Dakar is not what I expected mainly because I never bothered to look at a map of Africa. I assumed it was a tropical nation on the Gold Coast, but it is, instead, a desert-like oasis on the Atlantic nearer Mauritania than Ivory Coast.
Every year I try not to get ripped off the first day when I'm so uncertain of the currency and the territory, and every year I squander money anyway. I'd read on the internet a complaint by one visitor to my hostel that his taxi driver was never able to find the place. So I copied down detailed directions. And my taxi driver still could not find it. I ended up guiltily giving him $7.00 since he spent nearly an hour treading with me along Dakarian streets till we finally chanced on the (unmarked) place. I also squandered a few bucks to a tout at the airport who posed as an employee of the airport but was, instead, just a hustler.
Dakar is sand. Sand everywhere. You walk in it, you get it in your shoes, everything is colored by light brown sand. The buildings here in my part of town are all one and two story cement brick buildings. Like so many places I've visited there is lots of building going on reflecting, I assume, a growing population that is sprawling out horizontally rather than vertically. Don't know what downtown Dakar looks like yet.
My hostel is a beautiful mediterranean two-story structure. Oddly I'm sharing a room with a french woman of about 35 years of age. She seemed not at all nonplussed by having me for a roommate.
The plane ride was uneventful. Most passengers were headed for Johannesburg. I sat next to a South African family with two small children who were too preoccupied with the kids to be friendly.
Expenses
$4.78 newspapers, water on plane
$23.00 various ripoffs and taxi costs to hostel in Dakar
$2.00 electrical power adapter
$3.00 bottled water
$ hostel
$10.00 laundry and guide help from young girl at hostel
$1.00 bananas from streetside vendor
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