Fun in Senegal and The Gambia

Crossing the border from Mauritania to Senegal is a bit like going from Mexico to the US. Mauritania is everything that "Islamic Republic of Mauritania" suggests that it would be with everyone covered up and looking ready for a walk across the Sahara. Senegal is also almost entirely Muslim, but of the brand that allows a lot less clothing and a lot more drinking.

Senegal is the western-most country on mainland Africa, but it has a splinter shaped country in its side--The Gambia. The Gambia splits Senegal in two with only a small strip in the east connecting the two. The Gambia is English speaking (English is the second language of everyone, and not everyone speaks it well), and is culturally more like Jamaica than probably anywhere else. Tara is going to do the nature post for the two, but here are the city and cultural aspects:

Each time we think that transport can't get much more run down, it does. The car from the Senegal border to St. Louis, our first stop in Senegal, was literally held together with wire. Need to open the door? Pull a wire. Need to put up a window? Sorry, not possible. Here it is from the inside.

I forgot to take a picture from the outside, but here is a similar car. This one is in a bit better shape than ours was. St. Louis was not the most impressive city, but Tara did find plenty of azaleas there. Azaleas, we have learned in our travels, are like a stamp on a city signifying that it was probably once a major colonial city. Tara, and apparently all the slave-trading Europeans, really like azaleas. Public transport does exist, but it is somewhat cramped. On the plus side, the buses are very colorful. It is often free to ride on the back, so you will see buses like this going down the major road at 60 miles per hour with five people holding onto the back for dear life. In Senegal, a couple of religious leaders from the past have acheived near saint status (no actual saints in Islam). People often pray to them and have orders that worship them. They also paint the two most famous everywhere, represented below.Tough to say whether there are more paintings of these icons or goats. Probably more goats, though. They are everywhere and eat anything. Most are owned by someone and just allowed to roam freely. When someone gets hungry for goat meat, they go looking for their goats. A fairly cheap way to raise meat. I'm surprised that you don't see more free range, trash fed goat advertised in the US. In Dakar, we stayed at the Catholic mission. Here we would like to thank every Catholic who has ever given money to the church, thereby making it possible for us to stay in a beautiful building at one-fifth the cost of anywhere else in Dakar. We also want to thank Deanne, a wonderful Brit who told us about the place. In any case, there was this nice lizard, which I realized was dead only when I moved in for a closer picture...

Dakar is considered the musical center of West Africa. We went out to a club called Just 4U, which is a stupid name, but probably the best known club in the city. We saw Orchestra Baobob, which is probably the most famous Senegal group there is. They are all about 70 years old and play Cuban-inspired African music. Very interesting. And all we had to do was buy something, which in this case was an overpriced creme brulee.

Here is the front of the club during the day. Doesn't exactly look like such an impressive place, but good places often don't.

The most popular sport in Senegal (or maybe a tie with soccer) is wrestling. When we were in Dakar, they happened to be having one of the biggest matches in a long time in one of the main stadiums, so we went. In French, it was called Le Grand Combat. Essentially, two guys dance around the stadium taunting each other before a match that lasts anywhere between about 5 and 60 seconds. The goal is simply the throw your opponent to the ground. We were in the section of Modou Lo, the overwhelming favorite, but he lost. This is the winner below (the mostly naked one). They pour about 50 gallons of soda on themselves and then cover themselves in sand. Right, we don't understand, either.

The streets of Dakar are mostly filthy and dirty, but these little fire finches have adapted and bring some color to an otherwise dirty city. I'd like to claim we knew the name when we saw it, but we asked a guide later on in our trip.

Senegal has a fairly peaceful government, but the same guy has been in power for a long time. He lives here. The guard was fine with us taking a picture, which normally isn't the case at homes of presidents. His gun did encourage us to ask before taking this picture.

This little market in Dakar is very touristy, which is funny since it sells fish and vegetables, probably not the two most common tourist needs. Like most of Africa, people come up to us trying to sell us ridiculous things. Most of the time this happens while waiting at bus stations, but someone might come up with a gallon of tomato sauce and say they will sell it to us for only $5. We say no and shortly they are offering to sell it to us for 50 cents. Just in case we needed a gallon of tomato sauce.

Apparently almost all of our Gambian pictures are nature, so Tara will do those. Here, however, is a warehouse in Georgetown, The Gambia, that locals claim used to be used to store slaves. That seems to be untrue, but it is probably that other buildings stood in this location that were used to store slaves on their way out of Africa.

Leaving from Georgetown on what would turn out to be an epic journey to Mali, this short ferry ride was unique in that the passengers actually have to pull on the cable on the left to move the ferry across the river. We were lucky not to have a car on the ferry when we had to pull.

A bit scarce on non-nature pictures, I guess. Senegal and The Gambia were both decent countries, but tourists should be prepared for a lot of people asking for money and gifts. It was nice to be in The Gambia, where we could speak English, but tougher to ignore people who ask for something in your language.

Our favorite techniques for begging include the snake hiss (often used by anyone who wants your attention), the kiss (not a romantic gesture in this part of the world, it seems), and my personal favorite, the finger snap in your face followed by an open palm. The last is rarer, but happened multiple times. Really, has any Westerner ever given money to someone who snapped in his/her face and then held out a hand for money? I doubt it.

Both have some nice wildlife, and that gets higher marks in my book than the cities.

Northern Spain...with a side of Brussels

Hello there, and welcome to Andy and Tara's world tour...part deux! Our plan for this part of the trip is to spend 7 or 8 months backpacking around Africa, then on to India and Asia. But first, we managed to squeeze in a very whirlwind tour of three European countries.

We officially kicked things off almost a week ago with a flight from NYC to Brussels, Belgium, on Jet Airways. Yeah, we'd never heard of them before, either, but they had the cheapest deal to get us to Europe. Turns out that they are an India-based airline, which means we got Indian food for our dinner on the plane. That made it pretty much the best international flight I've ever taken.

Also, there were the little TVs at every seat with a decent selection of both Hollywood and Bollywood films. I chose to finally watch "Up," and therefore spent the first couple of hours of the flight almost bawling in my seat. (Oh, and marveling at how they totally ripped off Angel Falls and the Gran Sabana in Venezuela for the fictional setting of the movie!)

Anyway, on to Brussels. We spent 7 hours there, and that was quite enough time to see pretty much everything there is to see in the place. Not the most exciting city in Europe, but not a bad place to spend a long layover, either.

We found this guy outside of the comic strip museum. We assume that he is a famous Belgian cartoon character--can anyone confirm this?

The cathedral was free, and it was freezing outside, therefore we visited it. It was stately and, you know, cathedralesque.
Brussels's top tourist attraction is probably Manneken Pis, a statue of a little boy peeing. Or I should say fountain, since the water comes out of his weenie. Andy had been hearing about this statue for a long time and was seriously disappointed at how small it was. I had warned him not to get his hopes up!I had been to Brussels with my sister (hi Brooke!) in 2002, so I had seen a lot of this before, but I don't think Brooke and I ever made it to the EU Congress building. Andy and I did. You can't really tell from this picture, but it's super-modern and looks kind of like a giant space vessels plopped down in the middle of more medeival settings. Also, it has a duck pond out back, probably so that the French have a constant source of fresh foie gras.
So, add in some chocolate and Belgian fries, and that was Brussels. We jumped on our connecting flight that night and arrived in Madrid around 10PM. Then it was off to our couchsurfing hosts, Melanie and Serge, who are awesome. And not just because they had a gourmet dinner on the stove (people eat late in Madrid!) and insisted we partake. We had so much fun getting to know them, that suddenly we realized hours had gone by since we'd arrived, and it was time for bed.

It was raining in Madrid the night we arrived, but the next day was mostly clear. After stopping by the cathedral (free, so we went in) and the Royal Palace (not free, so we passed), we headed for the Retiro, Madrid's huge central park.

Some of its highlights were the Palacio de Cristal, a beautiful glass palace...and the troupe of peacocks that roams in the northern part of the park.
Madrid also has fantastic art museums. Melanie and Serge turned us on to the Caixa Foundation museum. In addition to having an amazing free exhibit of the contemporary Spanish artist Miquel Barcelo, which we loved, it has a neat vertical garden outside. It also afforded us our very first elephant siting of the trip!
Nearby is the Atocha train station, which has a mini botanical garden inside. You can check out the turtles while waiting for your train.
That night, we visited the Prado during its free hours, and went out for tapas at a few different places. More on that in the food post. The next day, we did a day trip to Toledo, a medeival city an hour away from Madrid.

The cathedral cost a whopping 7 euros each to visit, but it was pretty impressive. Note the famous stained glass window.

It also has this very cool structure in the center. We forget what it is called, but it was very fancy.
We also visited a synagogue in Toledo (they had a thriving Jewish population until Spain threw the Jews or forced them to convert out during the Inquisition), went to a couple of museums with lots of El Greco paintings, and I ate marzipan, for which the city is known. Yum.

That night, back in Madrid we hit the Reina Sofia modern art museum during its free hours (we love the free museum evening hours!) I forget the artist, but these were some fun ballet costume concepts on display, along with many Picassos, Dalis, Miros, and other works.
Here we are with our hosts, Serge and Melanie. Their apartment really felt like home for the three nights we were there. Serge is an incredible chef, hence the wooden spoon held aloft. We hope that they will come cook for us...I mean, visit us, one day in America when we have a spare room!

Then we took off for Granada, which I'll have to post about another time, because my time here is up. We are off to Morocco in the morning!

Santiago and the $100 challenge

A few weeks ago, we got an e-mail from a close friend saying that she was in touch with a fan of our blog who wished to become our anonymous "benefactor." We asked for more details, and here is the reply we received:

"Dear Andrew and Tara,

I here your trip around south america is going well. Sometimes I ask my housekeeper to put your computer sight on the tv monitor for me to read. I am not so handy with computers, but boy am I rich!

I have thought very hard about all the adventures in aouth smerica that I have heard about, but could not do myself for variuos reasons. (Gout, incarceration, ect.) But these ideas came to me so many years ago and I do not know if they are still posible. You must have a better lay on the land than I do.

I like the televesion program The Amazing Race. Do you? One time on that show I saw a challenge that I think you kids would enjoy. Too bad I don't have that guy Phil to give you the rules (isn't he a doll!) so I will ahve to do that here. I made it a little bit different since you don't have to compete with anyone and run around like crazy. Here is your challenge:

[Name deleted] will give you $100 US to spend in a Chilean city of your choice. The money must be spent in a period of 6 hours (any 6 hours you want), but you cannot buy any tangible goods to be used after the 6 hour period. No "stuff." Any money you do not spend in that 6 hour window you have to give back to [Name deleted], who will give it to me. And I don't want it back because I am so rich! Some specifick rules:

1. You can only spend $20 of the total $100 to upgrade the quality of your hotel (if you want to). If you spent $100 on a hotel, that would yield some pretty boring photos! I know you will stay at that hotel beyond the 6 hour window, but htat is okay.
2. You can buy food as long as you eat it within the 6 hour window.
3. Any kind of services or rentals are allowed, as long as they are legal. Or should be legal. Any thing you rent has to be given back by the end of the 6 hours though.
4. You can spend the money all in one place, or in many places. It is up to you.
5. You can't give the money away to anyone else, or pay for other people to do things, although you can leave generous tips for people who provide you services, according to local norms. If there eyes bug out at the tip, you have left too much and broken a rule.
6. There is no six.

Please take photographs of your adventures. I take joy in watching you do things that I cannot, sitting hear in this chair. If you want to put the phtos on your computer sight, that would be nice. I don't know how you kids do that. It looks liek magic to me! But in closing, please have fun. I don't want to look at pictures of you not having fun. I don't care if you tell people about this challenge, but don't put [Name deleted]'s name in their. She doesn't know that many people who are as rich as me and someone might figure eight who I am.

Have fun!!!!

Fondly,
The Benefactor

P.S. - I think it is strange that [Name deleted] calls me The Benefactor. I was going to call myself, "your special friend." But [Name deleted] said that has other meanings which are not so nice. I am so old!"

So, we decided to make Santiago, Chile's capital that city. This challenge turned out to be harder than we thought. How hard can it be to spend $100? Well, Santiago isn't the easiest place to do so as it turns out. We fell a bit shy of the total, spending only $95 by the end of the alloted time (what can we say--being cheap is just a part of life for us), but we had a great time trying. Here's how the day went:

First, we had to lay out the money. $100 US is 54,000 Chilean pesos. We felt rich.
So, you may wonder, what is the very first thing we splurged on? Laundry!!!! We had a lot of it.
Since we started our travels 3 months ago, we have only washed clothes in the sink, so paying someone to wash them for us in a machine with real detergent was a gift both for us and for the people who have to sit next to us on buses. At the laundromat, they weighed our clothes. The total charge: $8.
Next stop: New York street, just for nostalgic value. Cost: $0.

Also free was our climb up the Cerro Santa Lucia for views of Santiago. Those are not clouds in the background, but the snowy peaks of the Andes! We looked for ways to spend money all the way up, but couldn't find any.
No lighthouses allowed!
OK, next up was lunch. We sprung for two completos Italianos, which are tasty hot dogs (the completo) with tomatoes, avocado, and mayo. What makes these toppings Italiano, you ask? They are the colors of the Italian flag.

We also got two huge steins of fruit juice. Here you can see the kiwi-pear juice that Tara got. Apparently we forgot to take pictures of Andy's strawberry-pineapple.

The cost of our lunch was $5 total. This may not sound like much of a splurge, but if we hadn't been on the challenge, we would have shared one hot dog and one juice between us.

Yum, my own juice!
On to the market! They sell every food imaginable, but we didn't have much room left in our tummies. Our benefactor bought us 1/4 kilo (about 1/2 pound) of almendras confitadas, which are almonds coated in tasty red sugary stuff. We ate them within half an hour or so. This cost $2, but that is a lot more than the cheaper version, made with peanuts, which is what we would have bought on our own! Also, we probably wouldn't have bought quite so many...
Next stop was the Museo de Bellas Artes. This was the cultural part of our expenditures. The admission was actually a suggested donation of $1 apiece. On our own, we would have never paid this, but thanks to the benefactor, Chile's arts are now thriving. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to photograph the actual art, but here's the atrium. Total cost: $2.We then walked to one of Santiago's biggest parks and took the funicular up the Cerro San Cristobal to see the views and the giagantic statue of the Virgin Mary that towers over the city. What could be more fun than a fun-icular? Total cost: $6. (PS, Benefactor, Tara thanks you especially because without your support, Andy would have made her walk up the darn hill.)
There was a street musician playing flute and guitar at the same time near the funicular. He was pretty impressive. We never tip street musicians, but in the spirit of spending money, we gave him $1. He thanks the benefactor, but was too speedy for Tara to capture on film (you can see Andy's hand retreating across this photo after giving him the money).
Even better views of the Andes (which Tara kept messing up and calling the Alps) from the top of the hill!
The colossal Virgin Mary and her earthly representatives tried to convince us to donate the rest of the $100 to them, but we refused.
When we got down from the hill, we took what may be our first elective taxi ride of our entire trip. It was a long haul back to the hotel, and Tara was VERY happy because Andy never lets her take taxis. Cost of taxi ride: $5.After freshening up, we took another taxi ($6) to the Providencia neighborhood for a super-fancy dinner at a vegetarian restaurant called El Huerto. This dinner cost more than twice as much as any dinner we've had out on the whole trip! Luckily, it was delicious.We ordered drinks, something else we never usually do. Tara got a papaya juice and Andy got an awesome mint lemonade. Cost: $6.
Then we had an appetizer, another trip first. We went big for the sampler platter, which was filled with Mediterranean-style goodies. There was a mushroom pate, hummus (which we had not seen since Trinidad), and a tabouli salad. Also, olives, cheese, and pitas. Tara ate all the olives and cheese. Cost: $10. (We are cringing just writing that cost down!)
Andy's main dish was a melange of Indian-style stuff. Some components were a vegetable curry, a bean curry, and a tasty fruit chutney. Every bite was delicious. Cost: $11.50.
Tara continued with the appetizer's Mediterranean theme. Her dish included a delicious latke (fried potato pancake), an avocado hummus, a carrot and cranberry salad, tabouli, and a Greek-style spinach pie in phyllo dough. Yum. Cost: $11.50.
Dessert! Tara got a praline mousse with passionfruit jelly on top. It was unusual and delicious. Cost: $5.
Andy went for the traditional apple crisp with ice cream. It wasn't quite as good as Tara's dessert. But not bad, how could it be, it was apple crisp! Cost: $5. Dinner total with tip: $54.
(To those of you who live in New York, that may not sound like a very expensive dinner, and I would say that it was well up to NY standards! But for us, on this trip, it was quite pricey. Luckily, we were not paying!)

Taxi back to the hotel cost another $6. We had planned to take the leftover money and hit one of the nearby casinos and get some ice cream, but by the time we returned from dinner, everything in Santiago seemed to be closed. Plus, we were tired, so we must forfeit the remaining $.

Many, many thanks to our anonymous benefactor for her generosity. We had a terrific time trying to spend your money, and hope you enjoyed the pictures.

We leave you with a picture of our clean laundry, which we picked up the next morning, neatly-folded and fresh-smelling--a wonderful souvenir of our $100 challenge.
P.S. This post was written jointly by Andy and Tara.