Home » Mauritania Senegal » Overland Trip To Senagal 2004, Day 11: Goodbye from Mauritania, hello to 500 metres of anarchy...

10.04.04

Overland Trip To Senagal 2004, Day 11: Goodbye from Mauritania, hello to 500 metres of anarchy...

Thomas Morgan
2006-04-26 13:11:51

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Have you been to Rosso before ? No, please take advantage of me. That would have been us, but Frenchy lied and said we’d been here before. The border didn’t officially open until 3, and we got there at 1, spent two hours of fending off street hustlers, and then crossed where we’d face the toughest hassle yet and a hellish ride into the most pleasant city yet, St. Louis.

There’s probably only one place on the planet more unpleasant than Rosso, Mauritania. This place is Rosso, Senegal. Nothing can prepare you for it. We got off the boat with the guy who, it appears, had forced himself upon us. As soon as we had put our feet on Senegalese soil, our passports were collected by a policeman who then proceeded to walk off, as people swarmed around us, eager to greet us, welcome us to Senegal and, quite probably, to take us to the cleaners. It soon became apparent that this was to be a damage limitation exercise and we set about going on the defensive and trying to do as much as possible ourselves. I turned to our rather quiet and unassuming guide. “We’re giving you 500CFA, only to you, no one else, and you’ll take us to the taxis. OK ?” Yes, he told me, he understood, and for about 3 seconds it looked like this idea actually had a hope in hell of becoming reality. A second, rather more forceful guide appeared, and assisted us without having talked to us in doing things that all but the most stupid of the world’s creatures could have done, namely collecting our passports and walking away from the river towards the taxi garage. He then negotiate a special fare for us, having bought us two seats each so that we could be comfortable in the taxi, which is of course why we were squeezed in like sardines. For this he only asked 5000CFA for himself, which was the same price as the taxi for both of us and the bags to St. Louis. What a nice man. After much argument and an assurance that we wouldn’t board the taxi without paying him, we ...