Senegal: Ile de N'Gor

The easiest achieved on my new to do list with Herve was traveling over to Ile de N'Gor on one of the frequently operating ferries/boats that seemingly moonlight as sieves. Handing Herve the equivalent of $2, he sourced return tickets for the both of us and handed me a life jacket whose best days as a flotation device were probably in the '80s. I'm not a great swimmer but I'd be pretty concerned with myself (or dead) if I failed to make land on either side (400m tops) never mind any one of the dozens of nearer moored boats. Regardless, this nod to health and safety in an African nation - however notional it may be - was both amusing and a little heartwarming; at least they seemed to acknowledge the porous nature of the hull of their vessel.

Ile de N'Gor is very simply a tourist island. There are a handful of hotels, restaurants, bars, markets and homestays aimed at different sized wallets. It can be traversed on foot in under half an hour and reasonably well explored in half a day. It was here that I met Africa YeYe, a man who paints sarongs, makes and plays bongo drums and is more than half a dozen beers in before midday, everyday. Among the five or six of Herve's friends that I would meet, the camps of thought on Africa YeYe's boozing would be evenly populated by people regarding it as tragic or legendary.

For the princely sum of $2, Ile de N'Gor is well worth braving maritime rescue for. It's a little more spacious and less helter skelter than continental N'Gor, I suppose owing to the fact that it's almost exclusively a tourist trap...