Goo!

Happy belated birthday America! Turns out this was my first one celebrated abroad and it was just a bit different! Get out a map – we traveled as far away as possible in Senegal to Kedougou on the boarder near Guinea. What a blast! I’ll try to give you a re-cap of all the festivities!
A friend came here to Bambey to stay the night and we were picked up on July 1 by 4 others to fill a 7-place station wagon with 5 bikes on top. Normally, this famous road from Kaolack to Tambacounda takes an average 8 hours to go just 150 miles since it’s a paved road with deep pot holes. About an hour into the trip, since none of us had ever been down this road, we asked what village our driver thought would be a good one to stop and have lunch… he was also a rookie! Needless to say, it took us 12 hours to get to Tamba.

We stayed at that PC regional house overnight and got in another 7-place to Kedougou the next morning. This road is only supposed to take 4 hours. About 20 minutes after leaving the garage, we hit a cow, and then a tree. Our driver was an IDIOT! He sped up and aimed for its head. Honestly. Everyone was fine, I’ve hit deer before and they do damage. We got the hind leg of ol’ Bessy and she limped off, hopefully to be found sooner than later by her herder and our car didn’t have anything wrong with it. But our driver stopped the next 7-place going back to Tamba to tell them to send a mechanic and another 7-place since our car didn’t work properly. We thought this was very responsible, giving horribly unreliable transport in this county. So we waited in a village for 2 hours for this car to go 10 miles from the garage, he got there, we switched all the bikes and luggage, the mechanic took our old car for a spin and came back 2 minutes later to say it was fine and our driver didn’t know what he was talking about. So we moved all our luggage back and even though I asked sincerely for a smarter driver, they just laughed and sent us on our way. That took 8 hours total.

Arriving in the ‘gou was amazing. It is seriously a different world down there. Trees! Grass! Fat cows! Mountains! I couldn’t stop taking picture so make sure to check them out! I have tried to select the best. In 5 days I took nearly 200! So on the 3rd, we decided to bike to waterfalls. There were lots of us who wanted to go so I left with 3 other girls to get a head start in front of the boys, assuming they would catch up. Well then we got lost. A good hour, lost, until we found locals going the same direction to get us back on track. These are not easy paths! We were exhausted, pissed, hungry and thirsty. It is like 30k so like 18ish miles but an hour in the wrong direction added on to that. Never have I NEEDED a mountain bike on such terrain before so was rather unprepared. We got to the village and relaxed for a bit and decided to head to the falls still like 5k from this village. We left at 1pm without eating. We got to the bottom of the falls to the river, sat in it, and the 4 of us decided not to hike up the 45minutes uphill to see the falls. Sad but honestly, my body wouldn’t allow it. So by that time, everyone was starting to come down from the falls and we went to find lunch in the village. We stayed at a very nice campement, but also got lost getting there! Signs are needed for the inexperienced. That night, we ate dinner at 8 and fell asleep at 8:45 until sunrise. Then we headed back in order to make the party.

It was so easy getting back. Left at 7 and were home and showered by 10:30. About 70-80 volunteers made it down and we had delicious food: grilled pork and potato salad were my favorites! Plenty of beverages and our private DJ playing only American music, it was a constant dance party. We only had about 10 fireworks but we sang the national anthem through them all and it was great! We tried right?! The regional house in Kedougou is all outdoors so it was the perfect atmosphere!

The next day was recovery day. Dancing after all that biking and being just a bit dehydrated made for a pool day where friends were staying at a hotel. The next day we took transportation to a different set of falls further away. So I did get to see one! Pictures don’t do it justice: it was beautiful! The transport wasn’t that fun since it was the same road we biked on but it was the only way to do a day-trip. We only broke down once and another time had to all get out for him to properly clear a ditch so all in all it wasn’t that bad. To go that 30ishK was over 2 hours. Crazy right? Just not easy to travel down there!

I did have plans to go home through the north and take a few more vacation to see some friends’ sites but decided to come home instead. I got back here in 8 hours, yey! and am caring for my foot. I have a bit of an infection that I made someone else scrub like crazy, bringing plenty of tears streaming down my face. I came to Dakar to have our doctor look at it and she gave me meds to make things all better! I’ll live – all the adventures were well worth a sore foot!

Hope you all had a great Fourth!