Close to nailing down the 4x4

Day: 07
Location: still in Dakar, Senegal
Weather: perfect
Health: perfect
Accomodation: hotel du Marche
Price, room: 13K CFA
Morale: 9
Shower: yes
Total spend: 40K CFA

Yes, it seems like nothing changes on this trip, but we are indeed tied to Dakar until Rob lands tomorrow afternoon. We settled on terms for the 4x4, but it was a fairly brutal negotiation, complete with fake phone calls, tales of other offers, several walk outs, and Senegalese appeals to uninvolved relatives for their impartial opinions.

One of the best opportunities for these guys is the contrast between how heavily we value our time, and how little they seem to mind. The further down the path they can take us before we discover a potential deal breaker, the more likely we will be to find a way to deal with it. The tactic works.

Anyway, it's a 2001 Mitsubishi, and it drives nice. 60K CFA per day with 1600 km included, and a chauffeur included. While we don't want the chauffeur, the other alternative involved Rob driving solo back to Dakar with no French, no phone, and no assistance. That just didn't seem too smart, so we agreed to have him along. Let's hope he isn't on a champagne and caviar diet (just kidding, included means they pay him, and he takes care of himself). It should be about 1100 km round trip, but we argued hard for the extra. It's 200 CFA per km over, so we could bleed a lot if we get really lost (unlikely) or too ambitious. So that's 420K CFA before fuel, or 140K per person is $280. The real joke is going to be on us as we have to fuel the beast.

We treated ourselves to schawarma and the dodgiest hot dog ever as a celebration. Not a controlled experiment, but if something happens to our health tomorrow, I'm blaming that bright red "meat" frank. It is interesting that every successful branded chain restaurant here seems to be run by the Lebanese.

Guillaume is really sawing some logs here in the hotel du Marche!

We had a good dinner, Thiou Crevettes and Yassa Crevettes; then we went to this bar called The Viking, which bore a shocking resemblence to the bar with alien minstrels from Star Wars. There was every type of person there, from a dirty old french man to the african jam band to a group of young divas, to a guy in full arab gear getting smashed at the bar! And us.

GB: On a finalement reactive une autre piste pour la voiture, etant donne que meme apres 2h de negociations notre loueur a finalement essaye de changer une fois de plus les termes du deal. Momo, notre intermediaire pour la Peugeot 305, est donc revenu dans la course pour un photo-finish demain matin entre les 2 contestants principaux. De toute facon si ca marche pas, on prendra un Minibus.

Sinon tout va toujours bien a l'Hotel du Marche, ou on a l'impression que l'offre se diversifie et que la demande croit avec elle... Les dames de la maison ont maintenant change de maniere de nous approcher, tentant de devenir nos amies pour nous aguicher vu que la technique habituelle ne passe pas.

Enfin, apparemment notre chambre doit avoir une fuite quelque part, puisqu'a chaque fois qu'on s'eloigne pour quelques heures ou plus a notre retour elle sent legerement l'urine. Resultat: le manutentionnaire de charge se retrouve a faire des heures sup. Enfin jusqu'a hier soir puisque cette fois ci il a tout simplement refuse, et on a du se faire a l'odeur...

AW: So basically, the car guy tried to pull some shady stuff with the insurance so we called momo, the ladies of the hotel du marche are getting restless, and our room smells like piss.