums are getting flat and backs are creaking.
Hot, hot, hot.
" Can we have the air conditioning on please? How long until lunch?"
We don't exactly get a reply but in a few yards the bus pulls of the road into the shade of a large tree and we all get out to stretch our legs. Cold drinks in cool boxes on the luggage racks are thrown down to us and we are given some smallish but really good egg sandwiches . The men start disappearing into the undergrowth , us girls have a debate as to wether or we risk it and wait for the loo. Lunch must be soon. A TA nurse who has just returned from Afghanistan heads into the shrubbery . Three of us decide to wait. It is 12 noon as the bus pulls away.
"When will be at the ferry?"
" 30 minutes"
The air- con comes on fresh and cool. We all are smoothed over ..... For a bit.
Around about 1 pm ish the bus pulls into a rather good looking garage. Feeling encouraged by the surroundings and getting fairly desperate I ask for the ladies. We are pointed towards a still encouraging looking cement built toilet block. Two loos to be precise.
I go one side , Elaine goes to the other. As I have no idea what you are doing whilst you read this I am not going to elaborate any further on this experience. Suffice it to say , there is not a hygienic wipe large enough or bottle of sanitising hand gel big enough to cope. Dry retch , desperate needs require desperate measures
Back on the coach we are about to experience "Gambian time"
Nearing 2.pm and sweltering inside our air-con bus we are starting to see a more continuous line of huts bordering the road. Then we see a road block a red and white barrier halting all traffic heading north. Beyond the barrier the tarmac road becomes a single track of martian red dust.
Now the fun begins. This is just brilliant.
We dont know it but we are held in a queue for the ferry. The traffic heading towards the ferry port ( port is a large word) cannot pass the barrier until the traffic unloaded off the ferry passes over the single lane red dessert road and drives away . Now..... the traffic heading north is pushed off the sides of the main road to wait.
What is about to take place makes queuing for the ferry in Piombino look like child's play.
To start with we are all orderly in two lines one each side of the tarmac road. Quietly one Gule Gule sneaks slowly up along the Tarmac to get to the front of the queue . He needs to have a word with the policeman at the controls point. Of course he does. Everyone watches, by now the numbers of cars, lorries buses , goats, chickens etc. in the queue is fairly lengthy. Our bus , due to a friendly handshake is in pole position on the right bank . We wait, the patience of the drivers is melting in the heat, the level of chat is rising , drivers are getting out of their vehicles, almost imperceptibly traffic is inching forward. A game of grandmothers footsteps is taking place when ahead at the farthest point of vision down the one track road ahead a lorry is coming towards us. The game is on, like little kids the drivers can wait no longer and all run towards the Grandmother. All hell let's loose . Every vehicle facing north heads towards the barrier, not an inch of space is free, the road is completely blocked , in another land this collection of metal would be classed as breakers yard , a policeman, Mr Big, blows on his whistle whilst still talking on his cellphone. Arms wave , there is laughter , frustration and all has the look of your childhood dressing up box mixed in with a bag of liquorice all sorts.
The lorry traveling south, now brining its own queue of traffic, arrives head on at the barrier, which is now lifted. It really and truly is the most chaotic gridlock ever. I will never know to this day how it resolved itself but millimetre by millimetre the grubbly mulch of cars manoeuvred themselves and we all went on our way. Not a hand raised in anger no accidents things just dissolved . by this time it is nearly 2.30pm. Not yer crossed river. Not yet had lunch. Not yet visited stone circles.
A word about what "traffic " here consists of.
The Gambian street bus is called a Gule Gule. These are many times recycled European schools buses. The main fabric of the body work is rust held together by coats of white paint. They have outlived their life spans by several decades and they are FULL to the brim with bodies inside and on top they are stacked to the sky with a lifetime of possessions. Sofas, old fridges, goats, whatever. Then there are the bright yellow taxis with the green strips along the side. These cars are an art form all of their own. They nearly all belch out black fumes. They have been patched up and put back together on numerous occasions. They are dinted, dented, creased, crushed, the windscreens have straggly spiderweb cracks stuck over with Bob Marly coloured sticky tape. They would look perfectly in place at the Wimbledon Stadium stock car races. There are smart 4x4 s but not too many.
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