We spent a couple of days at the Saloum delta, enjoying its beauty and giving Kit's foot a chance to recover from being pinned under a GS pannier when we went over in the sand.
Each day the local villagers brought their horses into the delta and washed them with the salt water, as you saw above.
Sunset and sunrise were gorgeous
There were many ibis and cormorants
We had originally planned to head up to Lac Rose near Dakar but it was no penance to stay here, in a little bit with a bathroom open to the stars which were impressive.
The bike enjoyed a restful couple of days after its first topple in a decade
Fortunately the soft sand had left no mark.
When we set off I decided I would do the sandy piste solo and I lowered the tyre pressures, whilst we splashed out £3 for a villager to take Kit and the panniers the 5kms to the goudron (tarmac).
I made it safely to the goudron but I would be lying if I said it was easy
.
We were going to take a cross-country route with a ferry in the way as we were told it was more scenic (and it would avoid us retracing our steps through Kaolack. At this point we were headed back to The Gambia where we would need to get across the river on the notorious Barra ferry...But more of that later!
On the equipment front, I had taken my mini compressor home and brought a bicycle pump in my quest to reduce weight. Whilst my UK biker friends scoffed that I would struggle to blow up to the required pressures (which when 2 up with luggage are higher!), in fact it was straightforward to do and saved me a kilogramme of weight.
I had asked a couple of people about our route and they all said it was good tarmac. So with
we loaded up under a shady roadside tree and set off.
The ride was scenic and the ferry queue bustling for this small crossing of one of the delta's larger beaches
The ferry was well loaded:
And predictably, although I managed to get on first, we were regarded as deck luggage to be stuck in a corner
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