Stuck in the sand, sleeping at the beach

Day: 04
Location: Kayar, Senegal
Weather: beautiful
Kilometers: 270
Hours: 4
Health: perfect
Accomodation: Auberge de Ocean Bleu
Price, room: 7K CFA
Price, water: 500 CFA
Morale: 9
Song of the day: Training montage, spy game soundtrack
Total Spend: 54K CFA
Shower: no

AW: We toured Saint-Louis this morning for about two hours, taking pictures of everything as discreetly as possible, while still managing to offend a bunch of people who weren't keen on being photographed. No real harm done, and some of the shots were worth it.

The colonial town was interesting, but the fishing village on Ile de la Langue de Barbarie was fascinating. It looked like a war zone from across the water, but it was just a bunch of surly women smoking tons of fish. We really got scolded after emerging from an intense muslim beach cemetary where they put fishing nets on the graves of fishermen. We are very credible when claiming to be lost and generally befuddled, so we got directions and continued.

Then we drove back, stopping at a tiny roadside town to eat the one dish they were serving that day (Thiebou Dieune). It was delicious fish and rice for 1.5K CFA.

GB: As I am typing this post, Adam is driving the car to overheat. Although it feels like 100 mph, this is actually our speed in kph.

Buzzards - saw them for the first time today, immediately decided we would not let the car breakdown on this road.

AW: We called the owner of the call to ask if the heat gauge is always off the charts hot, but he told us not to worry about it. However, it eventually became clear that the water was either leaking or boiling off, as we put almost 10 liters in today.

At a police checkpoint they examined the registration, insurance, trunk and hood before explaining that the VIN on the frame didn't at all match the registration, and that this was a very serious offense. The numbers were in fact identical, and they gave up and let us go when Guillaume brought this to their attention.

Visited Keur Moussa monastery and le Lac Rose, which looked just like any other lake in low angle sun. It was supposed to have a pink color due to high salinity.

We got the car stuck in deep sand after we failed to pay sufficient attention to local advice: "Il faut foncer droit devant." Incidentally this happened right in front of a children's soccer match. The bloodsuckers surrounded us and the car (literally 25 kids) and it was chaos until we made them nominate one spokesman for negotiations. "12, 3 ok 5, no 6 - done." The little army pushed the car out, we paid their self promoted leader 6K CFA and were on our way to Bayakh and then Kayar.

We got stuck on the beach in Kayar again, but it was easily dug out this time. On local advice, we parked next to the mayor's Peugot for security, and walked 800m to the solar powered auberge on the beach for a nice fish dinner.

We met a french lady who said you can swing a 4x4 in Bamako the way we want it for 25K CFA / day. But she has a Senegalese boyfriend, so we think our chances of actually getting that are very small.