Stephanie and I are getting our plans and things together for fall break.
Saturday morning, the plan is to make our way to the sept-place station. These are station wagons cleverly named sept-places because of their seven-places. We'll pack our hiking packs with a bit of food and water, sleeping sacks and water filters plus a few extras. Then, around 6 or 7 in the am, score a couple seats and wait for the other 5 to fill up.
We'll take the first trip to Tamba counda, then depending on how we feel, down to Kedougou, a base town for hiking and biking in the "lush and mountainous" southeast. We'll just have to wait and see how big a misnomer that is.
There's not much to know about the area as the Lonely Planet isn't incredibly helpful and the internet isn't much better either for details. The general advice seems to be "just get down there, hike a bit, stay with some families, bring lots of cola nuts and have a good time." So, that's what we'll do. Sometimes this type of nonchalance can be tough to accept, but really - what good are plans anyway? They become more and more useless the less and less predictable limiting factors are (like roads, bike availability, etc.).
One definite about our plans is stopping by the Peace Corps house in Kedougou, where the volunteers in the area are based. We're hoping to meet some cool folks, get their take on the program and maybe find some lesser-known bits of the area.
Some other hopes for the trip are to run into the Bissai, a group that's still completely animist and a two-day hike to the border with Guinea. It's through the mountains and there's no official border post - just like the Sound of Music. I should google that line to see how many other folks have made that connection in their travel advice...
Once we're broken in from this trip, I'm hoping we'll all have a taste for domestic travel in Senegal and can make our way up to St. Louis, down to the Cassamance and maybe sneak into The Gambia.
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