7:30. Someone’s banging at the door. WTH? I told him (I assume it was the guide) we would visit HIM, exactly to prevent these kind of situations! I yelled at him to go away by shouting “no, non, nee!”, that should do it.
Isn’t it just possible te be left alone over here?? We fell asleep again to be woken up again just 15 minutes later. We yelled at him to go away (again) and were able to get an hour of sleep before we actually had to get out.
As we heard a couple of times now we understood the piste was indeed flooded so we took it for granted. We ended up with our guide a bit later at the gate. Ready for the “Rosso Hell”.
First I had to arrange some money from an ATM and then the gate openened. hundreds of people first had to get out and then hundreds had to be back in again. As if everyone seems to think it goes faster to get in all at once it was a bit nerve-racking to get our Mercedes in without hitting someone or another car bumping against ours. Our guide showed his usefulness already, he arranged us to get in soon and he asked me for all the necessary documents like the passport, driving license, transport documents and so on. He could spoil our complete journey now just to walk away 
But we had to do this, so we observed him running to all kinds of people distributing our papers. After 20 minutes he was back and had arranged everything, but the ferry did not seem to go anymore, as it was lunch time already so we had to wait for three hours to get on it. That was to be expected, that was the price we had to pay for not getting up at 7am to catch the first boat
We had to get out of the car because it was way too hot. The guide let us to a place where some senegaleze people were sitting and we drank some tea over there. Sitting on the ground we observed all the rural activities.
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| Waiting three hours for the ferry @Rosso |
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| Women doing their laundry in river Senegal |
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Crossing the border in Rosso. The ferry which took us to Senegal from Mauritania
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| Typical lush green environment, after we just passed the border in Rosso. After crossing the Senegal river, it’s bizarre how the landscape changed instantly. |
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This place is full of bustle and it’s easy to sit here for a long time watching all the people doing their things. We were sitting close to the river bank and saw the women doing their laundry, and kids where washed by their mothers, while a bit furher away lots of dropped litter was scattered all over the place. When the soft wind blew a bit in on-shore, we could easily conclude that they drop their human waste somewhere around here too.
Some man proved this was true by taking a leak close by. And then they wonder how they get so sick sometimes.. The women were singing while doing the laundry. I imagined how grummy the people for Europe would be if they had to do their laundry in some river, let alone in the dirt and in this hot temperature. We could take these marvellous women as an example, being so cheerful and singing together!
Once in a while a dragon came along, watching the scene (and trying to catch some fish). Melissa made our lunch and the guide got us some nice cold water. We had lunch together and the guide told us about all the people crossing the river in small boats. Most of them tried their luch by getting to Europe and were catched in their attempt to leave Africa for a better future. Lots of them were told that they could easily go to Europe and build up a better life. But reality is different. Without proper paperwork you can’t get in Lots of them will try it again by small boats or get on freighters illegally. Some try until they die because of the small boats they use to cross the sea from Morocco to Spain. They dry out or are just smashed over. The people see their dreams falling apart when they hear they can’t go in and then they have to walk and hitchhike back again.
At about 3pm we entered the ferry and were finally able to cross the river. At the other side, the guide started to arrange all the needed paperwork again. This side of the river is a complete culture shock, it’s the complete buzzing colourful Africa. Entering from the quiet sandy Mauritania to Senegal is quite a experience. All the typical African features are there, the african red sand, the green trees and bushes, the colourful clothes, noisy people and activity everywhere. This culture shock is very welcome
After everything is done we pay the guide 80 Euros and he earned 20 Euros for this. After leaving the small place we were stopped by an official. Self assured I handed over my papers and was stunned to hear he missed some sort of document. The vehicle registration document was missing, and he did not talk about the Carnet de Passage. He told me I should have received this document, otherwise it wasn’t possible to pass the border.
Well dude, there we are! I explained him we had arranged a guide and paid him to do all the necessary stuff. This guy wasn’t after our money, it wasn’t a trick to scare us, it wasn’t a stupid ‘You don’t have all the paper work , but you can pay me some money and I will let you through” thing. He told us we could get this document in St Louis and let us through.
A bit further we found a huge skull of an african cow. It was from the cows you see here a lot with the big horns. We talked about if we could take it with us, and how we could deal with all the borders we were about to cross in the future. We decided to give it a shot.
The weather was much better to cope with over here and while on the road we saw a massive amount of different bird species. We stopped a lot to check out the bird species and determine which birds they were.
A bit later when we entered a village we were stopped by an police officer. Melissa just had defastened her seatbelt to get something from the back of the car. This odd guy started to complain about this and wrote out a fine.
I explained to him we alsway drive with our seatbelts fastened and this was just a coincidence. He didn’t even listen and kept on writing while everyone was passing by without seatbelts on, most of the time the belts aren’t even there anymore. Let alone the fact that one can better count the things that DO work on these cars, instead of the other way around.
We started to get angry about this, because this was just because we were ‘rich’ tourists and he wants to get the money of of our pockets. He didn’t want to do anything about it, after he was finished writing he had the following offer for us: Pay half, and then he wouldn’t give us the fine and the money was (obviously) for him. Instead of 40 Euro we would pay 20 Euro.
“Great deal, but NO!” I yelled. I was still angry because we felt it was just because he wanted to get money from us stupid tourists. Not a very warm welcome. I got angry and I told I did not pay anything. The police officer did not want to give my drivers license back. I wanted him to give me the fine, because I did not want to deal with this kind of corruption, this way the guy would earn 20 Euros and we definitely preferred to pay 40 Euros so he wouldn’t get anything. We told him we would go to the police station, and tell them there about his practices. We continued, this police guy having my driving license. At the station we told our story, while someone was sitting there behind bars. Ramon was probably impressed, to see someone sitting in jail. These guys at the police station were very friendly but confirmed we indeed had to pay 2,5 Euro.
What The Heck? 2,5 Euro? We paid the fine and let them confirm the payment on this piece of paper and went back. This damn !#$&!@&$ guy want to fool us heavily. This fellow was not on his place anymore.
Now what? I let some dirty words out of my mouth. This was serious, if this guy disappeared to nowhere. It was a very small village and not too many places to search in this sandy old place. I asked in a little shop if they saw this copper somewhere around. We didn’t have his name on our piece of paper. Then he appeared from behind a tree and walked towards us. He looked very, very angry. We do understand now, instead of 20 Euros he now has nothing and has to give us our license back, us knowing he was fooling us. I smiled at him and told him to gives us back the driver’s license as we paid the fine of 2,5 Euros! We let this guy have his moment, he yelled some nasty words at us while we took off. This whole situation cost us one and a half hour, but a least we did not have our share in the corruption of the officers, that will spoil the situation for other tourists.
One of our philosophy for this trip was not to give presents or pay unnecessary things to officers. They should just do their jobs without bribes. We probably will have a hard time in Africa
That night we stood at the gates of the Zebrabar. Sometimes you enter terrifice place to lay back and relaxed and come together again, after all those stressing periods sometimes. There was nearly noone here, we practically had the place for ourselves. The swiss owner was there and cook us a great dinner after this exhausting day. We would stay here for some days, that’s for sure.
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| And the diesel beat goes on. |
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| Finally, we entered the Zebra bar. After this heavy day, where we were all put to the test. Couple of hours sleep, woke up way too early with someone banging at the hotel door. Of course hell called Rosso, the stuff with the missing papers right after the border, the corrupt officer later on the day. |
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