Easter weekend activities part one

It’s been lovely to have four days off work. Originally Nicola, Helen and I had planned to travel upcountry to stay with Rob in Kaur, but in the end we stayed in the Kombos. Nicola had been unwell in the week, Helen wasn’t feeling too great either, and I was just generally feeling tired; so despite Rob being the ultimate host, the idea of travelling had unfortunately lost its appeal. In addition, things have really heated up over the last few weeks. Here in the Kombos it’s a lot hotter in the day, but the cool sea breeze keeps the temperature feeling a bit more manageable. However in Kaur it’s now over 40 degrees every day, with no sea breeze to cool things down! Apparently in Basse, the hottest point, it is now reaching 43 degrees in the day. This makes any activity between 1pm and 5pm pretty hard work, and apparently sleeping at night isn’t too easy either. So… the hot temperatures and our tired bodies convinced us all that we should stay by the sea and get some rest.

Good Friday was spent at Safari Gardens. Nicola and I met there during the afternoon and relaxed by the pool for a few hours. We were joined later by Helen L, Rao, Joe, Martin and Munya and some others who came for a Gambian night that was being held at the hotel. We had a buffet dinner of vegetable domoda (Rao and Munya are vegetarian – they were catered for on this occasion but I suspect they might find things pretty hard to eat in The Gambia as a lot of dishes contain fish of some form if not meat), chicken yassa and plasas. I may have described these dishes before but domoda is a peanut based sauce, a bit like satay - which can be quite spicy depending on how much chilli has been used - cooked with meat or fish. Yassa is a sauce made with mustard and onions, and you most commonly get chicken or fish yassa, and plasas is a green leaf based dish (like spinach) but is flavoured with dried fish and spices. All dishes are served with rice.

After the food we listened to some drumming and had a bit of a dance. The hotel has had a tourism volunteer working with them, a Lancashire lass called Hayley. She has made some nice improvements, and the Gambian night was an idea of hers. Unfortunately a lot of her suggestions have involved putting the prices up and charging for things like pool entry and wifi. Whilst we understand why this needs to be done, unfortunately the prices are now a bit more than us vols can manage – so after the entertainment Nic, Joe, Helen L, Abdou and I left the 95 dalasi wine and 40 dalasi Julbrew and headed up to Aso Rock for 20 dalasi Julbrew and a live band.

The drummers playing and dancing by the
poolside - inc Abdou in the white hoody

Nic sporting Abdou's hat - extra large to
fit in the deadlocks (his not Nicola's!) 

The place was packed and very lively, with lots of Nigerians dancing to the live music and kicking up the sand! We all danced and joined in with the fun…   

Then, at about 1/1:30am we all decided to be good and go home, as we had arranged to meet at 9am the next morning to go to Abuko Nature Reserve.