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| Pictures of what we saw on our voyage up the River Gambia aboard the Alhagie | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Here is what we saw, mile after mile. There is a noticeable break between the salt and the fresh water - the salty bit is lined with Mangroves, and the fresh part looks more like the above. We probably travelled about 200 KM in 2 days, and were struck by how undeveloped and unspoilt the river banks are. We saw perhaps 5 boats during our whole trip, and evidence of no more than about 5-7 villages or inhabited areas visible from the river. Given how poor the roads are, and how good the navigating on the river is, it struck us that a major mode of transport is being underused. But we weren't complaining, as it made our trip much more scenic! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Here's one of the few other boats we did see! As is evident, most boats are quite simple and the Alhagie caused quite a stir when we did pass by villages - seemed like everyone turned out to wave at the Tuubaabs! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Indeed, we were part of the scenery along the river that weekend, as you can see here! The villagers were very friendly, although they did keep asking us for our empty water bottles - here Kate politely yet firmly says no. We knew we had a long hot drive home ahead of us (7 hours by van back to the Kombos). |  |
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| Of course we had all come to see the wildlife along the way - and we were not disappointed. There were several colorful birds to be seen and also great flocks/flotillas of birds. Here we came across a flock of pelicans, which all took flight majectically when we came too close. We also saw crocodiles, but don't have any pictures as we don't know the word for crocodile in Finnish, so didn't have our cameras ready! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Ok, these do look like blobs (even with the new telephoto lens on), but trust us, we saw HIPPOS floating in the River! Yes, we were very excited too! We think we saw about 4 or 5 - a bit difficult to say for sure. They were in a small cut between two islands, and once we saw them, we circles around and floated down towards them as close as we dared (probably about 50 feet away). You can sort of see their ears sticking out if you squint hard enough. We'll spare you more pictures (we have tons that don't look much different). | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| But just so you get the proper perspective, we saw more scenery like this, mile after mile of it, only occasionally puncuated with the odd paddler or village, bird, croc, hippo, monkey or cow. A very peaceful way to watch the world float by! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Back to story about our river expedition See photos from the voyage See our vessel - the Alhagie |
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