Our trip to Banjul, Gambia

Well this was certainly an adventure - here are some pictures from our trip. The above tree was our rest stop where we ate, used the "facilities" and rested. When we stopped here there was only 1 African watching us, when we left there were 3. I am sure they haven't seen many toubabs peeing out in the bush before. The picture below is a where they do the salt mining - they pull it from the water.

This is what the road looked like much of the trip - and to top it off our air conditioner stopped working as we started the second half of the trip and we had to have our windows down! This is their attempt to help the dust - make it mud!
Here is a mosque we saw on the way. The picture below is while I was waiting at the border. Two men praying for the mid-day prayers. Crossing the border was interesting as well. We have never crossed a border in the car. We had to stop at 4 offices and get a multitude of stamps. It took forever!

Here are some of the "few" kids we had around our car while we waited to get on the ferry. We got to the ferry at 3:00 and finally got on the ferry at 11:15. We really haven't seen corruption while we have been in Africa, aside from one police officer wanting tea money. But this was terrible. Many people came up to our car and asked us if we were wanting to go to the front of the line for a fee for the captain. We politely said no. So what they were doing was, those that paid went to a special line and those that didn't waited in the regular line. So when each ferry came they let a few cars from the regular line and all of the bribe paying line. This went on all day, so that we got on the last ferry across to Banjul. So we sat and waited for 8+ hours. During that time we saw many sellers, kids, animals, beggars, etc. Here are a few pics.

We were stopped in front of a Koranic school and here is a boy with his tablet of arabic.

Here is Faith after we finally made it on to the ferry - she was riding in our friends car - this says it all! We finally made it to the hotel around 1:30 and we fell into bed (after washing away the grime from the trip that was literally caked on our necks).

The hotel we are staying at is gorgeous and I will post some pictures tomorrow - right now I am in the internet room and I am being bit up by mosquito's!