Base Camp Paris; final hours in Europe

Adam got here yesterday, and is amazed - you forget how tiny everything is. The cars, the elevators, the people...

Today was spent making the last preparations and purchases, mostly for Guillaume:

• backpack
  
• small towel
  
• hiking shoes
  
• canon ixus camera
  
• cheap watch
  

Soon (tomorrow) we will share with you the list of things we are going to bring.

We discussed planning beyond our first night in Dakar today, but decided against due to laziness. Provisionally it is looking like north to Saint Louis before looping south through Dakar and on through Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Burkina Faso and then North into Mali (hopefully up to Tombouctou) through Mauritania back to Dakar. It is most likely impossible to actually do all that, but it's provisional.

The first challenge will be to get to the hotel, since we land at midnight and have no reservation anywhere, although we know where we want to go: the great Hotel Du Marche. It's supposed to be a very nice budget place, albeit a brothel as well as a hotel. We remain unsure of how the business works (Do the pleasure providers live and service on site or do they only service? Does the same management oversee both activities?).

Tomorrow, finalization of bags, goodbyes for Guillaume, and we are off.