Senegal: Toubab Dialao

When picking up the suit, Herve asked what I'd be doing the following day. After learning that I had no plan, he said he'd arrange it but would need $20 to pay for a deposit for a driver. Ordinarily I would have been a lot more circumspect about handing cash over and hoping but in many ways, we had already crossed that bridge with the suit and I felt like I could trust him.

Of course, driving a Westerner out to a remote part of Western Africa for extortion, robbery and/or murder crossed my mind but having already averted a knifing through no good decisions of my own, I figured he was probably on the level.

I met Herve at 7am the following morning and the two hour drive passed with only small event. My ability to get into taxis whose drivers are bold, erratic and treat traffic laws like mere suggestions must be unparalleled. Traffic was reasonably dense and roundabouts fairly frequent. The Senegalese approach to taking them seems to be from the same school of driving as the most ambitious of F1 drivers on the first corner of the first lap (looking at you, Kamui).

Someone's going to crash, just hope it isn't you.

I asked the driver (through Herve) why at one point for a few kilometers he drove on the footpath. His response, "it's smoother!" was simply inarguable.

Toubab Dialao is a satellite tourist town and fishing village. The beach is clean, water is warm, fish seemingly plentiful and the buildings are unfinished. This is typical for most of what I saw in Senegal. Apparently, building carries on until the money is exhausted and then goes on an indefinite hiatus. Some builders seemed wiser than others in electing to offer uninterrupted sea views by leaving that wall until last in some of the many unfinished houses.

Uninterrupted Atlantic Views!

Bougainvillea creeps over walls onto the streets, boys play endless games of beach soccer for kilometers, women wash clothes by the water, men fish just offshore, dogs laze on the sand moving only to go between sund and shade while tourist meander between hotel bars and cafes along the beaches and terraces above.

N'Gor and Toubab Dialao are both tourist-centric places but I welcomed the differences. Where N'Gor was full of pleasant (and some not so) ambushes, here people pretty much ignored you and for a day, that invisibility was very much welcome.

English was on short supply in Senegal, this had me smiling.

Toubab Dialao; shopping capital of Western Africa.