Goodbye Gambia and hello again Senegal. Er, sort of.

We left David and family a day later than planned due to a camera repair, a look around the market and going out for some live music. I was quite grateful of the extra day as whilst ‘getting a bit of colour’ I suddenly remembered Dr Hill’s (my sister) warning that taking Malerone malaria pills can increase your chance of getting burnt. Too late. I ended up getting the worst sunburn since I was about eleven, whilst in Spain, which saw me wearing my pyjama top for three days as unlike anything else I tried to wear, it didn’t feel like Freddie Kruger was giving me a back massage. Oh how I wished I had that little soft blue pyjama top, with red lapels. So, still in agony and with my water blisters just about outnumbering my mosquito bites we finally set off. Forty eight hours later and we’re still together and making pretty good travelling companions. Here’s what I know and something that I don’t really need to know.
Mick Hoey, 31, Danish, Peter Schmeichel lookie-likey, Honda VFR750 (?!, more later) former aircraft technician, has a more than worrying interest in the infamous ‘Mr Hands.’ Wikipedia it if you must – but you’ve been warned.
Day one of this two day entry saw us cross the river again at Banjul to take Gambia’s northern road eastwards, where we made good ground and stayed at a nice campsite. The following morning though saw us have to ride 30km the way we had come due to an impassable river crossing. Studying the map we made the old ‘that can’t be far’ mistake when we saw a tiny white road to Senegal. Lesson seven: white roads on the African map are the sort where you need to check how long’s left until your passport expires before attempting them. Lesson eight soon became sports touring bikes don’t do sand. This 40km took several hours in the heat and saw us run out of water, bad times. Mercifully after this hell we found tarmac which was adorned with signs in French and Senegalesed registered cars. Hooray! Except that we hadn’t actually passed any sort of border with its official procedures. Decision time then, either a) find the nearest cheerful bobby to explain our predicament only for him tell us to ride back the way we came or b) risk sharing a cell with big black Messuire Dique after being ‘pulled’ at one of the many police checkpoints along the way? So here we are then, 50km from the Malian border having waved and smiled our way through the many checkpoints. We’re wild camping 300 meters from the main road out of sight and tomorrow we’ll hopefully get to the border and with no other tactic thought up we’ll just have to play dumb. Or maybe those crappy ‘Dunston’ cigarettes will be useful after all?