Home again

After a bumpy flight we are now back home in Blighty and suitably immersed in the reality of having to go back to work to pay those bills!! However, as is customary I like to summarise the things I have learnt on my adventures and share them with you all.



The sun setting from our bedroom.....an arty visual metaphor!

 Food and Drink

1. All inclusive does not actually mean all inclusive!

2. If you order chicken here be prepared for chicken on the bone

3. Wanjo juice (local juice) is a great mixer for vodka based cocktails (and a great way to get cocktails on your "all inclusive package")

Culture

1. Gambian people are perhaps the happiest people on the world.

1.1. Yaya the bartender is the happiest person in The Gambia, thereby making him the happiest person in the world.

2. A Gambian river trip to fort James Island will seem to take an eternity - thankfully there was beer on board!!

3. Children make use of all manner of rubbish. My empty water bottles became impromptu drums for the children to entertain the next group of tourists.

4. The amount of Delasis you get for your £1 makes for an impressive Del Boy wad of cash.



The children used my empty bottles to *drum* up some business.
The one on the left is a relation of Cousin It from the Addams family!



Look at my wad!!

Climate

1. The weather here is deceptive. a wind can make it seem cool while in fact you are burning yourself to a crisp.

2. Sarah does not like Gambian evenings outdoors - too chilly!!

Wildlife

1. 50% DEET Jungle formula does not deter Gambian Mosquitoes; having a Sarah next to you does!

2. Magpies here are black, like crows and the crows here are black and white like magpies. 

3. Make sure you bring your own loo roll to Lamin Lodge, otherwise you will be regretting it!

4. You cant get any good wildlife shots with an iPhone.

Green Wood Hoopoe in the tree. See if you can find him? The
limitations of the iPhone for twitching!!



The General showing us his commando skills....

Anyway that is all for another year (which promises to be a very hectic and busy one!), so it is time for me to sign out. I hope you enjoyed the blog, and keep your eyes out for the next one.

Another day at rest

Today being our last full day we have used it to protect ourselves from the suns rays. 

It should be said that yesterday afternoon the breeze was enough to make it all a bit cool here but nothing stops the intensity of the sun, and Sarah's legs seem to have taken the brunt of it. My arms and knees are a bit sore to bend, but nothing too bad thankfully. However today we decided to keep a bit more covered up from it and are sitting at a shady part of the bar supping Julbrew ( the local beer).

Julbrew, the beer of choice in The Gambia

It does of course give me a chance to show you some more of the hotel. This is our bedroom. It is lovely and airy and full of hiding places for mosquitoes as without fail every morning, despite a thorough checking around the room before bed for the little blighters, we always have a new bite to scratch!!

Our bed is messy because I was jumping around on it, not poor housekeeping!



The unflooded bathroom area



A view from our window.....relaxing!

I think about now we are ready for coming home, we have sunned ourselves enough, read our books and indulged in plenty of booze, but all good things must come to an end and we need to think about returning to normalcy and rain (I am imagining). 

a view of the sea, underneath the shadow of a Baobab tree

A tree with lots of weaver bird nests outside our room.....

A week is just about enough here, and I am hankering for a lovely nice cup of tea. Gambian tea is not very nice. I am not sure why as Sarah brought with here some earl grey tea bags, but even that didn't work. It must be something to do with the water....

Any the next blog post I will do is going to be from Blighty, where I will summarise what I have learnt.

Waking up with the birds - a Gambian adventure

Apart from its slave trade history the other thing The Gambia is famous for is the richness of its bird life. Indeed, just sitting by the pool I am spoiled with Black Kites swooping around and hooded vultures are commonplace and today I have even seen a peregrine falcon (my favourite bird) make an appearance too. Outside our room there are a group of village egrets ( note: that is not a typo for village idiots!), a type of wading bird and there is a tree packed full of weaver bird nests too! And so I resolved to go on a "wake up with the birds" tour.

I must be some sort of sadist to force myself out of bed on holidays at 5:30am, but birds are at their most active at dawn and dusk so it was a necessary evil. Sarah decided that sleep was more preferable than wandering around mangroves looking at flappy things.

The bus was actually about 15 minutes late, which brings me on to a facet of life here. Being on the same degree of longitude as the UK, there is no time difference as such, but whereas GMT for us means one thing, to the locals it stand for Gambian Maybe Time. Never expect anything to be at the time they quote, they are too laid back for such conventions, it will just happen when it happens and you are best off just going with the flow. We eventually got on the bus, and I saw similar faces on this as I did on the Roots tour.

The tour guide we had for this trip was a man called Charlie, and it is safe to say he had a wonderful turn of phrase, which warmed the coach party up nicely. I was surprised that not many of the people on the trip were dedicated twitchers but just people either doing "Gambia by numbers" or because they were bored of just lounging by the pool.

We arrived at Lamin lodge - the first part of our trip. It was a fishing lodge and we were going to head out into the mangroves to spot some waders. It was about five minutes prior to departure when a case of Banjul belly struck me!! The toilets in the lodge were functional but not too dissimilar to the toilet used by Renton in Trainspotting. Also there was no male/female segregation, and the doors only just about covered your modesty, but at this point I cared not. 

 

Lamin Lodge - A nice location, but toilet facilities were basic to say the least!
 

Thankfully,  my seasoned traveller experience came to my rescue as I brought my own loo roll on the trip knowing that sometimes out of the way places don't have such luxuries. Judging by the sound coming from the cubicle next to me I was not the only one suffering today,  as some poor woman was in the same boat (forgive the pun!) as me. I didn't want to offer her my loo roll a) because I didn't want her to know my ears had witnessed the foulness that she had just deposited in the toilet pan next to me, and b) I was in self preservation mode and wanted to keep the toilet roll for myself. 

I also packed some Imodium tablets, and I had a couple of these before my boat ride. It took a long time to kick in and there were certain points on my journey into the mangroves when I thought I was in real trouble, I was sweating profusely hoping I wouldn't need to abandon ship at short notice!! Thankfully for me (and the rest of the party) this never happened, but it did mean I didn't enjoy the mangrove trip quite as much as I might have!!

 

Sunrise over the mangroves

 

That said, I did see a fair few birds on the way, most exciting of which are the raptors. We spotted a marsh harrier, peregrine falcon, many hooded vultures and black kites. The tour guide gave me book which allowed me to tick off which birds we had seen and appealing to my slightly obsessive nature, I set about ticking as many as I could spot. 

There were quite a few wintering birds here, which are common in huge UK so I was comfortable enough with spotting those, but I needed the tour guides help with the more African birds. Gambian birds have so much more colour than the birds in the UK, so armed with a pair of binoculars I was scouting out the trees and the skies.

Alas this is where the lack of a good camera was sorely missed, as I didn't manage to get any decent shots of birds on this trip, it is not that I don't have a good camera, but just that I decided to save the luggage allowance for things like fridge magnets and novelty Gambian instruments....

 

We moved away from the mangroves and back into the lodge for some breakfast which I politely declined. In The Gambia it is almost an insult to them if you refuse food, and several people came over to me with worried expressions checking to make sure I was OK. I would have like breakfast, but I just don't think my stomach would have liked that and rebelled in the most violent of fashion!

I did enjoy the others eating breakfast though, as next to the lodge there are a band of monkeys that live in the tree and have clearly learnt when breakfast time was because they were hanging around pestering the humans. Indeed, I was chatting to a group on my table when suddenly a cheeky monkey head popped up at the window, surveyed the table and then bobbed back down again out of sight. Moments later, when we had resumed talking, a long hand reached up and into the lodge grabbed the poor girls doughnut and the successful imp ran off over the roof being chased by a group of other monkeys trying to steal his prize!!

Following on from breakfast, we moved onto land and continued our bird watching on foot. From here we saw lots of different types of birds all very colourful, there were hornbills, hoopoes, rollers, which led Charlie the tour guide to tell us his Roller joke - there is one type of Roller in the UK, does anyone know what it is? Clearly this was designed for real twitchers, as the answers we were coming up with ranged from the Bay City Rollers to Keith Richards - both of whom Charlie had never heard of. The answer was Motorola, which brought a few groans.

In total I spotted 58 different bird types, which for 3 hours work was not bad at all. Don't worry I won't post a complete list of them, which would bore most people to tears (Sarah included!) but suffice it to say I have them ticked off in my book. :D 

 

Like with the Roots tour there was a man who followed us around videoing us looking at birds (as well as the birds themselves. At the end of the day he tried to hawk this to us for a reasonable price (500 Delasi - about nine pounds), but I just cant see myself looking back at this DVD in my dotage and trying to recall what that black speck in the sky is. Similarly, watching a video of me with a pair of binoculars looking at black specks in the sky is hardly the most riveting way for people to spend an evening, so I politely declined.

The afternoon has just been at rest, sitting by the pool and drinking lager with a bit of sleeping trying not to upset my tummy too much - the Imodium must have worked as by then end of the night I was back eating again without too much issue!

A day at rest....

Seems to be a strange title considering we are on holiday, but every day so far there has been something to do, so it is with some relief that we have little to do today but relax. After a reasonable lay in this morning, we headed off to go and have a nice couples massage.

I am a complete newbie to the world of professional massages, and I have to say it was all very nice indeed. Even when they were unknotting my shoulders with some fairly serious pressure, I couldn't help laughing (it is my ticklish spot!!). I was also enjoying the panpipes rendition of the Bryan Adams classic, Everything I Do (I do it for you). We came out of the spa feeling supple and relaxed, and decided to sit by the spa pool which was practically empty (this entire section of the hotel is practically deserted, so you we could have an entire gym and pool to ourselves virtually!!

This is the gym, which is always empty (I wonder why?!)

I have been in the gym and done a token amount of exercise (about 30 seconds), but will endeavour to do more before the holiday is over. 

As it is a day of rest I suppose I should give you all a guided tour of the hotel. Judging by our visit to the other hotels in the area to pick up gets for the Roots trip, I would say we are in the best hotel, it is in a secluded part of The Gambia away from the "strip" which seems to be a build up of hotels and restaurants/nightclubs which are a Mecca for TOWIE types. Being secluded does have its downsides, like if we wanted to go out for a meal we would need to get a taxi ride, but thankfully the food in house is good and the taxis are insanely cheap, but we have not felt any burning desire to leave the grounds. I am sure we will visit a market at some point, to get some novelty fridge magnets,  which are surprisingly hard to find here - they just haven't cottoned on to fact that tourist like buying cheap tut as a memento!!

Anyway the following are some snaps of the hotel, it is a fairly big complex but I don't think there are many rooms here which means it never has a busy feel to it. There are always loungers by the pool and the pool itself is practically empty all of the time.

 

The bar: home of Julbrew.....

 

The mazelike quality of the hotel is great fun for an explorer like me!

The path to our room, lots of crickets and geckos have been spotted and a large cane rat!

These are the apartments. All of them have a sea view as far as I know, and it is lovely to wake up of a morning to that sort of view. The vista we have allows us to watch the sun setting over the ocean, but it seems to go from daylight to night here so suddenly we have missed it so far this week!!

 

The rooms all face the sea, so you wake up to the sight and sound of the ocean

The hotel grounds are lovely.

A plus side of where we are is that we are within walking distance of forests and nature reserves which house a wonderful array of bird life. The Gambia is well renowned for its massive avian diversity, but I will talk a bit more about this tomorrow after I have done my "wake up with the birds" trip.

Anyway this is the main reception it is bright and airy and gives a real feel for the hotel as you can see straight out into the ocean from it. 

Main reception looking out to the road. The Sea is behind me

Where we breakfast every morning....it is a hard life ;)

This is the outside restaurant. When the weather is good this is where we eat. Sometimes, being on the coast, the wind picks up in the evening and so they make a decision (like tonight) to hold the dining experience inside.

The outside restaurant (on less windy days)

This is the bar, where I have heard all my musical delights - tonight we were treated to a bit of Phil Collins bit their rendition of Tom Jones' Delilah was a real highlight. No Boney M tonight though, which was a disappointment as I am holding out hope for Rasputin......everyone better clear the dance floor when that comes on!!

One thing worth a mention is the hotels Eco friendly pest control system. Instead of traps and poisons all over the place they have a small army of cats which patrol the hotel they have complete access to all areas and often they like to curl up next to Sarah and snooze. There is clearly one top cat, that I have decided to call The General who is always on guard and does the rounds checking on the other cats, if he catches them slacking off, all hell breaks loose and he chases them around the grounds to much caterwauling. It is safe to say I like The General. 

This is the pest control

That is all for today the burgers and the beer is calling, so I will head off. It is a bit cooler today, about 33 degrees, so a climate similar to what you are probably experiencing in the UK ;)

 

 

Leave(i) Roots

Today was our only opportunity to do the Roots tour - so named after the iconic TV series about the trials and tribulations of a man called Kunta Kinteh, who was taken from his village in the Gambia and sent off to the new world and into slavery. 

There are very few things of cultural/historical significance in the Gambia. But their links to the slave trade is one of them and so I felt it necessary to go and see James Island - a fortification on the river Gambia which was used as a holding fort for keeping slaves ready for loading onto the ships. 

To do this trip required us to be up nice and early as we waited for the tour bus. Our guide for the day was a man called Ibrahim and he was colourfully dressed in a tie-dyed shirt and electric blue trousers, meeting my internal stereotype of how Gambians should dress! I have to say he was very friendly and attentive as we went around to the other hotels picking up guests who would be joining us. 

I knew it was going to be a long day when we forgot to pick up a couple of people and had to park up and wait as a taxi brought them to us. 

When we got to the harbour my fears were not allayed by walking past a couple of sunken boats, which looked alarmingly like the one we were about to get in. Still, we were committed now and there was no turning back. Had I known the river cruise to our destination was over two hours away, I would have reconsidered the whole venture, but cunningly they only gave us this tidbit of information when we were well on our way.  

Two sunken ships in next to your boat doesn't inspire confidence!

 

It could have been a more pleasant journey if the boat was limited to only 20 people and there were sun loungers on deck for people to chill out and sunbathe on, but no, instead we were packed in like sardines and there was hardly any seating space available. It could have also been interesting if there was anything mildly of note to see on the journey, but there really wasn't - the river Gambia is very wide (about 8 miles across at the point we were sailing) and so all you could see was water and very distant land mass. There was a loose promise of harbour dolphins, but we saw none!

The boat journey was only the start of the ordeal however, as it soon became apparent that in order to get to the island we first had tick off a couple of cultural things first. 

Firstly we went to visit the village which Kunta Kinteh came from, but order to do this, we first had to get permission from the village elder. This was a slightly different experience as the village elder was a woman (it is a hereditary honour and the father had no male heirs, so it was passed on to her which was something of an exception in The Gambia). The withered crone that came out definitely fit the description of elder, and when during the introductions it was discovered she was single and childless, it did make me wonder what sort of dilemma the village would be thrown into when she finally heads off to the choir invisible. 

Would it create a power vacuum, or in the interests of tourism, would a distant relative be found to fill the void (much like the British royal family)?? You could have your photo taken with the old bird if you wanted to and, for 25 Delasi (about 30p), you could get a photocopied A4 certificate saying you had met her. I was hit with a wave of Scottishness at that point and my wallet stayed firmly shut away in my bag.

 

With permission from the village elder attained, we went into the village and met up with the ancestors of Kunta Kinteh himself and listened to a talk on how Alex Haley (his ancestor) traced them back from America to Gambia. I have to say it is a heartfelt story and you would really have to have ice in your veins not to feel for the horrible circumstances in how he was taken away from his village and to all intents and purposes, never heard of again (until the 1960s). Again there was the chance to get an A4 certificate, which we once again passed on.

 

The relations of Kunta Kinteh, or a couple of Gambian ladies who
didn't mind a load of tourists snapping away furiously. You decide.

 

After that we went and visited the depressingly depressing slavery museum. I guess my British heritage makes me feel somewhat guilty for what was done by my country to millions of Africans, even if it was hundreds of years before was born, and one of the driving forces behind me wanting to come and see it. The museum really gives a nasty flavour for the conditions the slaves had to endure, and so I was glad to get out of there and look forward to a trip out to James Island (my ultimate goal of the day).

 

James Island has since been renamed Kunta Kinteh island, in commemoration to the whole slave trade which he has come to symbolise. It is a world heritage site, but rather sadly is slowly being eroded away by the elements (this part of The Gambia river is tidal) and so not much of it remains. There were a few interesting things to see (I love my ruins), but at this point of the day we were tired, dusty and suffering a bit from heat exhaustion to fully appreciate the experience. In my mind I kept thinking about the long journey back we had to make. The return leg seemed to take even longer than the journey there, possibly because we were fighting against the tide! 

 

James (aka Kunta Kinteh) Island. Slowly sinking into the Gambia river

I love a good plaque! This is on the fortification walls

A prison cell for the naughtier slaves. I couldn't help thinking
that this place would have been a welcome break from the heat

The whole day reminded me very much of the Atlas Mountains trek we did in Morocco last year, which was equally long and arduous and not really worth the money. I would probably say the same for this trip too, it felt like they had to fill our day with things to justify the money, but in reality the majority of the trip is just a boat ride. But we made it back alive, have showered and eaten and now we have done the cultural bit the rest of the holiday is pretty relaxing.

 

Poor Sarah is getting bitten to shreds by the mosquitoes but we have a couples massage booked for tomorrow and that should relax us both after this days stresses!

Duelling Banjuls

It has been a fairly restless night as the difficulty getting comfortable in the bed merged with some rather interesting dreams brought on by the malaria tablets. I am pleased to report that, so far, the infamous Banjul Belly has not struck in this hotel room.

 

A bit chilly here today.....but I thought I would post this for my British friends ;)

Still we were up nice and early to meet Lamin our rep who was coming to give us an acclimatisation session. Lamin is possibly the happiest person in the world - I find it hard to believe he is not on uppers but everything he said was delivered with a smile and laugh. Apparently his name is very common in Gambia (it means trustworthy) as it is the name families give their first born sons and they have the responsibility for looking after the rest of the family in the event of the parents dying. So to get around the fact that half of the male population would turn around when you called out Lamin, he insisted he called him L.T. 

L.T went through a variety of local customs with his customary chirpiness which was infectious and the whole group were laughing along with his observations of how life works in The Gambia. He covered trips we could do, places we could walk to, advice on dealing with the locals, how to tip. It is fair to say he had warmed up his crowd and we were in the palm of his hand and very relaxed.

Suddenly L.T went dark. He started talking about crime and told us that when  someone in The Gambia commits a crime it is not left up to the police to sort, a group of Gambian men get together and sort it out themselves, dispensing summary (mob) justice! This was delivered in a sinister, yet assured tone - sort of like Liam Neeson in the film Taken, and made even more disturbing because his friendly, disarming smile was in place all the while.

Still, we had the meeting and have booked up a couple of things to do. Tomorrow we are heading off on the Roots tour, and on the Tuesday morning I am heading off at the crack of dawn into the rainforest for a bit of bird watching - Sarah politely declined the opportunity of getting up at 5am on her holidays!! 

So with the touring aspect all sorted, we moved to the sun-loungers for a bit of slow cooking. After an hour of warming up (and a couple of beers) we were decided to explore our surroundings. As I mentioned earlier, the hotel has a mazelike quality to it and you don't actually ever get lost, you just discover new ways of getting to where you want to go.

We have found the spa and the gym, which isn't the far end of the hotel, and as far as I can see it is unused.....we are going to have to come here and use the facilities so thati can return home buffed up and to puffed up from all the food and drink!! While we were there Sarah has booked us in for a couples massage on the Monday too. I usually baulk at the price of such things back home, but for about £15 each we have a full body massage with aromatherapy and acupressure. Seemed like too good a deal to refuse!

***evening update***

We have been supping cocktails and are a bit squiffy, but are also feeling the effects of sunburn on our bodies. It does appear that sun cream doesn't protect you for the sun and, in Sarah's case, super strong jungle formula does not protect you from mosquitos - thankfully I am untouched (my trusty can of hoffmeister deters the female of all species - with the exception of Sarah (thankfully)).

The eagle has landed.....

We have arrived in The Gambia and are relaxing in our hotel room as I speak. The was a slight delay on arriving, but we landed to 36 degree sunshine at 3:30pm local time. It was nice and a million miles away from the killer smog of the UK!! 



The Atlas Mountains - Sarah will remember fondly driving through this on our Morocco trek!!

 

The world's smallest cheese sandwich!!

 

Banjul airport, I was being paranoid about photographing sensitive installations, so did it from the plane!

 

The room is lovely and it looks out onto the sea. Closer inspection shows the place is a little bit rough around the edges but not in any way that is detrimental to the experience - although I did enjoy the engineer who came out because our shower was flooding the whole bathroom explaining to us the reason is  because the water pressure is 5 bar rather than 3 bar these days. I wondered how many people would understand what that meant. Just in case readers don't know - 5 bar is not so much a shower as a blast from a fireman's hose!!

The hotel is a maze of little pathways which are designed to get you lost I am sure, but slowly we are getting to grips with the labyrinthine layout of the hotel. We know where the restaurants and bars are, so we have clearly got our priorities right!!! The local beverage is called Julbrew, and similar to Morocco we love drinking it and have had a couple of these already ;)

Also, from what I can tell, the hotel has live entertainment most of the days, and I have to admit that while I enjoyed the group playing local music in the afternoon they were not a patch on the Gambian equivalent of Jive Bunny who could seamlessly meld Boney M's Rivers of Babylon to a Bob Marley medley before finishing with When The Saints Go Marching In. 

The people here are all very friendly, smiley and nothing is too much bother, but there is a very laid back pace of life here too, so when I phoned to get someone to mop up our bathroom from the aforementioned flooding, they took about as long as it took Noah to build his ark to come around and see us, and only then after I phoned them again to press home the point that we were going to the toilet in an inch of water!!! 

That said, when they did eventually arrive, we were inundated with helpful, smiley staff - an engineer who gave me the water pressure factoid, he also kindly found some seal for the bottom of the shower door to stop future flooding events - it clearly won't work as there is still a large gap between the door and the floor, but I didn't have the heart to tell him that. Next to arrive was a towel person, who was brining us a whole batch of clean white towels (we had used our lot to soak up the mess!), and the final person to turn up was a man whose job it was to mop up the remaining water on the floor clearly he is a newbie as he has the most mundane job of the three...

So that is the days events so far, and now, all that remains is for us to go to bed and start exploring properly tomorrow. I will post up some pictures later on.

 

Gammy Beer......

Previous experience (and regular blog readers will know) has taught me not to try and chance it by going down on the day as traffic chaos in London could seriously increase your stress levels!!! So early on in the process Sarah and I decided to book in for an overnight stay, so there was no mad panic to get here on the day. 

Things were going smoothly and we were half a hour into our journey down the road when I had a horrible sinking feeling - did I pack the malaria tablets?? A quick pull over onto a side road and opening of the case brought an element of relief as I had packed them deep in my case. Thankfully, I remembered them as I think Sarah might well have throttled me on the roadside having spent the past few days reminding me to pack them!!! 

On our way to the hotel we popped in to visit Sarah's mum, before setting off to brave the concrete nightmare that is the M25. Unusually, the road was stress free, and there were no hold ups whatsoever and we have arrived at the Hilton at a reasonable time and are currently settling in next to the runway in preparation for out early flight tomorrow morning. There is something strangely relaxing about the sound of jet engines roaring past ever 45 seconds or so (sorry, did I say strangely relaxing?? I meant to say irritatingly regular!!) but on balance it is a price worth paying to have the luxury of getting up in the morning and just walking across a sky bridge to the terminal.

To add a little bit of grandeur to our stay we have upgraded to the executive package - where you get a nicer room, a bit further away from the runway, and you get access to the executive lounge which has a happy hour from 6pm to 9pm. For an additional £35 I figured both Sarah and I could easily quaff our way through that much money in drinks so here we are sitting in the exec lounge drinking tea and nibbling scones and cookies, waiting until 6pm before the real fun begins...... 

***update***

We have supped some cocktails, and drank the complimentary booze and nibbled a few hors d'oeuvres before retiring back to the room to order room service. It became clear to me how the hotel to offer you endless free drinks, but the. Answer was simple it was to stock the bar with all manner of nasty cheap lagers that no one really had the desire to drink. That said, there were some admirable efforts by people to get value for money - we particularly liked the American family who instead of taking the kids to the restaurant for a meal (where you would have to pay), decided to dine exclusively on the nibbles in the executive lounge. There was also the three Mancunian single males who occupied a small table each and spread their laptops and papers out to make it look like they were working hard, while supping on endless bottles of 1664. We all know what they were downloading, and it wasn't the latest sales figures ;)

Anyway, I digress. We have drank, we have eaten and now all that remains for me to do is fall into the land of nod (Sarah is already there) so that is all for now, I need to head to bed so that I don't miss my flight - the next post will be from The Gambia where I will endeavour to give you some insights into Gambian culture, while swatting malaria laden mosquitos away with one hand and supping a nice big cocktail with the other.....