Gulu Gulu

Day 3 in Dakar was, again, eventful. This time, only the Therrien family (which had two additions, Mari's great aunt and uncle, Nancy and Carl) plus Claude, piled into the van in the morning. We were headed to Saly, a resort town about 2 hours from Dakar. On the way we drove through a few small towns, each with many interesting things to see. In many places, people constantly walk by cars sitting in traffic trying to sell their wares. From the car, we could have bought: underwear and bras, the game "Sorry", a jump rope, a hair-cutting kit, a broom, mangoes, roasted cashews, etc... For each thing you want to buy, you must bargain... Today, Mari's dad said he needed a new band for his watch and I said "go drive around Dakar!" Surely, someone would try to sell him one!

In Saly, we met a guide who had impressed Rae (Mari's mom) last year during her trip to Dakar. His name was Dou Dou and he was very nice and told us a lot about the village. We explored an old slave house and the place where the fisherman bring their fish in and lay them out to dry (that was kind of stinky). We enjoyed our tour and then, of course, we were asked to SHOP. After many many "No merci-s", we headed out for lunch and a tour at Bandia Game Reserve.

Bandia was AMAZING. We sat outside at a table near a small lake. While we ordered and ate, we watched monkeys playing around, a warthog family with four babies, water buffalo, crocodiles and many pretty birds. Even if we had only eaten lunch, it would have been a worthwhile excursion, but after lunch it got even better.

We jumped back in the van with our tour guide, Amy, and drove around the reserve searching for animals. Here's the list of animals we saw: Elan (a kind of large antelope), impala, warthogs, ostriches, giraffes, zebras, rhinoceroses, savannah buffalo, and again, some beautiful birds. We were told there was a chance we would not see the rhinos as there are only two in the park. According to Amy, the female rhino doesn't like the "gulu gulu" and therefore there are no new additions to the rhino family in the reserve. :) We were allowed to get out of the van and walk quite close to the rhinos and giraffes and took some great pictures! One ostrich tried to attack our van and was pecking at the window! It was incredible to see all the animals so close and essentially in the wild...very different from visiting a zoo. We're still working on adding pictures, but we will TRY to figure it out soon.

It was an amazing day in Africa and we drove back to Dakar feeling satisfied and quite tired. Sadly, just before bed, we received the news that a good friend in Portland had been killed. We felt quite shocked and sad, and we are struggling with not being able to share our grief with our other friends. We were happy to have the opportunity today to finally access the internet to be with some friends virtually and are sending many hugs to Portland.