Saint Louis

The desert: Lompoul

Senegal April 2010. DAY 1: The Pink Lake

Senegal: 11 April 2010.

We arrived in Dakar at 3 am to a sea of people asking us if we need a taxi. Luckily we found our guide in no time and upon strapping our luggage to his 4x4, he drove us to a hotel with no name. Pretty clen and decent.

We decided to wake up at 7.30 (2 hours of sleep later) to see the Kora played in a nearby catholic monastery for mass. The Kora is a 21 cord harp-like instrument used by the people of West Africa. It has a pumpkin cut in half overed with cow skin to make a resonator, and it looks like a guitar. It sounds beautiful! You can see one below played by a guy on one of our trips.

You can listen to a bit of Kora by Toumani Diabate here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DEKQjj6Ga0&feature=related

Our first stop after that was the pink lake. It is pink due to the micro-shrimps that populate it. It is also very, VERY salty. Similar to our lake in Sovata.


The lake is free for anyone to exploit, so many people make a living out of extracting salt. Each pile belongs to a different person...

Below- introducing our guide: Amadou, our car...and the fist ever sales man, who sold Manish a painting.


Next we went to a lovely terrace by the lake to have our first meal there: Poullet Yassa. This was chicken with rice and onion sauce and it would become Manish's favourite meal for a week.

We had lovely surroundings....


And had the pleasure to listen to some music during our meal too...

Finally, we had a lovely bath in the salty water...

And upon saying goodbye to our monkey friend, moved on towards the desert: Lompoul.