Adrift Traveler: St Louis

At the security check point the soldier were curious where we stayed. They recommended to us that we take the road to Douane instead of to Rosso. At the turn off to Douane there was construction and the road was blocked but the locals encouraged us to take the turnoff. After the first kilometer the road turned to dirt and the road got progressively worse as we went. At 10 k down the road we turned around. We ended up running with the herd on the road. Spotted some monkeys crossing the road but did not know that until the pictures were blown up on the computer. Then it was a long ride to the border. It took a while to get the vehicle gate open so we could enter the boarder checkpoint as the pedestrian gate had a never ending crowd pushing for position around it. Once inside we needed to get am exit stamp as the hustlers started to set us up as there mark, We found the right offices and Cindy took the passports in for a stamp.

I started being hit up for a ticket for a boat ride across the river. They wanted 500 and the ticket was printed 50. I did not even know if the ticket was for the ferry, so we went to check out the ferry setup. One of the hustlers started ordering us from one spot to another. We were still not buying a ticket. He started shoving my bike into me, I yelled at him to get the soldier attention that were around\. We were move once more away from the ferry. Then a man directing cars onto the ferry hit one of the hustlers that had be trying to sell us tickets.

I this gentleman about getting on the ferry and he just pointed us to a group of people waiting by the ferry. When the last car loaded the ferry the people went on and we followed. We crossed the kilometer wide Senegalese River. A toll was paid by the cars and not by the walk on passengers. Various people kept asking to take our passports to be processed. We kept our passports even when exiting the boat and a policeman was collecting a stack of passports. We headed for the office and Cindy fairly quickly had our passports stamped for Senegal.

We walked though the gates and the hustlers that followed us from the other shore were fairly surprised that we hoped on our bikes leaving without them getting anything from us for hassling us continuously, In looking over Rosso we did not see anyplace to stay. The town encouraged us to move on. Sun was going down and there were no other options close to Rosso so we opted to take a taxi to St Louis. Bikes were tide on the roof and glad we were not on the roof like the rams. An hour later we were in St Louis with the full taxi bottoming out on a couple of times. Three more kilometers and we were at a reasonable hotel for less than they wanted in Rosso for a dump of a room. We had a great dinner there by the water which was a nice ending to a long day. It was a full day

We are out of the Sahara. Yes the desert is over as we cross the Senegalese River. It is just a kilometer wide.