The Gambia

Our first night near the border wasn't a great place to camp.There were dozens of different types of biting and stinging insects, we were near a main road so it was noisy all night and we thought that we were no where near any civilisation only to be woken up by the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer at 5a.m.

One of many other big disadvantage of the site were the thorns and the burrs which seemed to attach themselves to clothes, skin, hair, shoes and anything else and made life painful. Some of the thorns were so fine that they hurt but there was nothing to see. Yet another disadvantage of the site was that there was soft sand everywhere and the truck got stuck several times. We needed to get the sand mats out and pave the way back to the road.

 We queued up at the ferry terminal to get from the northern shores of the Gambia river to the southern she where the capital, Banjul is located.

 The vehicles got on first and then the pedestrians followed and in typical Afican style it was chaotic, noisy but colourful.

 Even as the ramp was pulled up and we had pulled away from the loading ramps, there were still people running towards the boat and ready to jump the last few metres.

 On board it was another colourful scene with traders and hawkers always ready to sell their wares.

And there were plenty of colourful African printed materials to colour the scene.